‘Squad’ members primeried over Israel

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St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell announced this week he was dropping his months-long bid to unseat one of the country’s most outspoken Republican senators, Josh Hawley, to launch a primary campaign to oust fellow Democrat Rep. Cori Bush.

When asked to explain his switch, Bell pointed to Bush’s criticism of Israel.
“Our world is in a dangerous place, and we need steady and effective leadership,” Bell told reporters Monday. “And we’re not getting it” in the district.
“I think we have to stand with our allies, and Israel has always been an ally,” Bell added.
Since entering Congress in 2021, Bush has publicly spoken about what she has described as the “outright massacre in Palestine” and argued that “the Black and Palestinian struggles for liberation are interconnected.” On Oct. 7, the night Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded with airstrikes, Bush wrote on social media to condemn the killing of civilians and called for “ending U.S. government support for Israeli military occupation and apartheid.”

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Summer L. Lee (D-Pa.) also drew primary challengers who cite their criticism of Israel as an issue. George Latimer, the executive of Westchester County, N.Y., said he is weighing a challenge to Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), another member of the Squad, with Israel as a potentially defining issue in the race. “It might be that this becomes a proxy argument” between “the left and the far left,” Latimer told The Washington Post.

Support for Israel by the United States is a source of growing tension within the Democratic Party. While party leaders and establishment figures have largely been united in support of the 75-year-old democratic nation, the liberal wing of the party has grown louder in challenging the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee — which has helped fund challenges to incumbents it considers insufficiently supportive of Israel — declined, for now, to comment on the brewing congressional races.

Liberal political action committee Justice Democrats said AIPAC is targeting Democrats who criticize Israel and who also challenge economic policies that hurt poor and middle-class people. “What they really are is a vehicle for Republican dollars to be spent in Democratic primaries to elect Republican-adjacent Democrats,” Usamah Andrabi, spokesperson for the PAC, said in an interview Tuesday.

Wittmann disputed the characterization from Justice Democrats, saying in a statement, “Our sole criteria for supporting candidates — both Democrats and Republicans — is their position on supporting the U.S.-Israel relationship. In fact, our PAC has supported almost half of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It is entirely consistent with progressive values to stand with the Jewish state.”

A spokesman for Omar referred to comments she posted on social media, highlighting what she called “downright genocidal rhetoric,” from Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.), and “insulting and Islamophobic” advertising directed at her, from AIPAC.