We’re less than two weeks away from the Democratic primary in New York’s 16th district and things are not looking good for Rep. Jamaal Bowman.
A new poll from Emerson College shows Bowman’s challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, leading 48% to 31%.
Latimer is backed by AIPAC and the financial discrepancy is staggering. So far Bowman has spent less than $2 million on the race, while AIPAC alone has spent $13 million in support of Latimer. They’re projected to spend $25 million on the race altogether.
Bowman became a target of pro-Israel lobbying groups the moment he mounted a campaign against longtime House member and pro-Israel zealot Eliot Engel four years ago. Since ousting Engel in that upset, Bowman has remained a thorn in the lobby’s side, but things really got serious after October 7th. Not only was he one of the first Congressional members to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, he’s defended use of the phrase “For the River to the Sea”, is also one of the only politicians to call what’s happening a genocide, and has even questioned the official Israeli narrative of what happened on October 7th.
“There was propaganda used at the beginning of the siege,” he told a group of protesters in November. “There’s still no evidence of beheaded babies or raped women, but they still keep using that lie.”
That kind of rhetoric is such a massive no-no that AIPAC was actually inspired to run its first ad of the campaign season that mentions that bothers to mention the only issue it cares about.
The organization bankrolled an ad that features Elie Wiesel’s son, Elisha, smearing Bowman as a bigot. “Who are the antisemites engaged in falsely accusing Israel of genocide?” he asks the viewer. “Who stands up to oppose them? And who stands by silently? We know where Jamaal Bowman stands.”
I spoke with political consultant Peter Feld this week about AIPAC’s strategy in that race. He told me that such a spot enables the group to claim that it brings up Israel while it’s spending the vast majority of its money on ads that attack Bowman for things utterly unconnected to the issue.
“The online ads are obviously are not going to have the reach of television ads and sometimes they are done to drive free media,” Feld explained. “They might also be doing it partly to rebut the criticism that they never mention Israel and they can do it on the cheap because digital ads are a much smaller cost than the television ads.”
“They’re going into things like Bowman voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill.” he continued. “They’re running high-volume ads. I watched the news last night, and there were multiple ads within an hour for Latimer. There was one 15-second ad for Bowman. So you see the mismatch right away with the difference in spending. I think the number I last heard for the race is $13 million for Latimer and Bowman’s going to have $2 million. I’m not sure how much the outside groups that might come in on his behalf are going to spend, but maybe that’s included in the $2 million.”
“Right now the lobbying groups are running a message against Bowman that claims he’s against Biden, that he opposes Biden’s agenda and he’s hurting New York.”
Feld also pointed out that there’s a paradox to a lot of these races. On one hand, poll after poll shows that Democratic voters are shifting to the left on Palestine. On the other hand, the issue has not become a central part of these elections. The vast majority of the Democratic base thinks that the Biden administration should push for a ceasefire and condition weapons shipments to Israel, but Latimer feels emboldened enough to claim Bowman’s base is in Dearborn, first Arab-American majority city in the United States.
If AIPAC is able to take down Bowman and Bush, (and it looks like they have a good chance of ousting both of them), it sends a clear message to other lawmakers: speak up for Palestinians at your own peril.
“It’s an extremely effective strategy if your goal is to chill support for Palestine in Congress and send the message that it’s just too toxic to support Palestine right now,” says Feld.
Not bad for a $100 million.
Summer of Protest
Two weeks ago, with cops set to show up, Columbia University students dismantled their third Gaza Solidarity Encampment.
“We will be back,” declared the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on social media. “Despite Columbia University’s shameful and coordinated efforts with NYPD and the billionaire lobby to suppress our movement, we remain undeterred. Agitate, educate, and escalate for Gaza.”
The 48-hour encampment coincided with Reunion Weekend, where students had called on the visiting alums to cancel any donations until the school committed to divesting from Israel.
The action is just one of the many recent actions showing that, while many students are heading home for the summer, the protests aren’t stopping.
In Massachusetts former students at Amherst College shut down a Reunion Weekend meeting demanding that the school commit to divesting from Israel’s war on Gaza, at UCLA almost 30 people were arrested during a violent police crackdown on their encampment, and at Oregon State University students chained themselves to two concrete pillars for days, to name just a few recent developments.
We are set to enter a summer of antiwar protest like nothing this country has seen in decades.
Last week 100,000 people converged on D.C. to form a two-mile “people’s red line” around The White House. “You’re complicit in genocide!” a protester yelled at Biden during a recent event. Big protests are expected at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this August.
It makes sense that the activism on campuses will decrease over the next few months and that some of the remaining encampments might close up shop, but what happens when students return to school after an additional season of organizing under their belts?
Beyond the obvious and imperative demands of the current Israeli assault, one of the most important aspects of the campus protests has been the call for divestment. The issue has gone mainstream, in much the same way it did for South Africa in the 1980s.
“This student uprising has been a crash course on Palestine for millions in the west in particular, undoing many years of silencing and erasing Palestinian voices, Palestinian history, Palestinian culture,” said Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement co-founder Omar Barghouti recently. “It gives us hope and inspiration in these dark times of Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip.”
Many of us are old enough to remember the early days of BDS when many progressives were denouncing the movement as a laughable, counterproductive decision. They insisted that such an effort would never amount to anything, but of course it already has.
Reading and covering the protests each week, I am often reminded of a speech I saw Palestinian Youth Movement organizer Mohammed Nabulsi deliver in Detroit last month.
“Our capacity to generate the crisis that we have generated up until this point, and we have done this, it must be said—There’s a bit of a, I want to call it nihilism, because I believe it’s nihilism” Nabulsi told the crowd. “This idea that everything we’ve done has been for naught. That we haven’t achieved anything, that the war is raging on. There’s a mistake in the logic of this type of thought process. It overemphasizes and overstates our subjectivity, meaning our individual thoughts about the role we’re playing, as opposed to looking at how we can materially contribute as a front in a war.”
“We are one front,” he continued. “We are not the sole front. We are not the front. This genocide will come to an end, in part, because of all of the work that we’ve done. But that’s the key word here: in part. Not because of us.”
Odds & Ends
🪧 ‘People’s red line’ surrounds the White House to demand end of Gaza genocide
💰 ‘Their message is, The Empire Strikes Back’: Breaking down AIPAC’s role in the 2024 election
🏫 ‘The generation that says no more’: Inside the Columbia University encampments for Palestine
🇱🇧 The Biden administration must stop Israel before it escalates in Lebanon
🗳️ New York Times: Bowman Makes Amends With Democratic Socialists After Rift Over Israel
🏫 Jewish Insider: University of Michigan president vows ‘zero tolerance’ for further campus encampments
💰 Politico: Bipartisanship or Republican meddling? AIPAC is biggest source of GOP donations in Dem primaries
🇺🇸 Truthout: Biden Wants to Enable Genocide. We Must Make It Impossible for Him to Continue.
🎓 Al Jazeera: The Harvard graduating students denied their degrees over Palestine protest
🍎 Middle East Eye: Employees accuse Apple of donating to groups funding West Bank settlements
📢 Democracy Now: “15,000 Kids Dead Is Not Self-Defense!”: Protesters Confront Jake Sullivan over Gaza Assault
🇺🇸 Counterpunch: Intruder at Large: The United States in the Middle East
🇺🇸 Responsible Statecraft: Washington is not telling truth about the Gaza pier
⛺ In These Times: Students, Gaza and a New Vision of Safety
⚽ The Nation: How the Sports Media Is Manufacturing Consent Over Gaza
🗳️ Daily News: Bowman accuses Latimer of anti-Arab ‘dog whistle’ in NY-16 primary debate
Stay safe out there,
Recently, somewhere on this site, I saw someone commenting on how the media control the narrative by selective focusing attention (sorry, I don’t recall the name). I don’t recall the specifics, but I was reminded by some news I saw and heard this afternoon.
On ABC’s “Inside Edition,” considerable attention was given to video of purported masked “Hamas” protesters on the subway in NYC, who were yelling slogans against Zionists. I wasn’t there, but it had the appearance of some silly play acting, either by enthusiastic young pro-Palestine demonstrators, or by pro-Israel false flag operatives. But evidently it is part of a big ongoing controversy about the need to ban masks in New York to preserve public safety, something that Governor and others are taking seriously.
Also this afternoon, on the BBC’s News Hour, there was a moving, even chilling, report on the situation in Gaza from a spokesman from UNICEF, the UN’s agency for children, who had spent time on the ground there.
Finally, this afternoon, on “The Useful Idiots” podcast, former Israeli negotiator Daniel Levy provided a depressing review of some of the history of the “peace process,” and an even more depressing description of the current reality.
Vastly different views of reality are available to Americans, depending on where they look for information. Of course, that is–and has been–true for many things. Thus, some take recommended vaccinations, while others regard them as an evil threat. A Republican member of Congress recently accused Dr. Fauci of “crimes against humanity.
Democracy may be better than the alternatives, and America’s press may be as free as any, but there are problems.
“If AIPAC is able to take down Bowman and Bush, (and it looks like they have a good chance of ousting both of them), it sends a clear message to other lawmakers: speak up for Palestinians at your own peril.”__________________________________________________________________
Losing Bowman and Bush could serve as a wakeup call for Palestine and its support system. Instead of building a bridge to Americans and Israelis and standing firm for justice and co-existence, the old game of coercion dominated. Student activism could have been more effective along side with a workable plan for co-existence and equality, yet has been predominately about BDS… the opposite of divide and conquer. The political damage from the “elimination” narrative was left intact.
Bowman is losing because he’s a weak candidate for this particular district. I have not lived in this district in decades, but I grew up there and still have a few friends who have remained. They are moderate Democrats who provided me information about Bowman’s reputation and his chances beyond the effect of AIPAC money.
I can state that Bowman’s affiliation with the Squad and his endorsement by Democratic Socialists of America is a huge liability. This district is generally middle to upper middle class with pockets of extreme wealth and a few struggling communities. Being a Squad member and a Socialist in this district loses voters in a huge way. He’s also lost the endorsement of Hillary Clinton and Mondaire Jones. Jones is a progressive Black gay former Congressman who lost his seat due to redistricting, but is still active in politics locally. Jones is more favorably viewed than Bowman. Bowman is viewed as anti-Israel in a heavily Jewish area while Jones supports Israel. Clinton endorses Latimer for his record as a moderate Democrat who gets things done. Latimer has served for a long time in local politics and is viewed as effective. Bowman is viewed as an embarrassment for pulling a fire alarm in Congress and being charged with a misdemeanor.
There are a lot of reasons why Bowman isn’t a good fit for Ny16, and Latimer is. From this article you would think the entire election comes down to AIPAC. That’s wrong. AIPAC support helps Latimer, but AIPAC only joined in because they thought Bowman would lose in his own right. Latimer is a better fit in the first place for NY16. My friends who still live there are thrilled to see Bowman kicked to the curb.