Weekly Briefing: The Israel lobby defeated Jamaal Bowman

This week Jamaal Bowman, a progressive congressman from the Bronx and Westchester, lost his seat to the Israel lobby, and the media’s tongues were tied. No one could say as much directly.

Bowman, a member of the leftwing “Squad” elected in 2020, had made the political errors of calling for a ceasefire and saying Palestinians are experiencing a genocide, and so he was swept aside in a record of spending for a congressional race. There were colossal contributions to his opponent by an AIPAC-related pac, of $15 million, and by at least one other Zionist pac that spent $1.6 million to get out the Jewish vote.

Mainstream voices were quick to deflect the spending. David Axelrod said on CNN that Bowman had lost touch with the mainstream of the Democratic Party and that’s why he lost–he was a progressive in a “center left” district. Halie Soifer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America said the same thing. “Jamaal Bowman was out of step with the Democratic Party, his constituents, and Jewish voters,” she wrote.

J Street also said that the lobby had nothing to do with it. The center shifted. “Jewish and American opinion on Israel are coalescing in favor of sensible, solutions-oriented policies that promote both Israeli security and Palestinian rights and against perpetual conflict and occupation,” Jeremy Ben-Ami wrote.

The Axelrod/J Street/Soifer position –reflected by the mainstream media — is that Bowman is a fringe/urban figure and that the liberal heart of the Democratic Party is both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel. As Axelrod emphasized on CNN, and has emphasized before in sorting out the politics, you can weep for Palestinians and Israelis: “Two things can be true at once. I am the son of Jewish refugees so I feel strongly about this. October 7 was unthinkable. [But] you can still weep for Palestinian children who are starving.”

This is a fiction. The Palestinian children aren’t just starving, their bodies are being broken by U.S. bombs. There is no liberal center of the Democratic Party that supports both Israelis and Palestinians. That liberal center is pro-Israel. The Democratic Party will support continued funding for Israeli weaponry, including massive bombs that bury Palestinian children under rubble, it will oppose any forceful calls for ceasefire, and it will protect Israel from war crimes charges at the U.N. and the International Criminal Court. It will do nothing to stop Israel’s vengeful brutal bombing, besides a few pretty-pleases. Axelrod’s tears are the old Israeli story of shooting-and-crying.

The only pro-Palestinian position in American politics is the call by members of the Squad for a ceasefire, and for cutting off weapons for unending Israeli war crimes. That was Jamaal Bowman’s position. And for treating Palestinians as human beings deserving of our sympathy, he was drowned in pro-Israel spending and smeared as a fringe figure.

Axelrod and J Street and every other mainstream liberal voice is desperate to claim a middle ground on Palestine for understandable political reasons: they don’t want the progressive base of the Democratic Party to walk away from Joe Biden over the genocide. They are trying to hold the traditional coalition of blacks and Jews together for November.

So they lie to the base. They say that Jamaal Bowman doesn’t represent the heart of the party.

When in fact the polling shows that Bowman does represent the heart of the party. By 56 to 22 percent in May, Democrats said that Israel is committing a genocide. That is overwhelming. Obviously there ought to be an address for such views among Democratic leaders. Jamaal Bowman was such a leader. And his political career has been destroyed by the Israel lobby for adopting a position favored by the base (let alone younger voters, who overwhelmingly see a genocide).

J Street and Axelrod and the Jewish Democratic Council all do lip service to Palestinians but they always side with Israel in the end. Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street says he wants to “ensure long-term support for Israel in the Democratic Party,” and he quibbles with AIPAC over the methods that it is using in the Democratic primaries. He can point to the fact that AIPAC is supported by Republican megadonors. Sure, but it’s not like those megadonors actually care about the Republican Party. Paul Singer supports abortion rights but he pours money into the Republican Party to keep it on board with Israel.

So Ben-Ami does the Democrats, and AIPAC does both the Republicans and the Democrats. The lobby’s mission is as Ben-Ami stated it, to ensure long-term support for Israel, even as it carries out a genocide. “If this Capitol crumbled to the ground, the one thing that would remain would be our commitment to… Israel,” Nancy Pelosi said, disavowing the Squad.

The other big lie here is that AIPAC does not represent the Jewish people. This is the claim of IfNotNow, the (wonderful) activist youth group that has opposed the Gaza genocide forcefully. IfNotNow argues that AIPAC is a Republican MAGA force, and continued support for Israeli war crimes is not the American Jewish agenda. Sadly this is simply untrue. Pew’s polling shows that the most reactionary group in the Democratic Party on the Gaza war are American Jews. They support military aid to Israel by 74 to 15, while the party overall opposes military aid by 44 to 25. That is the crux of Biden’s political problem on this issue.

As Soifer and the Daily News said this week, Jews flooded the polls in Westchester for this primary election, and they voted against Bowman. “The Jewish vote made the difference in this race,” Soifer wrote.

Jews are also the richest group in America when people are sorted by religion – and as a J Street expert explained a few years back, when you run a Democratic congressional campaign, you go to the Jewish community for money, and before you do that you go to AIPAC for a position paper on Israel.

Jews are still the supporters of Zionism, Jews are still by and large the force behind the Israel lobby. The idealistic young Jews of IfNotNow are trying to change that, honorably. So is the great anti-Zionist group, Jewish Voice for Peace. So am I. But the reality is that Jews are for Israel in the same sort of zealous degree that evangelical Christians are against abortion rights. In the Jewish case, it is a deep emotional adherence, shaped by the Holocaust, as Axelrod says.

If we are to take on this force in American politics, we need to name it. Jewish Zionism is a significant force in the Democratic Party– older Jews who care about Israel and are willing to spend a lot of money on the issue have caused the party leadership to banish politicians who care about Palestinian human rights. And the media will then cover up the lobby’s work.