In November 2023, Melat Kiros wrote a blog post rejecting the idea that law students who protested Israel’s actions in Gaza were antisemitic.
“We cannot let the painful nature of this moment stop us from remembering in one another our shared humanity and our responsibility to condemn any government’s systemic oppression and murder against innocent people,” she wrote. “We cannot fulfill these duties when any critique leveled at the Israeli government, and the Zionism that inspires it, is callously characterized as anti-Semitism.”
The law firm where Kiros was employed at the time demanded that she delete the post. She refused and was fired. That’s when she decided to become involved in politics.
Kiros didn’t waver on the issue after she threw her hat into Colorado’s 1st district race.
“Over $30 billion has gone to support what nearly every major human rights organization in the world has called a genocide in Gaza,” explained her website. “Seventy-five percent of Democrats want to end military funding to Israel, but too many representatives aren’t listening. I support an immediate and unconditional arms embargo on Israel, ending all funding to Israel’s military, and a just and lasting peace grounded in the equal human rights of all people in the region.”
On the domestic front, the 29-year-old activist advocated for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, universal childcare, and the abolition of ICE. She was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America (who helped bolster her campaign via grassroots organizing) and Justice Democrats.
On Tuesday, she won the Democratic primary, ousting Diana DeGette, who has been in Congress since 1997, the year Kiros was born. The 1st district, which encompasses almost all of Denver, is a solid blue area, so Kiros is expected to cruise to victory in the general election.
The Kiros victory comes just a week after a slate of progressive candidates backed by NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani prevailed in the city’s Democratic primaries, and the issue of Israel/Palestine became a central component of each race.
The immediate centrist spin was that New York City wasn’t a good representation of the United States, as it’s big, diverse, and leans liberal.
I asked political consultant Peter Feld about that critique the morning after the New York elections.
“First of all, we’ve seen lots of places besides New York City where people with similar perspectives on Palestine have won upset victories,” Feld told me. “Analilia Mejia and Adam Hamawy in New Jersey, Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, and at the end of this month, there’s a strong possibility that Melat Kiros in Colorado is going to defeat longtime incumbent Diana DeGette. We have primaries to come in Florida. We have general election contests in California that will be progressive Democrats versus mainstream Democratic incumbents such as Doris Matsui and Jimmy Gomez. So we’ll find out soon enough that this type of movement is not limited to New York.”
“But I would also suggest to people who say that New York isn’t the world that they look at the polling on Israel and the Iran war nationally,” he continued. “It’s impossible to get those huge numbers we’re seeing react negatively to Israel if it were only New York.”
One clear takeaway is that Palestine has emerged as a litmus test for many voters, and that “Progressive Except for Palestine” lawmakers risk electoral consequences if they refuse to change course.
Months before the election, a video of DeGette yelling at a pro-Palestine constituent in a coffee shop went viral. DeGette had been confronted about voting to send more weapons to Israel. DeGette told the woman, who was actually a Democratic delegate, not to vote for her if the only issue she cared about was Palestine.
Palestine is certainly not the only issue voters care about, but her district, like many locations across the country, clearly regarded it as a priority.
Committee to Protect Journalists
This week, the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) announced that it had voted to affirm its existing definition of “journalist.”
The move came after reports that the organization was narrowing, thus reducing the official count of journalists killed by Israel. Last week, the group said it had undergone a review process of its documentation and had removed 8 slain journalists from the list.
“It is not true that CPJ planned to change our definition of who is a journalist to exclude slain Palestinian and Lebanese press killed in the Israel-Gaza war. Such unsubstantiated allegations undermine the rigorous documentation of our Middle East and North Africa program over many years, while endangering Palestinian and Lebanese journalists documenting events on the ground today,” said CPJ board Chair Jacob Weisberg in a statement.
“The board stands fully with the staff of CPJ, whose difficult daily work of documenting attacks on journalists is today more important than ever, and with all journalists wrongly smeared and maligned for doing their jobs,” he continued.
Information on the reported shift came from Nika Soon-Shiong, the publisher of Drop Site News and a (now former) CPJ board member.
“I have been informed that I’m no longer a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists board,” tweeted Soon-Shiong, alongside an attached email she had sent to the group, expressing concerns.
In the email she referenced the alleged proposal.
“I request that the Board vote on whether to proceed with this effort, given the absence of a clear objective, defined scope of work, or assessment of the potential institutional risks,” it read.
“The proposal to exclude journalists who exhibit certain ‘behaviors and activities’ or who work for ‘state-backed propaganda outlets, militant- and designated terror-affiliated organizations’ emerged from our discussion of Adam Kredo’s Free Beacon article alleging I am too vocal against genocide and apartheid,” she added.
At Mondoweiss, Gaza Correspondent Tareq Hajjaj writes about the removal of the 8 journalists, including Hassan Eslayeh:
Hassan Eslayeh was one of Gaza’s best-known journalists. He maintained professional relationships across the political spectrum — with various Palestinian factions, their media offices, local officials, and ordinary people alike. That is not evidence against Hassan being a journalist; it is evidence of journalism. Reporters depend on broad networks of sources to do their work. Contact with the media office of a political faction does not make a journalist a terrorist or a member of that organization.
The Israeli military tried to kill Hassan twice. The first attempt targeted the journalists’ tent. He survived but spent nearly a month recovering at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. I spoke with him almost every day whenever he was well enough to answer the phone. I once asked him, “They already tried to kill you once. Aren’t you afraid they’ll come back?” His answer never changed: “They want to kill every journalist in Gaza. After they kill me, they’ll say I was a terrorist or that I belonged to Hamas, even though I belong to no faction. That is how they will justify my death. The truth is that they want to silence my voice and erase my images from the world.”
During the second assassination attempt, Israel killed Hassan in an airstrike on the hospital burn unit, where he was getting follow-up treatment. The Israeli army released a statement calling him a terrorist and member of Hamas, with no evidence.
But who is the terrorist journalist — the one documenting a genocide, or the one justifying them?
Great question.
Odds & Ends
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🔁 The Intercept: Congressional Dems Shift to Overwhelmingly Oppose Involvement in Israel’s War on Lebanon
🗽 Electronic Intifada: Grassroots voters reject AIPAC and boost Palestinian liberation in New York
🚨 Counterpunch: Congressional MKUltra Hearings as MAGA PSYOP
🇮🇱 Common Dreams: Netanyahu Claims He Doesn’t Want Any More American Aid. Why Are Top Democrats Trying to Keep It Flowing?
💵 Drop Site News: AIPAC, Big Tech Back Diana DeGette Over Melat Kiros With $2M Spending Flood
🗳️ Jewish Currents: An Earthquake Just Hit New York Politics
🏫 The Guardian: Tenured California professor fired over Gaza protest wins job back
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