The Shift: What should we think about AIPAC’s big win?

On Tuesday night Jamaal Bowman lost to George Latimer in the Democratic primary for New York’s 16th district.

It was the most expensive House primary in the history of the country, with $23 million spent on behalf of Latimer. At least $15 million of that came from UDP, a Super PAC wielded by AIPAC.

Bowman’s loss is undoubtedly a massive victory for the Israel Lobby, as he had been a thorn in their side since he upset Eliot Engel back in 2020.

Writing for a site back then, Josh Ruebner called Engel’s loss a “monumental collapse” for the lobby. “Engel is not an interchangeable automaton regurgitating AIPAC talking points,” wrote Ruebner. “As the eighth-ranking Democratic Representative in seniority, Engel has a more than three-decade-long track record unmatched by any other Democrat in the House of Representatives of introducing, sponsoring, and successfully legislating dozens of bills and resolutions to cement unequivocal US support for Israel apartheid rule over the Palestinian people.”

It wasn’t just that Engel had been ousted. It also seemed like Bowman might be halfway decent on the issue of Israel, especially in comparison to most of Congress.

“We must also have honest conversations about our government’s role in enabling the continued occupation of the Palestinian people,” declared his official platform. “Our taxpayer dollars should not be going toward subsidizing settlement expansion, home demolitions, the detention of Palestinian children, or in any way supporting the threatened Israeli ‘annexation’ of the West Bank. Past presidents like Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush used our financial leverage to promote peace in the region as well. We must ensure that U.S. support is used to address the very real security threats Israel faces, not to entrench the occupation.”

In the last four years, Bowman has moved further to the left on the issue but his enemies, and the mainstream press, have mainly classified this as a post-October 7th shift.

That’s not quite true. Bowman’s rhetoric seemingly began to shift after he returned from a J Street trip to Israel and Palestine in 2021. One of the only outlets to note this was Politico, which ran a good story on the trip last week.

Bowman told the website that the trip was a “transformational moment” for him, and that it made him begin to doubt the chance of a two-state solution. Bowman says he began to view two-state solution rhetoric as “the thing that you say so that everyone leaves you alone.”

The other important part of that trip is that Bowman faced backlash over it. He met with Israeli leaders during the visit and voted for additional Iron Dome funding around the same time. “This evening at the Knesset, I met with a delegation of Democratic members of Congress,” tweeted former Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid after the meeting. “I thanked them for supporting the replenishment of the Iron Dome missile defense system, and we discussed the importance of continuing to strengthen the US-Israel relationship.”

Many in DSA argued that he should be expelled from the socialist organization over these moves.

“Despite insisting that he is sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people, he has continued to show that he simply is not in solidarity with Palestinians, nor that he is willing to do what solidarity would actually necessitate,” said the (now defunct) BDS and Palestine Solidarity Working Group at the time. “Building real solidarity and social bonds with Palestinians requires more than just recognizing and feeling bad for their plight. It requires following the lead of Palestinian civil society, and further, it also means empowering Palestinians everywhere to meaningfully change their own circumstances.”

The group that put out that statement was actually disbanded as a result of the Bowman fallout within the organization.

This stuff is all part of the story, in the same way a pro-Palestine counter-protest at a recent Bowman rally is part of the story. It’s easy to chalk this kind of stuff up as leftist infighting, but anyone who knows the slightest thing about the history of U.S. social movements knows that there have always been debates about how to engage with electoralism and that these battles are always worth paying attention to.

“Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!,” tweeted AIPAC after Latimer prevailed. If that’s actually true, why did the Israel Lobby have to spend an unprecedented amount of money just to win a measly House primary?

The reality is, we know it’s not true. We know that Democratic voters have soured on Israel, we can just look at the polling. We know that the lobbying groups know this too because they do not mention Israel in their ads. We know that if being pro-Israel was really good politics, then AIPAC would show up in Rashida Tlaib’s district, or Ayanna Pressley’s. We know they would have intervened in Summer Lee’s primary earlier this year.

AIPAC wants people to believe they swung the Bowman race, so they can scare politicians and candidates into submission. They want the analysis of Bowman’s loss to send out a warning: If you speak out on Palestine, you will be targeted and defeated.

This doesn’t actually add up.

There are a multitude of reasons why Bowman lost and some of them have virtually nothing to do with AIPAC.

For starters, Bowman’s district was recently redrawn. Look how well he did in the Bronx, vs. how poorly he did across Westchester’s rich suburbs. Matt Karp has an extremely useful piece breaking this down in Jacobin.

“Yet in most working-class portions of the district, Bowman’s far-left views seem to have held up just fine. He took 84 percent of the vote in the Bronx,” writes Karp. “Analysts looking to find a popular repudiation of pro-Palestine politics will have to look somewhere beyond working-class Yonkers and Mount Vernon, where the congressman led the early vote by margins similar to his victory in 2020.”

“Unfortunately for Bowman, too much of his district did, in fact, reside in Scarsdale or somewhere similar,” he continued. “Though Times reporters did not see fit to mention it, last year NY-16 was redrawn so that the Westchester share of its primary vote jumped from about 60 percent to over 90 percent. This was of course the story of the entire election. The new and wealthy suburban areas in the district — including parts of Tarrytown and at least five additional country clubs north of Rye — all voted heavily against Bowman.”

Beyond that, we can look at the fact Bowman didn’t win by much in his last election a couple years ago.

“With Bowman I think they just see vulnerability,” political consultant Peter Feld told me earlier this month. “Frankly, Bowman won his last race, but he was running against divided opposition and he scored 54.4%. That’s a pretty good warning sign for an incumbent if you’re that close to 50. It wouldn’t take that many negatives to drive you under 50, which means that you’re losing a two-way race.”

Then we have the fire alarm incident. You probably recall that Bowman surveillance footage caught Bowman pulling a fire alarm in a congressional building last fall. He says he got confused about the sign and pulled it by accident. Republicans insist he was trying to stop an important vote from happening and censured him over the event.

AIPAC had already been in talks to recruit Latimer for a run when this went down. A couple months after, he officially announced his candidacy. By that point, AIPAC had already greased the wheels with a series of anti-Bowman attack ads.

Bowman also got no help from Democratic leadership, in the way that incumbents historically do.

“During the 2018 cycle, Democrats blacklisted campaign vendors who worked with progressive primary challengers. When several incumbents faced challengers from their left last cycle, House Democratic leaders, including Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., launched a new political action committee to back their members,” Akela Lacy noted at The Intercept. And a new dark-money group cropped up to help the cause…party leaders have been active in fighting off progressive challengers. Jeffries has campaigned around the country alongside incumbents facing challengers from their left.”

“As leading pro-Israel lobbying groups poured millions into the race to oust Bowman, however, Democratic leaders have been less unified in their outspoken support for incumbents than in previous cycles,” she continued. “Jeffries has not appeared on the campaign circuit with Bowman, even though both members represent districts in New York…”

Finally, we must face the fact that Bowman’s public positions on Israel may have alienated some voters, particularly the suburban ones that Karp references. In a recent piece at Yahoo Daniel Marans talked to liberal Zionists who ended up turning on Bowman. “I was always having to be his defender,” said one former Bowman donor. “And I could no longer defend his behavior.”

This shouldn’t be surprising. Things might be changing, but there’s still a lot of pro-Israel Democrats.

This is all to say that Bowman was targeted by AIPAC for a very specific reason: they knew he might lose.

This is not to suggest that AIPAC money did not have an impact on the primary. $15 million obviously goes a long way, Citizens United should be overturned, the U.S. political system is a joke, etc.

However, it would be a mistake to overstate AIPAC’s power based solely on Latimer’s win.

When Bowman upset Engel in 2020, AIPAC didn’t even have a Super PAC. Their decision to start spending on elections was a direct response to the growing support for Palestine developing among progressives. They’re spending over $100 million this election cycle because the cost of defending Israel is becoming more and more expensive.

AIPAC won this week and they might win in August when they go up against Rep. Cori Bush, another electorally vulnerable Squad member, but there’s a good chance that history will reveal these to be Pyrrhic victories.

BDS Win

There was a huge BDS win this week, as the South by Southwest conference officially announced it would no longer be sponsored by the U.S. Army or weapons manufacturers.

“After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model,” reads a statement on the festival’s website. “As a result, the US Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of SXSW 2025.”

This was an effort led by Palestine activists, as over 80 performers dropped out of the 2024 festival to protest U.S. support for Israel.

“It is done in solidarity with the people of Palestine and to highlight the unacceptable deep links the festival has to weapons companies and the U.S. military who at this very moment are enabling a genocide and famine against a trapped population,” said the Irish rap trip Kneecap in a statement at the time.

The Austin for Palestine Coalition put out a statement about the win:

MAJOR CAMPAIGN VICTORY!

Our BDS campaign demanding that the SXSW festival drop weapons manufacturers and war profiteers that are complicit in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza is successful!

SXSW has announced that for the 2025 festival they will be not be accepting these companies or the US military for sponsors. This is a tremendous win accomplished by the hard work of activists and the principled artists who withdrew their labor, in protest of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza.

We commend SXSW for listening to the demands of the artists. We urge SXSW to give further clarification regarding refusing to invite war profiteers will as exhibitors or speakers.

That further clarification point is quite important, as Army Futures Command spokesperson Lt. Col. Jamie Dobson has already told the website Breaking Defense that he doesn’t believe the military is fully banned.

“We appreciated the opportunity to join South by Southwest in 2024,” said Dobson. “With US Army Futures Command headquartered in Austin, we value any opportunity to join with our community to ignite discovery and make new connections.”

When bands protested the event earlier this year Texas Governor Greg Abbott tweeted, “Bands pull out of SXSW over U.S. Army sponsorship. Bye. Don’t come back. Austin remains the HQ for the Army Futures Command. San Antonio is Military City USA. We are proud of the U.S. military in Texas. If you don’t like it, don’t come here.”

Seems like you can still go there.

Odds & Ends

🇮🇱 For opposing genocide, Bowman is framed as antisemitic — by liberal Zionists

💰 Latimer defeats Bowman with $15 million worth of help from AIPAC

🐘 Republicans demonstrate their terrifying Palestine policy

🗳️ Progressive Congressmember Jamaal Bowman loses primary to AIPAC-backed candidate

🗳️ What Jamaal Bowman’s defeat means

🇱🇧 The mainstream media is setting the stage for an Israeli war on Lebanon

🇨🇳 Responsible Statecraft: Trump cabinet hopeful wants the ‘Israel model’ for US China policy

🗳️ Jacobin: Scarsdale Is What We Thought It Was

🏥 Truthout: Democrats’ Support for Israel Is Weakening the Reproductive Rights Movement

⛺ In These Times: “Raid Happening Now”: Scenes from UChicago’s Popular University

🗳️ Counterpunch: Tuesday’s Jamaal Bowman Primary Hits Close to Home for Me

🇺🇸 Truthout: US Claims IDF Is Investigating Hind Rajab’s Death, But Aid Group Says It Isn’t

🇮🇱 The Guardian: Israeli documents show expansive government effort to shape US discourse around Gaza war

🇮🇱 The Hill: Netanyahu meets with Fetterman: ‘Israel has had no better friend’

🇮🇱 Counterpunch: The ‘Israel Lobby’ Works for the US Military Industrial Complex

🇮🇱 Democracy Now: Journalist Antony Loewenstein on Assange’s Release, WikiLeaks & Israeli Drones Killing Gaza Reporters

🏳️‍🌈 The Nation: Pride and Genocide Don’t Mix

🇵🇸 NPR: I-95 Gaza protesters sentenced to jail

🇺🇸 Electronic Intifada: The anti-Palestinian canards of Congressman Chip Roy

🗳️ The Nation: What the Left Can Learn From Jamaal Bowman’s Loss

💰 The Intercept: Progressives on AIPAC’s defeat of Bowman: “Now we Know how much it costs to buy an election

🪧 Truthout: North Carolina GOP Is Trying to Corner Prosecutors Into Charging Protesters