On Antisemitism and the Fight for Democracy

Plus some lessons about big money in politics from the primary fight underway between Rep. Jamaal Bowman and George Latimer.

I’m spending a good chunk of today and tomorrow virtually attending TICTeC, which stands for “The Impacts of Civic Technology Conference.” After a hiatus due to Covid, this annual global event, which I’ve attended most years since it started in 2015, is back with a packed schedule of talks and presentations happening in London right now. Expect a post from me at the end of the week offering highlights—assuming there are some!

In the meantime, I’m just going to share a few more observations about the rupture inside the Democratic party over Israel/Palestine, focused on the intensifying Democratic congressional primary that we’re living through here in NY’s 16th district. I can tell from the lower open rates on my last two posts about the battle between Rep. Jamaal Bowman and George Latimer that some of you have already heard enough. In which case, feel free to stop reading. It’s OK, I understand! I’m exhausted by this topic too! And yet, I think it matters for the larger picture as well.

An important course correction

From my perspective, the most interesting development on this whole front in the past week was Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to hold an online dialogue Monday with two liberal Jewish experts on antisemitism, Amy Spitalnick of the Jewish Council on Public Affairs and Stacy Burdett, a former vice president at the Anti-Defamation League and former top staffer at the US Holocaust Museum who is on JCPA’s board. The conversation was framed as a discussion on antisemitism and the fight for democracy, but I heard a political argument come through loud and clear. (You can watch a recording of the half-hour event here on YouTube.)

Ocasio-Cortez’s opening remarks set that argument up. She began by reminding her audience that while antisemitism is a real and rising problem, criticism of the Israeli government or Zionism is not automatically antisemitic. She also emphasized that accusations, including false ones, of antisemitism, are often weaponized against people of color by bad faith actors, often to create “a false choice between the fight for Jewish safety and the cause of Palestinian self-determination.”

Spitalnick and Burdett then made two key points. First that celebration or denial of the October 7 attack, or celebration or embrace of Hamas, such as labeling its actions as a “creative resistance,” and/or targeting of Jews or Jewish institutions here for the actions of the Israeli government—all of these things are antisemitic. And second, as Spitalnick put it, that with close to 90% of American Jews saying they believe in the need for Israel as a Jewish homeland, setting up a litmus test that tells Jews they have to “leave that relationship at the door” if they want to be part of progressive coalitions, was also antisemitic. “We see it in calls to ban or boycott Zionists, like these lists of Jewish authors or artists that are making the rounds,” Spitalnick said. “We're seeing it during Pride month, where in certain spaces, Jews have been told they can't show up as their full Jewish self. We're getting calls to ban Jewish organizations like Hillels from campuses. And even this weekend, and it's one of its most horrific forms, chants like we saw in DC of ‘kill another Zionist.’”

Spitalnick went on: “And so when we use this term, Zionist, as a pejorative, and we use it to call for bans, boycott, the elimination, it's ultimately calling for the vast majority of Jewish Americans to be banned or boycotted and eliminated. And that is effectively a form of antisemitism. And what that does is ultimately divide Jews from the very coalitions, the very spaces we all need to be in right now.” Ocasio-Cortez nodded her head in agreement.

Burdett made the same point this way: “Empathy and care and inclusion cannot be limited only to Jews who reject Zionism. To me, those are part of my community. Friends and colleagues and progressive Jewish groups are doing more good work than ever fighting antisemitism, but still excluding Jews who believe there should be a Jewish homeland is excluding most Jews for whom it's just a feature of their identity, and that in our civil rights legal system and our civil society, it’s discrimination.” Again, Ocasio-Cortez signaled her agreement. (I wish people who rushed to condemn Jews for celebrating the freeing of four Israeli hostages over the weekend had similar sense. No, we’re not rejoicing in the IDF’s killing of 200 Palestinians that occurred during that rescue, but if you can’t recognize Hamas’s shared complicity in that outcome, or can’t understand why Israelis are caught in their own trauma from what happened on October 7, what are we talking about?)

Spitalnick, who made her mark in national politics leading the successful lawsuit against the neo-Nazis that marched in Charlottesville, took care to situate this call for inclusion alongside the larger conflict underway in America over expanding diversity, equity and inclusion everywhere from universities to workplaces. She said, “If we don’t ensure that Jews are welcome in progressive spaces and coalitions, and if we don’t make sure that we’re not letting our communities be pitted against one another, this deeply painful moment can fracture the very coalitions we need more than ever.” Burdett agreed, noting how the question of how to combat antisemitism is being fitted into the larger culture war, “and in that culture war, there’s a big group of people determined to brand progressives and diversity itself as a threat.” Progressives have some internal work to do to make sure that doesn’t happen, the three women agreed.

“The guiding principle for all of this work,” Spitalnick concluded, “is to understand that no one's going anywhere. Jews, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans, here in the United States, Israelis and Palestinians in the region. All of our futures are inextricably bound up with one another. And in fact, the only future in which I'm safe as a Jewish American woman is one in which some black, immigrant, LGBTQ neighbors are safe and vice versa. And so too is the only future in which Israel and the Israeli people are truly safe and finally secure, one in which Palestinian children and all people are finally safe and free. And so that requires us to do the hard work to understand how in disagreeing over policies and protesting, we don't cross that line into harm, into a eliminationist rhetoric, into antisemitism, and that we also not allow legitimate concerns and fears about antisemitism to be exploited to advance a broader extremist agenda that seeks to pit our communities against one another and undermine our fundamental democracy.”

I say amen to all of this. But not everyone agrees. Before, during and after this online event, people on the anti-Zionist left and on the pro-Israel right were attacking it—but the harshest criticism came from the left. For example, left-wing media personality Katie Halper addressed AOC on Twitter, writing, “I know you’re in a hard spot but if you want to talk to Jews about antisemitism please don’t talk to liberal Zionists. Talk to people at Jewish Currents or Jewish Voice for Peace. This was a disturbing discussion.” Later, she retweeted other progressives who denounced the event as “a bizarre hostage-style video where [AOC] denounced the scourge of anti-Semitism in ‘progressive spaces,’” and who claimed “If you are helping to validate the completely fictional narrative that there is an epidemic of antisemitism on the political left, you are a facilitator of Israeli atrocities. You are helping the imperial war machine murder children.” This is the level of us-them-ism now prevalent on the left. For my money, it’s great to see Ocasio-Cortez stepping into the breach and spending some of her political capital on trying to make room on the progressive left for the vast majority of American Jews.

I have to contrast what Ocasio-Cortez did Monday with what my own congressman, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, another member of the Squad, has chosen to do as he fights for his political future here in New York. Monday, Nicholas Fandos of The New York Times reported that in pursuit of a last-minute endorsement from the Democratic Socialists of America, a leftwing group that has a large grassroots activist base in NYC but also some very far-left views on Israel, Bowman not only walked back his break from the group last year (over its promotion of a rally that praised Hamas’s attack) but declared that he no longer supported funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and that he would soon come out in favor of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. These statements were made privately, during a Zoom interview with him conducted by DSA over the endorsement question, but Bowman hasn’t walked them back since they leaked.

More than a few progressive activist friends of mine, both Jewish and non-Jewish, have asked me since this story broke if they think Bowman has given up on trying to win his primary and is now feeling liberated to just say what he believes in, the local political consequences be damned. That willingness to speak out fearlessly has always been one of his most appealing characteristics, because most politicians, who are, by definition, ambitious and opportunistic, usually avoid gutsy declarations on any topic. Maybe he already has a different political future in mind for himself?

A new poll from Emerson College, the first independent survey on the primary here, which came out yesterday, has found Bowman losing badly to Latimer 48% to 31%, with 21% undecided. (The poll’s margin of error is +/- 4.7%.) So, it’s possible Bowman already sees the writing on the wall and is thinking past the primary towards his next steps, or just his legacy. But I think he is still hoping that he’s summoning a movement into existence to defend his seat.

And with early voting starting this Saturday, the same day that voters can still register to vote in the June 25 primary, there’s an outside chance that his growing army of volunteers could bring more young voters—the only group in the poll that favors Bowman over Latimer—out to vote. (Coincidentally, Saturday is also Juneteenth there are a lot of local Juneteenth celebrations planned for the day.) [CORRECTION: June 19th is Juneteenth; I got confused because some Juneteenth events are happening this Saturday.] The Emerson survey found that younger people (18-39 year-olds) in the survey favored Bowman 44% to 35%. But Emerson only assumed they would make up less than one-fifth of the likely electorate. People over the age of 60 made up 45% of the poll’s sample. This isn’t an unfair assumption; older people tend to vote at much higher rates than younger ones, especially in lower level, lower attention races like party primaries.

There were a few things about this poll that gave me pause. The first is that Emerson College Polling, which conducted the survey, had to make some critical decisions about how to weight its sample of 425 “likely Democratic primary voters.” On its methodology page, Emerson says its “data sets were weighted by gender, education, race, and age based on 2024 registration modeling. Turnout modeling is based on U.S. Census parameters, voter registration data provided by New York Secretary of State, and voter data provided by Aristotle, Inc.” Translation: we’re guessing that turnout levels will match past behavior by gender, education, race and age. But will it?

A second caution. Of the 425 “likely Democratic primary voters” in this survey, 25 said they voted for Donald Trump in 2020. None of these people say they are planning to vote for Bowman; 9 said Latimer and the rest were undecided. Why include in your sample 25 people who admitted they didn’t vote Democratic in 2020? Are these people likely primary voters? So it’s possible the primary is closer than this poll suggests.

That said, I think Bowman is wrong to be cozying up to DSA in its current incarnation, to be prepared to endorse BDS, and to oppose funding for Israel’s Iron Dome. I understand that directionally, he and DSA both want to reduce inequality in America. But the NY DSA group is way off on the far-left when it comes to Israel, for example demanding back in 2020 that political candidates promise not to even visit the country as one of its conditions for a possible endorsement. It behaves more like a political sect with strict litmus tests than a pressure group that understands the realities of electoral politics. Some of its members even want to embrace Hamas, theorizing that it is an anti-imperialist force rather than a violent Islamic fundamentalist group.

As for BDS, I get why in principle, if we want people to take political action in nonviolent ways rather than violent ones, we have to defend the right to boycott other countries for their policies. But BDS goes further, demanding that progressives shun Israeli-Palestinian groups like Standing Together, as part of its insistence on “anti-normalization” with any Israelis it deems insufficiently engaged in the struggle against occupation. And instead of focusing on expanding sanctions against the most rightwing forces in Israel, like the settlement movement, BDS has put most of its energy toward hurting the more left-leaning sectors of Israeli society, like academic and cultural institutions.

Finally, it ought to be obvious why to differentiate between continuing offensive military aid to the Netanyahu government while it carries on its unnecessarily brutal war in Gaza and providing support for defensive weapons like Iron Dome. It was just two months ago that Iran attacked Israel directly with more than 300 missiles and drones, many of which were shot down by Iron Dome and related systems. Nearly every day since October 7, Hamas and Hezbollah militias have fired rockets at Israeli civilians. If Israel didn’t have the ability to shoot most of these down, the war in both the south and the north would likely be much, much worse. Bowman may think it is simply immoral to give Netanyahu any help right now, but I’ve also heard him say that Israel has the right to defend itself. Surely that has to include Iron Dome.

Money and politics, point one

Consider this: other than the special election earlier this year to replace Rep. George Santos, where outside groups spent a whopping $22.1 million, the battle for this one House district between Bowman and Latimer now holds the distinction of being the number one target for outside spending this cycle. According to OpenSecrets.org, more than $10.8 million has already poured in to tilt the race; AdImpact politics, which tracks spending on political ads, puts the number higher, at $12.7 million. At the moment, we are ground zero for the politics of personal destruction.

Of that, 96% has been spent by one group, the United Democracy Project super-PAC affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. I have an inch-thick pile of mailers on my desk from both sides in this miserable primary, and the overwhelming majority are from UDP. They are relentlessly negative and deceitful. Some examples:

-Because Bowman voted against Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Act, UDP says he voted against rebuilding roads and bridges, on replacing lead pipes and on critical flood protection. The fact that Bowman had permission from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to cast this protest vote because of the abandonment of the Biden Build Back Better bill, which would have vastly expanded funding for elder care, childcare and other social services, is not mentioned.

-Because back in October he questioned Israeli claims of beheaded babies and raped women, UDP says he “didn’t believe Jewish women.” Bowman has since renounced that statement, but UDP doesn’t point that out. (And no one talks about the fact that in that same speech, he called for the release of the Israeli hostages and said that he supported a cease-fire because he wanted no more Israelis or Palestinians to be killed.)

-Because he voted against Biden’s debt limit deal, UDP accuses him of risking Social Security and Medicare, veterans benefits and the whole US economy. Again, the debt limit extension was not in doubt at the time, but the UDP elides that fact.

-Because he supported a proposed House resolution recognizing the Palestinian “Nakba,” UDP claims he “called the establishment of Israel a catastrophe.” Actually the resolution specifically says only that it recognizes that the Palestinian experience of uprooting, dispossession and becoming refugees in 1948 was a “catastrophe” for them.

UDP has also paid for an unending stream of YouTube ads attacking Bowman in similar terms while praising Latimer. Given the numbers just reported by the Emerson College poll, all this relentless ad spending seems to be working—who can be surprised?

Money and politics, point two

As I noted in my last post, we’re arguing a lot about the role of outside money in this primary. It came up in a very ugly way Monday night, during an online Zoom debate hosted by the local chapter of the League of Women Voters. For someone who probably has internal polls showing the same lead found by Emerson, Latimer was surprisingly nasty to his opponent throughout the debate—though truth be told Bowman gave as good as he got. Both men seem to be aiming their rhetoric at entirely different audiences—which is odd given that one out of five voters apparently remain undecided.

At one point, Latimer—who continues to insist despite the FEC data that “the majority” of his money comes from in-district (conveniently ignoring the $12 million-plus flooding in from elsewhere on his behalf)—tried to zing Bowman over the fact that he has gotten 90% of his direct campaign contributions from outside the district. “When you get as much as you get from outside the district, your constituency is Dearborn, Michigan; your constituency is San Francisco,” Latimer charged. This, I suppose, is meant to suggest that Bowman is more the representative of radical Arabs in Dearborn and radical leftists in San Francisco? Not only is it a truly offensive thing to say, but it’s also a blatant distortion of where Bowman’s money is coming from. According to the Federal Election Commission, Bowman has 3 donors from Dearborn/Dearborn Heights, who have given him $7850 in all. He has 34 from San Francisco, who have given $177K in all. So just under seven percent of Bowman’s money has come from Dearborn and San Francisco.

The whole idea that a candidate’s legitimacy should be defined by how much money they raise from inside their district comes with a built-in bias toward establishment candidates. Only four-tenths of one percent of the US population gives more than $200 to political candidates, according to OpenSecrets. Just four-one-hundredths of one percent give more than $3,300. Many studies have found that this “donor class” is more male, older, and far wealthier than the general population. For example, in 2016, Demos found that among congressional donors giving more than $5,000, 45% were millionaires. (Millionaires then made up just three percent of the overall population.) More than 90% of those donors are white. Raising more money from inside one’s district is a sign that a candidate is more plugged into the existing power structure, not more “grassroots.”

But that’s who is funding Latimer, producing the choice Democrats here face. With all the attention on this race because of AIPAC’s huge investment in the outcome, there’s been little discussion of his other positions. It fell to Damon Maher, a local county legislator, to point out in his weekly newsletter, how differently the two candidates addressed a question at Monday’s debate about the long-term solvency of Social Security. He wrote, “Mr. Latimer spoke vaguely about doing something about it in every year's budget negotiations, then he went into a non sequitur about attending monthly meetings of the Mt. Vernon Chamber of Commerce…On the other hand, Dr. Bowman said outright we can and should tax the rich, as well as reduce wasteful spending on prisons and the military-industrial complex, to ensure the full, long-promised benefits are always there for retirees and people with disabilities.”

When you are heavily funded by wealthy donors, you don’t talk about things like raising taxes on them, or changing zoning rules to open up wealthy communities to cheaper, more plentiful housing, or cutting spending on prisons and the military. Instead, you talk about issues like abortion rights, gun violence, and protecting LGBTQ kids. We’ll soon know if that is enough for the Democrats here.