Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York was the first one in the club to fall in a primary election. Representative Cori Bush of Missouri followed him down the path to defeat.
In relatively quick succession, two African American members of The Squad, an informal group of left-wing Democratic members of the House of Representatives who have been excessively critical of Israel, fell short in primaries and ignominiously lost their bids for reelection to the U.S. Congress.
Bowman, whose 16th district encompasses parts of the New York City borough of the Bronx and Westchester county, was unseated by George Latimer this past June. Bush, one of the most vocal progressives of The Squad, was deposed on August 5 by Wesley Bell, who aligned himself with Israel.
No one knows whether more progressives of their ilk will lose primaries in the future, but the majority of Jewish voters will miss neither Bush nor Bowman.
In U.S. politics, money talks.
Guided by that spirit, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee funnelled about $15 million into the campaigns of their opponents, thereby ending the short-lived political careers of Bowman and Bush, both of whom were elected in 2020.
The Squad, known for being the most progressive members of the U.S. Congress, was initially composed of four outspoken women elected in 2018: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.
Two years later, they were joined by Bowman, Bush, Greg Casar of Texas and Summer Lee of Pennsylvania. Delia Ramirez of Illinois came on board in 2022.
They all had a jaundiced view of Israel and shared the belief that the Palestinians have been oppressed by Israel, which they have condemned as an apartheid state. With one glaring exception, they support a two-state solution. Tlaib, the only Palestinian member of Congress, has called for a single state in place of Israel.
Their criticism of Israel escalated sharply after Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip last autumn in response to the murderous attack mounted by Hamas in southern Israel on October 7.
Almost from day one of the war, they lobbied for an immediate ceasefire, which would have enabled Hamas to survive as a military force and as Gaza’s governing authority.
As the weeks passed and Palestinian civilian casualties mounted significantly, they accused Israel of committing genocide, glossing over the reality that Israel expressly targeted Hamas gunmen. They also ignored the oft-documented fact that Hamas cynically uses ordinary Palestinians as human shields.
Appalled by the high Palestinian casualties, they implored President Joe Biden, a self-declared Zionist, to cut off the flow of U.S. weapons and munitions to Israel.
The Squad seemed supportive of Hamas, which has been labelled as a terrorist group by the United States and other leading Western nations.
Bowman and Bush were in the forefront of bashing Israel and equating Hamas with a national liberation movement.
A former school principal in the Bronx who was elected after defeating Eliot Engel, a pro-Israel hawk, Bowman was one of the first U.S. lawmakers to call for an immediate truce, a suggestion that upset many voters in Westchester, which has a comparatively substantial Jewish population.
In mid-November, he told pro-Palestinian protesters that reports of sexual violence by Hamas amounted to “propaganda.” Subsequently, he apologized, citing a United Nations report that confirmed Israel’s allegations.
By then, he had alienated most Jews in his district.
Senator Bernie Sanders off Vermont, one of Bowman’s supporters, characterized the primary as “one of the most important in the modern history of America.” As Sanders claimed, “This election is not about Jamaal vs. Mr. Latimer … but about whether or not the billionaire class and the oligarchs will control the United States government.”
Sanders’ hyperbole was not taken seriously by the electorate. Voters decided that Bowman was out of step with the views of many people in his district. Bowman lost by a considerable margin. Come November, Latimer will face Miriam Flisser, the Republican candidate and the former mayor of Scarsdale.
Bush, a nurse by profession, is a community activist who demonstrated in the streets of Ferguson in 2014 after a white police officer fatally shot an African American teenager.
Her opponent in the most recent primary, Bell, is a county prosecutor who ran as a progressive who supports Israel. He, too, was financially helped by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The New York Times claims that their race was one of the most expensive in the history of House of Representatives primaries.
Bush condemned Israel’s air and land offensive Gaza, and in January, she voted against a resolution barring Hamas members or Hamas October 7 attackers from entering the United States.
Shortly after the Israel-Hamas war began, she called Israel’s retaliatory offensive an “ethnic cleansing campaign” and accused Israel of “a war crime” by dint of having imposed “collective punishment against Palestinians.”
Tellingly, she declined to describe Hamas as a terrorist group. As she told The New York Times in a muddled answer, “Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes. But do I know that? Absolutely not. I have no communication with them. All I know is that we were considered terrorists, we were considered black identity extremists and all we were doing was trying to get peace. I’m not trying to compare us, but that taught me to the careful about labelling if I don’t know.”
Amid an outcry, Bush recanted, her spokeswoman saying, “The congresswoman knows Hamas is a terrorist organization.”
After her defeat, she remained defiant. In her concession speech, she said, “We will keep supporting a free Palestine.” This inflammatory remark prompted a supporter in the crowd to shout, “Free, free Palestine.”
Attacking the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, she said, “All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid. AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down!”
She remain incorrigibly anti-Israel.