#democratic hamas caucus

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Corey Walker

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) did not post a statement responding to the release of the hostages from the Nuseirat refugee camp. Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, has repeatedly issued blistering condemnations of Israel, referring to the country as “Jewish supremacist” and accusing it of “apartheid” and “genocide.” In past statements Tlaib drew an equivalence between Israeli hostages in Gaza and so-called Palestinian “political prisoners” who are being held in Israeli prisons, in many cases for terrorism-related offenses. Last month, Tlaib gave a surprise speech at a conference tied to the terrorist group Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in which she lambasted Israel.

Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA), another prominent anti-Israel member of Congress, has remained silent on the rescue of the four hostages in Gaza. Lee came under fire last July for voting “no” on a resolution that rejected the notion that Israel is a “racist state.” The congresswoman has voted against sending aid to help bolster Israel’s military operations against Hamas terrorists. Lee also called for an “immediate ceasefire” only nine days after Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel which left over 1,200 people dead. More than 250 people were taken to Gaza as hostages during the onslaught.

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO), one of the most left-wing members of Congress, has also refrained from commenting on Saturday’s successful IDF operation. Bush has repeatedly argued that Israel’s war against Hamas is tantamount to a “genocide.” She has accused the Jewish state of engaging in “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. The progressive lawmaker also donned a keffiyeh — a traditional Arab headdress that has been repurposed after Oct. 7 to symbolize solidarity with the Palestinian cause — in the halls of Congress.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), arguably the most prominent progressive in Congress, has kept mum regarding the hostage rescue. Ocasio-Cortez has previously denied that Israel is a democracy and accused the state of engaging in “apartheid.” Only weeks after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorism, Ocasio-Cortez called for a “ceasefire” between Israel and the terrorist group. In March, the congresswoman accused Israel of inflicting a “famine” and “genocide” against civilians in Gaza. 

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) has also not yet released a statement regarding Saturday’s hostage rescue. Like his fellow left-wing peers, Bowman has repeatedly accused Israel of being an “apartheid state.” Only days after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, Bowman signed onto a ceasefire resolution which made no reference to hostages or Hamas. The progressive lawmaker also dismissed the heavily-corroborated claims that Hamas terrorists raped Israeli women as mere “propaganda” and “lies.”

Tlaib, Lee, Bush, Ocasio-Cortez, and Bowman did not respond to requests for comment from The Algemeiner.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Christopher Mathias at HuffPost:

A coalition of 185 social justice and religious groups published an open letter Monday expressing support for the campus protest encampments sweeping the country in opposition to Israel’s siege of Gaza, and calling on university administrators to end the brutal crackdowns of the student-led demonstrations. “We commend the students who are exercising their right to protest peacefully despite an overwhelming atmosphere of pressure, intimidation and retaliation, to raise awareness about Israel’s assault on Gaza — with U.S. weapons and funding,” the letter states. “These students have come forth with clear demands that their universities divest from corporations profiting from Israeli occupation, and demanding safe environments for Palestinians across their campuses. ” Groups that signed the letter include Gen-Z for Change, Working Families Party, IfNotNow Movement, Young Democrats of America Black Caucus, Movement for Black Lives, Sunrise Movement, MPower Change, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Legal, and the Unitarian Universalist Association.

Some 900 students have been arrested during anti-war encampments and demonstrations at American universities in the last 10 days, per a tally from Al Jazeera — a tumultuous period that mirrors volatile demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968, when police arrested at least 700 students. The open letter Monday represents one of the largest shows of support among progressive groups for the burgeoning student protests, and makes clear the divide between establishment Democratic figures and social justice groups when it comes to U.S. support for Israel. President Joe Biden has refused so far to condition the sale of weapons to Israel. “Our communities have been horrified to see the militarized and violent response to students protesting an ongoing genocide funded and supported by our government, and our coalition of organizations join millions of our members across the country in standing in solidarity with the students’ efforts in support of the people of Gaza,” Yasmine Taeb, one of the main organizers of the letter, told HuffPost. Taeb is a human rights lawyer and political director at MPower Change, a Muslim social justice group.

“Instead of attacking young people mobilizing for Palestinian human rights, President Biden needs to listen to the majority of Americans who have been calling on him to stop funding and supporting the atrocities committed against the people of Gaza,” Taeb said.

[...] Israel has killed over 33,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, when the Gaza-based militant group Hamas launched an attack in which nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed. In January, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel’s siege of Gaza — which has displaced 85% of the population and put the occupied territory on the cusp of famine — left Palestinians at risk of experiencing a genocide. Last week, health officials in Gaza said medics had discovered mass graves at hospitals raided by Israeli troops. “We join [the students] in calling for an immediate and lasting ceasefire and an end to the U.S. government’s and institutions’ role in the ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza,” Monday’s letter states. “As we stand in solidarity with the students protesting in encampments across the country, we reaffirm our commitment to amplifying their voices, condemn the university administration officials’ violent response to their activism, and demand that universities remove the presence of police and other militarized forces from their campuses,” it continues.

[...] Meanwhile, Republican Party officials and right-wing media figures have accused the demonstrations of antisemitism, falsely equating criticism of Israel with bigotry towards Jews. Although there have been scattered reports of actual antisemitic incidents at or near the encampments, many were not perpetrated by students but by interlopers. Many of the student protesters across the country are Jewish. Far-right agitators, including Christian nationalist activists, have also targeted the encampments, with MAGA pastor Sean Feucht leading hundreds of Christian and Jewish Zionists on a march around the Columbia campus on Thursday. The rally ended with pro-Israel demonstrators yelling through the gate at pro-Palestinian Columbia students. “Go back to Gaza!” they screamed.

More than 185 groups, including IfNotNow, Jewish Voice For Peace, MPower Change, and Working Families Party, signed a letter in support of the campus protests against Israel Apartheid State's genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

[boreal-sea]

Who is Tim Walz?

Kamala Harris has apparently picked Tim Walz as her running mate. He seems good, based on his record. He's also responsible for the widely spreading "Republicans are weird" meme I've seen quite a lot of.

He has a good record. Just like I did for Kamala Harris in a post that has become quite popular, I will do a simple review of things I like from Tim Walz' political history. Again, as with Harris, this is just from his Wikipedia page. Let's go!

House of Representatives

Opposed increasing troop numbers in Iraq

Co-sponsored a bill to raise Minnesota's minimum wage

Voted for stem cell research

Voted to allow Medicare to negotiate pharmaceutical prices

Voted against the act to Prohibit Federally Funded Abortion Services

Voted to advance the ACA

Has received a 100% rating from many progressive organizations like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU

Was a member of several caucuses, including the LGBT Equality Caucus

Governor of Minnesota

Signed into law police reforms after the murder of George Floyd

Had Minnesota join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, meaning that all of the state's electors will vote for whichever candidate wins the popular vote nation-wide.

Under his governance, Minnesota passed laws for requiring paid leave, banning non-compete agreements, cannabis legalization, abortion rights, universal free school meals,

Political stances

Pro cannabis

Against bailout bills that loan taxpayer money to large banks and auto manufacturers

Was a former teacher for many years, and is very pro-education and supporting public schools. He is against merit pay for teachers (this is a good thing), and supports lowering tuition costs

Used to be pro-gun, but after Parkland he changed his mind, and as Governor he signed a bill mandating universal background checks

Pro-LGBT - has voted for LGBT rights many times, including as Governor, where he signed bills banning conversion therapy and protecting gender-affirming care

Supports veterans rights and support

Supports abortion rights and women's rights

I am going to copy-paste the entire section for his views on the Israel-Hamas war, because I don't want people claiming I am taking anything out of context. Overall, he has views that echo my own in many ways:

Walz condemned Hamas's October 7 attacks in Israel and ordered flags to be lowered to half mast in the following days. After the 2024 Minnesota Democratic presidential primary, in which 19% of voters cast "uncommitted" ballots, Walz took a sympathetic view toward those doing so to protest President Biden's handling of the war in Gaza, calling them "civically engaged". Of the protests against U.S. funding of the war in Gaza, Walz said: "This issue is a humanitarian crisis. They have every right to be heard... These folks are asking for a change in course, they're asking for more pressure to be put on… You can hold competing things: that Israel has the right to defend itself, and the atrocities of October 7 are unacceptable, but Palestinian civilians being caught in this… has got to end." Walz also said he supports a ceasefire in Gaza.[100]

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By Niles Niemuth

The Toronto Police Service (TPS) escalated their campaign to crackdown on and suppress protests against the Gaza genocide last week with the announcement of a second arrest in relation to a March 7 protest. In addition to mischief charges which could bring up to 10 years in prison, the two demonstrators are facing charges of “disguise with intent” for wearing medical masks which protect from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases during the protest. This latter “offence” also carries a maximum sentence of a decade in prison.

“While demonstrations may end, investigations into criminal activity continue and we pursue all leads to hold individuals accountable,” Toronto Police Chief Myron Demikw declared in a statement Tuesday on X. He then boasted, “Over the last year we have made 80 demonstration-related arrests and laid 124 charges. Arrests can happen at any time after an offence.”

Tens of thousands in Toronto and across Canada have turned out to protest week after week for more than a year as Israel, with the backing of American imperialism and Ottawa, has carried out its ethnic cleansing operation in Gaza launched in the aftermath of the October 7 uprising led by Hamas. Protesters’ demands that the trade union-backed Liberal Trudeau government press for a ceasefire and stop arming Israel have been rebuffed, with Trudeau and Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly instead smearing protesters opposing genocide as “antisemites.”

Pro-Palestinian protest encampments erected by students, faculty and supporters on campuses across Canada have been broken up by court injunctions and police raids. The deployment of far-right Zionist vigilante groups on campus to provide “security” has been openly encouraged by the federal government, with a new law passed enabling private security firms to access government funding. Groups in line to profit from this funding stream include Magen Herut, whose members must be Zionists and have experience in policing or military service, and Shomrim, an international vigilante group present in Hasidic communities. Magen Herut members have “patrolled” at anti-genocide protests, where they have surveilled and intimidated participants.

Immediately upon Israel’s launch of its genocidal onslaught on Gaza, Canada’s political establishment closed ranks to launch a vicious witchhunt against anyone who spoke out against the mass slaughter. The New Democrats, who were in a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Liberals at the time, threw Member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament Sarah Jama out of their parliamentary caucus because she issued a statement declaring her solidarity with the Palestinians and accusing Israel of apartheid, an accusation supported by the United Nations. Trudeau has repeatedly sought to intimidate protesters by repeating the lies of extreme Zionist forces, including in February when he accused demonstrators of being antisemites merely because they marched past Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital.

With the backing of the governments of Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Tory Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Demikw and the TPS have launched a far reaching campaign of harassment and arrests of pro-Palestinian protesters under the title “Project Resolute.” The Breach published an investigation in June which revealed the extensive character of the secretive political policing operation, which has included early morning raids, trumped-up charges and efforts to turn protesters into informants.

The police operations have gone hand in hand with the efforts of the political establishment to smear protesters as “antisemitic.” Eleven people were arrested last November in relation to a postering protest against the CEO of Indigo Books, who happens to be Jewish, over her campaign to support the Israel Defense Forces, with the police insinuating that their actions were “hate motivated.”

Demikw and TPS have been carrying out their crackdown in coordination with the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s premier spy agency.

Faisal Ibrahim, 38, was arrested and charged on October 19 with one count of mischief, interfering with property and a count of disguise with intent in relation to the March 7 protest. A research assistant and teaching assistant at the University of Toronto, Ibrahim had been targeted by Zionist social media pages for his pro-Palestinian activism before being charged by TPS.

Rachelle Friesen, 38, of the Student Christian Movement of Canada and Community Peacemaker Teams, was charged on October 1 with two counts of mischief that obstructs, interrupts or interferes with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property and one count of disguise with intent in relation to pro-Palestinian protests on November 13, 2023 and March 7, 2024.

After living in Israel for five years, including four as Peace Program Coordinator with the Mennonite Central Committee, Friesen was deported from the country in 2014 and banned for 10 years for her advocacy on behalf of the Palestinians.

Protesters interrupted the Scotiabank Giller Prize gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Yorkville on November 13, 2023 to protest the bank’s complicity in the Gaza genocide. Evan Curle and Maysam Abu Khreibeh, both 25, and Fatima Hussain, 23, were charged at the time with obstructing, interrupting, or interfering with the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property and using a forged document.

March 7, meanwhile, was a day of action by students and others protesting RBC and calling for the bank to divest from support for Israel, respect Indigenous sovereignty and end financing for the Trans Mountain Expansion and Coastal Gas Link pipelines.

The police claim that both Friesen and Ibrahim “wore medical masks to conceal their identity” during a March 7 protest in Midtown Toronto and that their participation prevented an employee from entering her workplace and forced her to leave the area in fear of her safety.

In another recent effort to suppress the protests, the Trudeau government in coordination with the Biden administration in the United States banned the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network as a “terrorist entity” and placed sanctions on activist Khaled Barakat.

Samidoun has organized protests in opposition to the Gaza genocide across Canada. Its international coordinator Charlotte Kates was arrested in April in Vancouver following a speech in which she led the crowd in a chant of “Long live October 7th” and advocated for the delisting of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and other groups as terrorist organizations. The organization’s listing as a terrorist entity resulted in its bank accounts being frozen and make it difficult for members to travel internationally.

The unanimous endorsement of Israel’s genocide within the political establishment has introduced a climate of fear and censorship into Canadian cultural life. In the latest example of this, the Aurora Cultural Center north of Toronto closed down an exhibit titled Expressions of Critical Thought after one day this month due to complaints of “antisemitism” on social media because some of the works on display referenced Palestine. The Center told the artists in an October 4 email that the show was being censored due to “concerns raised by members of our community regarding the traumatic responses to some of the artworks.”

“I feel what they did contributes to the consistent dehumanization of Arabs in general,” Iraqi-Canadian artist Hala Alsalman told Hyperallergic. “I’m the only Arab who was showing, but obviously it’s not just me, it’s all of us.” Chantal Hassard, a co-curator of the show and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, noted that there was nothing antisemitic about the art on display and the claims were a “dangerous mischaracterization of the term.”

[eretzyisrael]

Source

Are they serious? We don't recall them ever disavowing any of the bigoted Democrat Congressional Hamas Caucus members. - EY

[gowns]

Many Democratic lawmakers are telling their staff to let phone calls asking for a cease-fire in Gaza go to voicemail.

At least 24 lawmakers in the House and Senate have called for a cease-fire in Gaza, but Joe Biden has said there is ��no possibility” of that happening. Instead, Israel agreed this week to a daily four-hour “humanitarian pause,” which it seems to think is enough time for civilians to flee bombs on foot.

Staff from more than 24 Democratic congressional offices told HuffPost in a story published Thursday that the caucus was unprepared for how many calls, emails, and letters they are receiving from constituents demanding a cease-fire. Most lawmakers do not yet have an official response.

One staffer, speaking anonymously, said that until a formal stance is developed, many of them have been told to “let it go to voicemail.”

Another staffer said that the office phone rings every five minutes with someone urging a cease-fire. A third staffer said the phone “doesn’t stop ringing at any point in the day.”

The majority of voters across party lines believe in the need for a cease-fire, and 80 percent of Democratic voters agree that the United States should call for a cease-fire and de-escalation in Gaza, according to a poll from Data for Progress.

It’s not just constituents, either. More than 100 staffers, both Democratic and Republican, staged a walkout on Wednesday to call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

But lawmakers, by and large, seem to be fine ignoring the calls. Some believe the movement will eventually just die down, and one lawmaker allegedly joked, “They weren’t going to vote for me anyway.”

Staffers are shocked at both the public unity behind the issue and lawmakers’ refusal to take it seriously.

“This building is not listening,” one Democratic aide told HuffPost. “I’ve never seen such a disconnect between where voters and constituents are and where Congress is, and that’s saying something because there’s always a disconnect.”

More than 11,000 Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, have been killed in Israel’s ongoing retaliation to Hamas’s October 7 attack. The fighting has also killed at least 39 journalists and other media workers and more than 100 United Nations employees.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Ron Kapeas

Published: Jan 8, 2024

JTA — In a speech marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, Rep. Ritchie Torres likened protesters who have celebrated Hamas’s October 7 massacres to white people in the Jim Crow era who celebrated after the lynching of Black people.

“I was profoundly shaken not only by October 7, but by the aftermath,” Torres, a Black Bronx Democrat, said Friday in a speech at Central Synagogue, a prominent Reform congregation in midtown Manhattan. “I found it utterly horrifying. To see fellow Americans openly cheering and celebrating the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And for me, the aftermath of October 7 revealed a barbarity of the American heart that reminded me of an earlier and darker time in our nation’s history, a time when the public mobs of Jim Crow would openly celebrate the lynching of African Americans.”

Protests have proliferated since October 7, when Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people, kidnapped around 240 and brutalized thousands more in an invasion from Gaza. They have grown as Israel has waged a war in Gaza to eliminate the terror group, and especially as casualties mounted: So far, close to 25,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, which does not differentiate between fighters and non-combatants and is also believed to tally civilians killed by errant rockets fired by terror groups.

A number of the protests have decried the October 7 violence on Israelis, but others have skated over the initial massacres or have embraced Hamas and described its atrocities as resistance.

Torres, a member of the progressive caucus in Congress, has garnered a reputation as an unstinting supporter of Israel. He has duked it out online with fellow progressives in debates over Israel, a dynamic that has only intensified since October 7. Torres is heavily funded by AIPAC and donors aligned with the pro-Israel lobby, and spoke at a massive rally for Israel in Washington on November 14.

In his speech, Torres alluded to the controversies that assailed elite universities after the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania told Congress that calls to commit genocide against Jews did not necessarily violate the schools’ codes of conduct. The ensuing uproar drove Harvard’s and Penn’s presidents to resign.

“What we’ve seen in the aftermath of October 7, is appalling silence and indifference and cowardice from so called leaders in our society from institutions that we once respected and admired,” he said. “And if we as a society cannot bring ourselves to condemn the murder of innocents with moral clarity, then we must ask, what are we becoming as a society? What does that reveal about the depths of antisemitism in the American soul?”

I had the honor of delivering the annual MLK sermon at Central Synagogue.  My speech touches on a range of topics and themes: October 7th, Jim Crow, Leo Frank, MLK, Elie Wiesel, silence, indifference, moral clarity, nonviolence, Israel, Am Yisrael Chai, Hatikvah, and hope. pic.twitter.com/stxqxzgyLi — Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) January 16, 2024

Central is a locus for some of the city’s wealthiest liberal Jewish families, many of whom are also firm supporters of Israel. Dr. Shonni Silverberg, the synagogue president, introduced Torres as a champion of progressive priorities as well as an advocate for Israel, and noted that he is the first openly LGBTQ representative elected from the Bronx.

“Ritchie remains steadfastly focused on the priorities of his South Bronx constituents, expanding access to safe and affordable housing, rebuilding New York economically and ensuring that no child goes hungry and that all receive a good education,” she said. “But he has also shown himself both in and out of Congress to be a great friend of the American Jewish community and Israel.”

--

==

I was shocked, but not surprised. Shocked at how openly, how loudly and how quickly pro-Hamas, pro-terrorism supporters emerged from their Postcolonial Studies, Gender Studies, Intersectional Feminism Studies and other fraudulent sewers in the ivory towers long before Israel ever fired a shot back.

I was not surprised, however, since antisemitism is a cornerstone of Intersectionality, as I posted about more than two years ago:

I naïvely expected that they'd go, "whoa, we didn't mean it like that, that's not what we were after," the standard No True Scotman tactic to distance their enlightened antisemitism from the antisemitism of murderous Islamic jihadists.

But they went the other way and leaned into it, cheering it on, while others tried to gaslight everyone with the usual array of denials that they weren't saying what they were openly saying, and that anyway, if they were saying it, that's not what they meant.

[beardedmrbean]

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are bleeding cash and facing a $2 million deficit, and Representative Ritchie Torres is celebrating.

Torres, a New York Democrat who has been staunchly pro-Israel amid its war with Hamas, expressed his content with recent reports that suggest the DSA's debts have reached the seven-figure mark.

"The DSA is collapsing in real time under the weight of its own antisemitism and extremism," he told The Sun on Monday. "It is fair to say that I will not be mourning its death or attending its funeral."

Newsweek reached out to the DSA via email for comment.

Over the weekend, a report emerged that the DSA—which has led pro-Palestinian protests against the U.S. response to the war—is facing financial headwinds that could result in layoffs. The Bread and Roses caucus in the DSA published a blog post on Thursday confirming those reports and saying while no one wanted to consider such drastic measures, staff costs would have to be reduced given the "great crisis for capital."

The January 18 post said that the DSA is projecting $5 million in income for 2024, but $7 million in expenses.

"That means we eventually need to come up with $2 million to break even," said Alex Pellitteri, Kristin Schall and Laura Wadlin—members of the 2023-2025 DSA National Political Committee from the Bread and Roses caucus.

The DSA leaders said that while the current sociopolitical climate should be a "really favorable time for DSA"—citing the growing support for Palestinians and for labor groups across the nation—the group has "still been treading water, and things are going to get more challenging before they get better."

A November poll from Quinnipiac University found that the number of U.S. voters who sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis has grown in the wake of the war, although the majority still have more sympathy for Israelis.

"Biden's disastrous policy of fueling Israel's genocide in Gaza has created the kind of space for an independent alternative from the Democratic Party that has not existed since [independent Vermont Senator] Bernie [Sanders]," they said, but Pellitteri, Schall and Wadlin admitted: "We have not had strong figures at the top of the organization to lead with a political vision that inspires people to become committed socialists."

"Working people are inspired to transform the world, but they are doing it elsewhere," the post said.

Torres, whose office has been vandalized by pro-Palestinian protesters, has previously tussled with the DSA over the Middle East. The congressman, who represents the South Bronx, has accused DSA members of promoting antisemitism by supporting a Manhattan rally that was held in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. "The NYC-DSA is revealing itself for what it truly is—a deep rot of antisemitism," Torres said in an October 8 statement. "The DSA should be universally condemned for its genocidal celebration of Israel's destruction in the wake of Israel's deadliest terrorist attack." In response, the DSA has held several protests outside his office.

Torres is not the only Democrat at odds with the organization since the fighting broke out in the Gaza Strip.

Representative Shri Thanedar, a Michigan Democrat, renounced his membership in the DSA after the October rally, saying: "I can no longer associate with an organization unwilling to call out terrorism in its form." The DSA has emphasized that it did not organize the rally but acknowledged that the New York City chapter promoted the event "in anticipation of escalatory violence to come" after October 7.

In the Hamas attack that triggered the war, some 1,200 people were killed and Hamas and other militants abducted about 250 people, according to the Associated Press. Israel subsequently launched its heaviest-ever air strikes on Gaza. As of Monday, at least 25,295 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 60,000 wounded, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, the AP said.

While Torres blamed the gap in funding on the DSA's outspoken position on the Israel-Hamas war, the Bread and Roses members pointed to mismanagement from top directors in the organization.

In Thursday's blog post, the DSA leaders said that senior staffers had withheld essential information from elected leaders and imposed their own political objectives that hindered the DSA from achieving its ultimate goal of "a rupture with capitalism."

"As a result, we are now left holding the bag and tasked with cutting expenses just to keep the organization afloat," they said. "It's our responsibility now to learn from our mistakes: not reckoning soon enough with a downturn in enthusiasm, and failing to understand that as a sign that we were not serving our role to champion independent politics as a socialist organization in a time of great crisis for capital."

[theculturedmarxist]

A Big-Money Operation Purged Critics of Israel From the Democratic Party

How the Israel lobby moved to quash rising dissent in Congress against Israel’s apartheid regime.

The following article is adapted from the new book, “The Squad: AOC and the Hope of a Political Revolution,” out December 5, 2023.

In May 2021, the Israeli government began pushing ahead with evictions of Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem. It was one more creeping step forward in an occupation and annexation process that had been under way for decades, but what was new this time was the reaction of Hamas, the government in Gaza. If Israel didn’t back off its plan to evict the families and the Palestinian Authority wouldn’t stand up for the homeowners in Sheikh Jarrah, Hamas announced, they would do it themselves.

The Israeli government did not back off, as was to be expected, and Hamas responded by launching rocket attacks into Israel, attacks that were intercepted by the U.S.-built Iron Dome air-defense system or that otherwise crashed to the earth. Israel launched an assault on Gaza, and what became known as the Gaza War of 2021 broke out.

In Gaza wars past, the Washington ritual had always been repeated. Israel had “a right to defend itself,” each statement began, even if the support for that right was occasionally caveated with a hope that Israel might decide to respect human rights and, perhaps, if it saw fit, limit civilian casualties.

This war was different. In the United States, the tenor of the coverage was far less sympathetic than it had been, with images of Israeli police attacking protesters in East Jerusalem and reports of widespread casualties from the Israeli strikes. Mark Pocan, the Madison, Wisconsin, congressman who’d previously co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus, reserved an hour of time on the House floor on May 13, and Democrats paraded through to denounce the assault.

It was like nothing the U.S. Congress had ever seen. Ilhan Omar, standing in the well of the House, bluntly but not inaccurately called Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu an “ethno-nationalist.” Rashida Tlaib added, “I am a reminder to colleagues that Palestinians do indeed exist.”

Omar recalled her own experience as an 8-year-old huddled under a bed in Somalia, hoping the incoming bombs wouldn’t hit her home next. “It is trauma I will live with for the rest of my life, so I understand on a deeply human level the pain and the anguish families are feeling in Palestine and Israel at the moment,” she said.

Ayanna Pressley, the elder of the Squad and the least inclined to challenge the status quo on Israel-Palestine, spoke directly to the political guardrails put up around members of the House of Representatives—and then ran right through those guardrails. “Many say that ‘conditioning aid’ is not a phrase I should utter here,” she said, “but let me be clear. No matter the context, American government dollars always come with conditions. The question at hand is should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing, and repair, or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit hard, too. “Do Palestinians have a right to survive? Do we believe that?” she asked, reminding the House that Israel had barred Omar and Tlaib from traveling to the country. “We have to have the courage to name our contributions,” she said, referring to the U.S. role in perpetuating and funding the fighting.

The clerk of the House addressed Cori Bush: “For what purpose does the gentlelady from Missouri rise?”

“St. Louis and I today rise in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” Bush responded.

What made the moment dramatically different, however, was that the Squad wasn’t isolated, but instead was part of a sizable group pushing back. Rep. Betty McCollum of Minnesota rose to slam the assault on Gaza, as did Reps. Andre Carson of Indiana, Chuy Garcia of Illinois, and Joaquin Castro of Texas.

As chair of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, McCollum had influence over U.S. foreign military aid. “The unrestricted, unconditioned $3.8 billion in annual U.S. military aid . . . gives a green light to Israel’s occupation of Palestine because there is no accountability and there is no oversight by Congress,” McCollum said. “This must change. Not one dollar of U.S. aid to Israel should go toward a military detention of Palestinian children, the annexation of Palestinian lands, or the destruction of Palestinian homes.”

Castro thanked Tlaib for her presence, agreeing with her statement, “My mere existence has disrupted the status quo.” He seemed to address Israeli leaders directly when he said that “creeping de facto annexation is unjust.” “The forced eviction of families in Jerusalem is wrong,” Castro said from the floor, offering what would have been an uncontroversial assertion most anywhere else, but that was a foreign one to the House floor.

Marie Newman, who had been beaten by the combined force of No Labels and AIPAC donors in 2018, had come back and won in 2020, and she joined her colleagues on the floor. In January 2021, she spoke out publicly against Israel’s unequal distribution of the Covid-19 vaccine, demanding that the country vaccinate people in the Palestinian territories it was occupying and allow the vaccine to get to Gaza through the blockade. She organized a letter sent to Secretary of State Antony Blinken demanding that he act. “They ended up negotiating that the vaccine would go through. And so, as a freshman, that was kind of a big coup,” she said. “Never before on any matter that engaged on Palestine, on any letter, resolution, legislation, did you get 23 or 25 members of Congress to sign up something, it just didn’t happen. So, we felt like, Oh, gosh, this is so good. Then that’s when the DMFI [Democratic Majority for Israel] first was like, ‘Oh, shit, she’s a pain. She’s a problem.’”

Newman was warned that being outspoken on the issue would come with a cost. “A couple of folks in my delegation, and then a couple of folks in Congress that were Democrats—more conservative than I am, said, you know, you need to be careful, because it’s really going to ruffle some feathers,” she told me. Speaking against the Gaza War on the floor brought out more opposition. “That’s when I started getting donors that had given to me in 2018, and even some of them in 2020, saying, ‘This is going to really hurt you, Marie, just so you understand.’ And it did; they were correct.”

The hour of speeches critical of Israel’s bombing of Gaza was a sloshing together of watery metaphors—a high-water mark and also a watershed moment, one that unleashed a flood of money that would erode the foundation on which the Squad had built its power to date.

After the success of the first Bernie Sanders presidential campaign, Democratic politicians began to recognize that voters were in a progressive mood. This early recognition had saved Ed Markey’s Senate seat and produced the environment in which progressive Democrats—and groups like the Sunrise Movement—had so much influence over legislation. If Sanders had led a self-described political revolution, the Gaza speeches galvanized the counterrevolution and brought tens of millions of dollars off the sidelines and into Democratic primaries, with the express purpose of blunting the progressive wave. “We’re seeing much more vocal detractors of the U.S.-Israel relationship, who are having an impact on the discussion,” Howard Kohr, head of AIPAC, told the Washington Post in a rare interview. “And we need to respond.”

Throughout the 2020 cycle, AIPAC had been content to let DMFI run the big-money operation in Democratic primaries. To encourage support for it, AIPAC donors were even allowed to count money given to DMFI as credit toward their AIPAC contributions, which then won them higher-tier perks at conferences and other events. But the unprecedented display of progressive Democratic support for Palestinians amid the Gaza War, as seen on the House floor, was triggering. AIPAC would go on to spend well over $30 million against progressive candidates in the coming cycle, potentially upping that to $100 million in the 2024 race. Their first target was Nina Turner.

The problem, Kohr said, was “the rise of a very vocal minority on the far left of the Democratic Party that is anti-Israel and seeks to weaken and diminish the relationship. Our view is that support for the U.S.-Israel relationship is both good policy and good politics. We wanted to defend our friends and to send a message to detractors that there’s a group of individuals that will oppose them.”

A Controversial Vote

In September 2021, Congress prepared to cut Israel a fresh check. It was considering its latest bill to both avoid a government shutdown and raise the debt ceiling—a legislative maneuver needed to avert both default on the debt and a global financial crisis—and Pelosi decided at the last minute to add a billion dollars in new money to the bill to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome, which had been depleted by the Gaza War. The round number had a symbolic, slapped-together feel and was well out of whack with what the United States had previously provided, representing 60 percent of the total funding given to the Iron Dome over the entire last decade. Sen. Pat Leahy, who chaired the Appropriations Committee, which doles out the money, told reporters the request wasn’t remotely an urgent one. “The Israelis haven’t even taken the money that we’ve already appropriated,” he said. Democrats, though, were making a billion dollar point, whether the money was needed or not.

But so was the Squad. Jayapal, backed up by the now six members of the Squad and by Minnesota’s Betty McCollum and Illinois’s Marie Newman, threatened to take the bill down if the money were included. Pelosi relented and pulled the bill from the floor on a Tuesday. The Washington insider outlet Axios described the stunning development for its readers: “Why it matters: There has never been a situation where military aid for Israel was held up because of objections from members of Congress.”

Mark Mellman’s client Yair Lapid, not yet prime minister, was serving at the time as Israel’s foreign minister. According to a readout later provided by the Israeli government, Lapid called Steny Hoyer to demand to know what had happened. Hoyer assured him that it was a “technical” glitch and that the House would get Israel its money quickly.

Making good on his promise, Hoyer moved to schedule a new vote, suspending the House rules so the bill could hit the floor on Thursday of that week. Omar spoke with him the night before and pleaded for a delay, arguing that a spending increase that large needed to at least be discussed and that there were other ways to move the legislation. Why use this moment, Omar asked him, to force a fiery debate on the House floor? Doing it this way would put a target on the backs of the opponents, she said—with part of her aware that this was the precise purpose of hurrying with the vote. “Israel wants a stand-alone vote to show the overwhelming support for Iron Dome,” Hoyer told Omar.

Bowman and Ocasio-Cortez both lobbied Hoyer for a delay or for a different legislative vehicle, but both were told the same thing. The vote was going ahead. In a floor speech, Rep. Ted Deutch charged Tlaib with anti-semitism for accurately referring to Israel’s government as engaged in apartheid. Pelosi made an unexpected appearance to claim that the proposed money was part of a deal President Obama had cut with Israel to fund Iron Dome. Voting against the funding, speaker after speaker said, would be tantamount to killing innocent Israeli civilians. “All of this framing starts to cross a new line—that we are now removing and defunding existing defense, when the bill is actually just shoveling on more,” Ocasio-Cortez texted from the Capitol, trying to lay out her frame of mind. “Meanwhile the vitriol started to really heat up—AIPAC has escalated to very explicit, racist targeting of us that very much translates to safety issues. This is creating a tinderbox of incitement, with the cherry on top being that Haaretz’s caricature of me holding and shooting a Hamas rocket into Jerusalem with Rashida and Ilhan cheering on.” Back at home in New York, she said, rabbis from City Island who were typically progressive and on her side were sending out mass emails warning that her vote would put people’s lives at risk. She had even been banned from attending High Holidays in her district.

Ocasio-Cortez walked onto the House floor and voted against the Iron Dome funding. She and Bowman, in the neighboring district, had gotten a barrage of calls and emails to their offices urging them to support the funding, but almost nothing at all from constituents telling them to vote it down. “Those on the ‘yes’ side were very clear, and very loud, and very consistent with why they believed the vote needed to be ‘yes,’” Bowman told me. “And that’s why I’m saying there needs to be much organizing on the left around this issue and others.” But back in the cloakroom, Ocasio-Cortez was shaken. For the first time in her life, she had been trailed that week by her own private security detail, the Capitol Police having refused to offer protection, even as the FBI was investigating four credible threats on her life, one of them a still-active kidnapping plot.

The other three members of the original Squad—Pressley, Omar, and Tlaib—had all cast “no” votes. The two newest additions, though, were split, with Cori Bush voting “no,” but Bowman voting to approve the funding. In the cloakroom, AOC began to tear up while telling Omar and Tlaib that she felt she had to go out there and change her vote.

“Alex, it’s fine,” Omar said, embracing her. “Just don’t go out there and cry.” Omar was a big believer in the mantra that you couldn’t let them see they’d hurt you.

Tlaib cut in. “Ilhan, stop telling people not to cry!” They all laughed, knowing Rashida’s penchant for letting her emotions flow freely down her cheeks.

It may have been good advice from Omar, but Ocasio-Cortez didn’t put it into practice. On the floor, she saw Pelosi, who knew AOC was angry at being forced to vote on the funding. Pelosi approached her, telling her she hadn’t wanted this stand-alone vote, that it was Hoyer, who controlled the floor schedule, who had forced it. “Vote your heart,” she told Ocasio-Cortez.

AOC broke down, this time on the floor, with tears flowing in full view of the press and her colleagues, some of whom gave a shoulder of compassion, others giving awkward back pats as they slid past. She switched her vote to “present.”

Speculation about the tactical designs behind the vote quickly shot through the press. Did this nod toward the pro-Israel camp mean AOC was angling for a New York State Senate bid? Was she worried that redistricting would bring heavily Jewish New York suburbs into her territory? Or was all of it just becoming too much?

Her “present” vote was the epitome of Ocasio-Cortez’s effort to be the consensus builder and the radical all at once. Voting her heart, she felt, would have permanently undermined her ability to serve as a peacemaker on the issue. “While I wanted to vote NO[,] the dynamics back home were devolving so fast that I felt voting P[resent] was the only way I could maintain some degree of peace at home—enough to bring folks together to the table[,] because all this whipped things up to an all out war,” she said.

Omar and Tlaib held firm, though, and the threats of violence ratcheted up. “For Muslim members of Congress, it’s a level no one understands,” Omar messaged me when speaking about the death threats the next day. “The anti-American rhetoric is a violent beast and our vote yesterday makes it 10x worse.”

Marie Newman also faced serious pressure after she had announced her opposition. Ahead of the vote, she said she got a call from a member of party leadership, and from other from rank-and-file members, urging her to reconsider. Pressure had been applied in the run-up to the vote, too. “I was like, well, it is what it is. It’s done. And I feel good about it,” she said. The resistance was fiercest on the floor during the vote. “I got bullied on the House floor. Two of AIPAC’s members—congressional members—came over and literally yelled at me,” she said, demanding to know why she had voted the funding down. “First of all, my husband is an engineer, and from an engineering standpoint, there’s no way that battery system costs a billion dollars,” she told them. But also, she said, her district was opposed to it and would rather the billion dollars be spent here, in the United States.

The next day, Ocasio-Cortez sent a long note of apology to her constituents. “The reckless decision by House leadership to rush this controversial vote within a matter of hours and without true consideration created a tinderbox of vitriol, disingenuous framing, [and] deeply racist accusations and depictions,” she wrote. “To those I have disappointed—I am deeply sorry. To those who believe this reasoning is insufficient or cowardice—I understand.”

Then Came the Money

Amid the 2021 war in Gaza, Nina Turner was setting on a 30-point lead in a special election when DMFI and an allied organization, called Mainstream Democrats, decided to make an example of her. 

Mainstream Democrats PAC, backed by LinkedIn billionaire Reid Hoffman, and DMFI were effectively the same organization, operating out of the same office and employing the same consultants, though Mainstream Democrats claimed a broader mission. Strategic and targeting decisions for both were made by pollster Mark Mellman, according to Dmitri Mehlhorn, a Silicon Valley executive who serves as the political adviser to LinkedIn’s Hoffman. DMFI also funneled at least $500,000 to Mainstream Democrats PAC. Together, Mehlhorn and Mellman controlled the kind of money that could reshape any race they targeted.

“Our money is going to the Mainstream Democrats coalition, which we trust to identify the candidates who are most likely to convey to Americans broadly an image of Democrats that is then electable,” Mehlhorn told me, saying he relied on the consultants linked to DMFI to make those choices. “I trust them. I think Brian Goldsmith, Mark Mellman—they tend to know that stuff.”

The super PACs came in with a deluge of money and swamped Turner, electing Shontel Brown instead. On election night, she thanked supporters of Israel for her victory. 

Mehlhorn, Hoffman’s right-hand man, was explicit about his purpose. “Nina Turner’s district is a classic case study, where the vast majority of voters in that district are Marcia Fudge voters. They’re pretty happy with the Democratic Party. And Nina Turner’s record on the Democratic Party is [that] she’s a strong critic,” he told me. “And so, this group put in money to make sure that voters knew what she felt about the Democratic Party. And from my perspective, that just makes it easier for me to try to do things like give Tim Ryan a chance of winning [a U.S. Senate seat] in a state like Ohio—not a big chance, but at least a chance. And he’s not having to deal with the latest bomb thrown by Nina. So anyway, that’s the theory behind our support for Mainstream Democrats.”

Mellman, in an interview with HuffPost, acknowledged that his goals extended beyond the politics of Israel and Palestine. “The anti-Biden folks and the anti-Israel folks look to [Turner] as a leader,” Mellman said. “So she really is a threat to both of our goals.” His remark was itself a case study in the strength of Washington narratives to withstand reality. The party’s right flank, led by Manchin, Gottheimer, and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, was actively undermining Biden’s agenda, while Turner’s allies in Congress were the ones fighting for it.

In response to DMFI’s spending in 2020, the group J Street, a rival of AIPAC that takes a more progressive line on Palestinian rights, launched its own super PAC to compete. Its leaders guessed DMFI would spend somewhere between five and ten million dollars. If the advocacy group could cobble together $2 million, said J Street’s Logan Bayroff, that would at least be something of a fight, given that AIPAC and DMFI had to overcome the fact that what they were advocating for—unchecked, limitless support for the Israeli government, regardless of its abuses—was unpopular in Democratic primaries.

But then AIPAC itself finally stepped into the super PAC game in April 2022, funding what it called the United Democracy Project. It would go on to spend $30 million, with its first broadside being launched against Turner in her rematch against Brown.

The constellation of super PACs and dark-money groups around No Labels, the political vehicle for Josh Gottheimer and Joe Manchin, kicked into gear, targeting progressives in primaries around the country. And then came the crypto. Hoffman’s super PAC spent heavily, while crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, his Ponzi scheme having yet to collapse, chipped in a million dollars against Turner. SBF, as he became known, seeded his Protect Our Future PAC with nearly $30 million and began spending huge sums.

 “We’re always gonna expect the right to have more money, given that they’re operating off of the basis of big donors. But that’s a little bit more of a fair fight,” he said of the disparity between J Street and DMFI. “But now you add to what DMFI is doing, 30 million [dollars] from AIPAC—that’s just in a whole other realm,” he said. “It’s been a radical transformation in the politics of Israel-Palestine and the politics of Democratic primaries.”

Going into 2022, Turner was joined by the biggest number of boldly progressive candidates running viable campaigns in open seats since the Sanders wing had become a national force. There was Gregorio Casar in Austin, Delia Ramirez in Chicago, Maxwell Alejandro Frost in Orlando, Becca Balint in Vermont, Summer Lee in Pittsburgh, Nida Allam and Erica Smith in North Carolina, Donna Edwards in Maryland, Andrea Salinas in Oregon, and John Fetterman and Mandela Barnes running for Senate in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — both, coincidentally, their respective state’s lieutenant governor. Also in Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner was challenging incumbent Kurt Schrader, one of the most conservative Democrats left in Congress, who had made it his personal mission to block the Build Back Better Act and to stop Medicare from negotiating drug prices.

Redistricting had also produced two progressive-on-centrist primaries between sitting Democratic members of Congress, as Marie Newman and Andy Levin were both crammed in against centrist incumbents. On January 31, kick-starting the primary season, Jewish Insider published a list of fifteen DMFI House endorsements, nearly all of them squaring off against progressive challengers.

“In Michigan and Illinois, Reps. Haley Stevens (D-MI) and Sean Casten (D-IL) are, with support from DMFI, waging respective battles against progressive Reps. Andy Levin (D-MI) and Marie Newman (D-IL), who have frequently clashed with the pro-Israel establishment over their criticism of the Jewish state,” the Jewish Insider piece read.

In January, DMFI released its first list of fifteen endorsements, the start of the year’s battle to shape what the next Democratic class would look like. The constellation of progressive groups that played in Democratic primaries scrambled to respond. Their loose coalition consisted of J Street, Justice Democrats, Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, the Working Families Party, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, and Way to Win.

Because Justice Democrats had been unable to form a collaborative relationship with the Squad, it hadn’t been able to raise the kind of small dollars that AOC or the Sanders campaign could. This meant it was increasingly relying on the small number of left-wing wealthy people who wanted to be involved in electoral politics and were okay angering the Democratic establishment. This left the organization without many donors, but with enough to stay relevant.

Collectively, the groups would be lucky to cobble together $10 million, up against well more than $50 million in outside spending, and that’s before counting the money that corporate-friendly candidates could raise themselves. Remarkably, the Squad and Bernie Sanders were conspicuously absent from this organized effort to expand their progressive numbers.

In the summer of 2020, facing down their most intense opposition from within their party, the four members had created a PAC called the Squad Victory Fund. But in the 2022 cycle, it raised just $1.9 million, and a close look at the finances show that it spent nearly a million dollars to raise that money—renting email lists to hit with fund-raising requests, advertising on Facebook, and so on. The remaining million was doled out mostly to the members of the Squad.

Had the Squad worked collaboratively with the coalition of organizations—lending their name, attending fund-raising events, and the like—several million dollars could have been raised. If Sanders had turned on his fire hose, the resources available to the left would have been considerable. As it was, the left had to find a way to even the playing field, and, to a handful of progressive operatives, Sam Bankman-Fried seemed like the only path left.

After SBF was arrested, he texted with a reporter at Vox, saying his effective altruism evangelism and woke politics was all a cover. “It’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those who got fucked by it,” he said in a series of direct messages the reporter published, “by this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shib[b]oleths and so everyone likes us.”

John Fetterman was locked in what threatened to be a tight primary race with Rep. Conor Lamb for a Senate nomination, and Lamb’s campaign was openly pleading for super PAC support to put him over the top. Early in the year, Jewish Insider reported, Mellman had reached out to Fetterman with questions about his position on Israel. “He’s never come out and said that he’s not a supporter of Israel, but the perception is that he aligns with the Squad more than anything else,” Democratic activist Brett Goldman told the news outlet.

Mellman said the Fetterman campaign responded to his inquiry and “came with an interest in learning about the issues.” Following the meeting, the campaign reached out again. “Then they sent us a position paper, which we thought was very strong,” Mellman said. But it wasn’t quite strong enough. Jewish Insider reported that DMFI emailed back some comments on the paper, which “Fetterman was receptive to addressing in a second draft.”

In April, Fetterman agreed to do an interview with Jewish Insider. “I want to go out of my way to make sure that it’s absolutely clear that the views that I hold in no way go along the lines of some of the more fringe or extreme wings of our party,” he said. “I would also respectfully say that I’m not really a progressive in that sense.” Fetterman, unprompted, stressed that there should be zero conditions on military aid to Israel, that BDS was wrong, and so on. “Let me just say this, even if I’m asked or not, I was dismayed by the Iron Dome vote,” he added. DMFI and AIPAC stayed out of his race.

During the Gaza War in 2021, Summer Lee had once posted support for the Palestinian plight. “It was really one tweet that kind of caught the attention of folks,” she said. “Here, this is it, we got you. And it was really a tweet talking about Black Lives Matter and talking about how, as an oppressed person, I view and perceive the topic. Because the reality is—and that’s with a lot of Black and brown progressives—we view even topics that don’t seem connected, we still view them through the injustice that we face as Black folks here and the politics that we see and experience here, and are able to make connections to that.”

Lee had written on Twitter: “When I hear American pols use the refrain ‘Israel has the right to defend itself’ in response to undeniable atrocities on a marginalized population, I can’t help but think of how the West has always justified indiscriminate and disproportionate force and power on weakened and marginalized people. The US has never shown leadership in safeguarding human rights of folks it’s othered. But as we fight against injustice here in the movement for Black lives, we must stand against injustice everywhere. Inhumanities against the Palestinian people cannot be tolerated or justified.” That was the extent of her public commentary on the question.

But the comment was shocking to some in Pittsburgh. Charles Saul, a member of the board of trustees of the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, was later quoted by the paper saying he was concerned about Lee because “she’s endorsed by some people I believe are antisemites [sic], like Rashida Tlaib.” He went on: “Another thing that worried me was her equating the suffering of the Gazans and Palestinians to the suffering of African Americans. That’s one of these intersectional things. If that’s her take on the Middle East, that’s very dangerous.”

In January 2022, AIPAC transferred $8.5 million of dark money to the new super PAC it had set up the previous April, United Democracy Project. Private equity mogul and Republican donor Paul Singer kicked in a million dollars, as did Republican Bernard Marcus, the former CEO of Home Depot. Dozens of other big donors, many of them also Republicans, along with more than a dozen uber-wealthy Democrats, kicked in big checks to give UDP its $30 million war chest.

On May 11, Israel Defense Forces sparked global outrage, first, by killing Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh and then, again, days later at her funeral procession, by attacking her mourners and pallbearers and nearly toppling her casket.

Primary Elections

That Tuesday in May was a day that DMFI, AIPAC, and Mainstream Democrats had been hoping would be a death blow to the nascent insurgency that had been gaining traction in the primaries. In April, AIPAC had begun its furious barrage of spending, tag-teaming with DMFI, Mainstream Democrats, and Sam Bankman-Fried to make sure Nina Turner’s second run against Shontel Brown never got off the ground. Turner was smothered. Reid Hoffman’s PAC had spent millions to prop up conservative Democratic representative Kurt Schrader, who was facing a credible challenge from Jamie McLeod-Skinner in Oregon.

Nida Allam, a Durham County commissioner and the first Muslim woman elected in the state, ran for office after three of her Muslim friends were murdered in a gruesome Chapel Hill hate crime that drew national attention. AIPAC would spend millions to stop her rise. Elsewhere in the state, it spent $2 million against progressive Erica Smith in another open primary. United Democracy Project, for its part, began hammering away at Summer Lee, whose Pennsylvania primary was held the same day as North Carolina’s.

Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Indivisible, the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, and the Sunrise Movement worked in coalition with J Street on a number of races in which DMFI and AIPAC played. Where the progressive organizations could muster enough money, the candidates had a shot. “If you look at the races we lost, we were outspent by the bad guys six, eight, ten to one. If you look at Summer’s race, it was more like two to one,” said Joe Dinkin, campaign director for the Working Families Party.

AIPAC and DMFI did manage to win their rematch against Marie Newman, who had beaten the incumbent Democrat Dan Lipinski in 2020. That win had been critical, as Lipinski would certainly have been a “no” vote on Biden’s Build Back Better and the Inflation Reduction Act. In 2022, Newman was redistricted out of her seat, with much of her former area being sent to a new district, the one Ramirez claimed. Illinois Democrats carved up the Palestinian-American stronghold and split it into five separate districts, diluting its strength. This forced Newman into an incumbent-on-incumbent contest with a centrist. AIPAC and DMFI also knocked off the synagogue president Andy Levin.

Nida Allam lost a close race, and Erica Smith, who also faced more than $2 million in AIPAC money, was beaten soundly. And in Texas the following week, Jessica Cisneros was facing Rep. Henry Cuellar in a runoff she would lose by just a few hundred votes. But McLeod-Skinner knocked off Schrader, and progressive Andrea Salinas overcame an ungodly $11 million in Bankman-Fried money through Protect Our Future PAC to win another Oregon primary.

The marquee race, however, was in Pittsburgh, where AIPAC and DMFI combined to put in more than $3 million for an ad blitz against Summer Lee in the race’s closing weeks. In late March, Lee held a 25-point lead before the opposition money came in—and that amount of money can go a long way in the Pittsburgh TV market. As AIPAC’s ads attacked Lee relentlessly as not a “real Democrat,” she watched her polling numbers plummet.

But then she saw the race stabilize, as outside progressive groups pumped more than a million dollars in and her own campaign responded quickly to the charge that she wasn’t loyal enough to the Democratic Party. Her backers made an issue of the fact that AIPAC had backed more than one hundred Republicans who had voted to overturn the 2020 election while pretending to care how good a Democrat Lee was.

“When we were able to counteract those narratives that [voters] were getting incessantly—the saturation point was unlike anything you’ve ever seen—when we knocked on doors, no one was ever saying, ‘Oh, hey, does Summer have this particular view on Middle Eastern policy?’ Like, that was never a conversation. It was, ‘Is Summer a Trump supporter?’” she said. “We were able to get our counter ad up, a counter ad that did nothing but show a video of me stumping for Biden, for the party. When we were able to get that out, it started to really help folks question and really cut through [the opposition messaging].”

On Election Day, Lee bested Irwin by fewer than 1,000 votes, winning 41.9 percent to 41 percent, taunting her opponents for setting money on fire. Had she not enjoyed such high popularity and name recognition in the district, AIPAC’s wipeout of her 25-point lead in six weeks would have been enough to beat her.

John Fetterman, meanwhile, was able to face his centrist opponent in an open seat for the U.S. Senate without taking on a super PAC, too, and won easily. In Austin, Casar and the progressive coalition behind him had known he was within striking distance of clearing 50 percent in the first-round election, which would avoid a May runoff—and avoid the opposition money that would come with it. They spent heavily in the final weeks, and Casar won a first-round victory, another socialist headed to Congress. Once sworn in to the House, one of his first major acts as a legislator was to support Betty McCollum’s bill to restrict funding of the Israeli military. He quickly became one of the leading progressive voices critical of U.S. adventurism abroad, likely producing regret among DMFI and AIPAC that they had allowed him to slip through.

The big-money coalition had not gotten the knockout win in the spring it had hoped for. But AIPAC itself posted impressive numbers. It spent big against nine progressive Democrats and beat seven of them, losing only to Summer Lee and an eccentric, self-funding multimillionaire in Michigan. Without their intervention, Turner, Donna Edwards (who saw AIPAC spend more than $6 million against her), Nida Allam, and, potentially, Erica Smith would have joined the progressive bloc in Congress, in districts that are now instead represented by corporate-friendly Democrats. And many of the ones who did make it through had been forced to moderate their stances on the way in. Still, the Squad of AOC, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Bowman, and Bush was being joined by Summer Lee, Delia Ramirez, Greg Casar, Maxwell Frost, and Becca Balint. On a good day, that was ten. But what kind of ten?

Summer Lee, reflecting on her near-death experience, was pessimistic. I asked if the amount of spending had gotten into her head and influenced the way she approached the Israel-Palestine issue. “Yes, absolutely, and not just with me. I see it with other people. I see people who are running for office or thinking of running for office in the future, and they feel deterred because this is a topic that they know will bury them,” she said. “There’s absolutely a chilling effect . . . I’ve heard it from other folks who will say, you know, we agree with this, but I’ll never support it, and I’ll never say it out loud.”

More broadly, though, it makes building a movement that much more difficult, Lee added. “It’s very hard to survive as a progressive, Black, working-class-background candidate when you are facing millions and millions of dollars, but what it also does is then, it deters other people from ever wanting to get into it,” she said. “So then it has the effect of ensuring that the Black community broadly, the other marginalized communities, are just no longer centered in our politics.”

Her narrow win, coupled with some of the losses, began to crystalize into a conventional Washington narrative that the Squad was in retreat and that voters wanted a more cautious brand of politics. “It’s a way of maintaining that status quo,” Lee told me. “But also it’s just disingenuous when we say that we’re not winning because we’re not winning on the issues. No, we’re not winning because we’re not winning on the resources.”

Israel’s Rightward March Continues

Whatever the fears of hard-line Israel hawks, the rise of the Squad did not materially slow the expansion of Israeli settlements into occupied Palestinian territory. In 2019, the Squad’s first year in office, Israel added more than 11,000 new settlement units. In 2020, the figure doubled to more than 22,000, many of them in East Jerusalem and deep into the West Bank. “As stated in numerous EU Foreign Affairs Council conclusions, settlements are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible,” said an EU representative to the United Nations in a report chronicling the increase. The settlement expansion included multiple “outposts”—seizure of farmland and pasture—which puts any semblance of Palestinian independence or sustainability farther out of reach. In 2021—despite Israeli prime minister Lapid’s campaign promise not “to build anything that will prevent the possibility of a future two-state solution”—settlement expansion in East Jerusalem doubled in 2021 compared with the year before, threatening to fully slice the remaining contiguous parts of Palestinian territory into small, prisonlike enclaves.

On August 5, 2022, without the support of his cabinet, Lapid launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip, agreeing to a truce on August 7. Palestinian militants fired more than a thousand rockets, though no Israelis were killed or seriously wounded. The three-day conflict left forty-nine Palestinians dead, including seventeen children.

Israel’s initial denial of any role in the killing of reporter Abu Akleh gradually morphed under the weight of incontrovertible evidence into admission of possible complicity. Partnering with the London-based group Forensic Architecture, the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq launched the most comprehensive investigation into her death. On the morning of August 18, at least nine armored Israeli vehicles approached the group’s headquarters in Ramallah and broke their way in, ransacking it and later welding shut its doors. An attempt by the Israeli government, headed by Mellman ally Yair Lapid, to have the European Union label Al-Haq a terrorist organization was rejected by the EU, which reviewed the evidence Israel provided and found it not remotely convincing.

With the primaries over, Bankman-Fried’s PAC, AIPAC, and DMFI had mostly stopped spending to help Democrats. In September 2022, the Democratic National Committee refused to allow a vote on a resolution, pushed by DNC member Nina Turner and other progressives, to ban big outside money in Democratic primaries. Leah Greenberg, cofounder of Indivisible, said it was absurd that Democrats continued to allow outside groups to manipulate Democratic primaries even though they clearly had little interest in seeing the party itself succeed. Their goal is to shape what the party looks like; whether it’s in the minority or majority is beside the point. “For a group called Democratic Majority for Israel, they don’t seem to be putting much effort into winning a Democratic majority,” Greenberg said.

Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democrat from Virginia whose race was listed as “key” by AIPAC, had been one of the organization’s most outspoken and loyal allies since her 2018 election and had regularly teamed with Gottheimer as he made his various power plays. Her first significant act as a member of Congress had been to join him in confronting Rashida Tlaib with their white binder of damning quotes. Still, AIPAC’s United Democracy Project had declined to help her, and Luria was among the few incumbent Democrats to lose reelection in 2022.

Instead, AIPAC’s first foray into the general election had been to spend its money in a Democrat-on-Democrat race in the state of California. According to Jewish Insider, “a board member of DMFI expressed reservations over [David] Canepa’s Middle East foreign policy approach, pointing to at least one social media post viewed by local pro-Israel advocates as dismissive of Israeli security concerns.” The allegedly dismissive message, which Canepa posted on May 13, 2021, as the Gaza War raged, had read, “Peace for Palestine.”

But AIPAC saved the rest of its energy for Summer Lee. Because the Republican in the race had the same name, “Mike Doyle,” as the popular retiring incumbent Democrat—deliberately, no doubt—voters thought that a vote for Doyle was a vote for the guy they’d known for decades. After spending millions of dollars attacking Lee for not being a good enough Democrat, AIPAC spent millions in the general elections urging voters to elect the Republican. Lee won anyway.

At the end of 2022, Bibi Netanyahu, at the head of a right-wing coalition so extreme that mainstream news outlets had dubbed it fascist, was once again sworn in as prime minister, ousting Yair Lapid, the prime minister backed by DMFI’s Mark Mellman. 

Disclosure: In September 2022, The Intercept received $500,000 from Building a Stronger Future, Sam Bankman-Fried’s foundation, as part of a $4 million grant to fund our pandemic prevention and biosafety coverage. That grant has been suspended. In keeping with our general practice, The Intercept disclosed the funding in subsequent reporting on Bankman-Fried’s political activities. A nonprofit affiliated with Way to Win, called Way to Rise, has donated to The Intercept, facilitated by Amalgamated Foundation.

[dertaglichedan]

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate leader who now heads his own lobbying shop, sought the Biden administration's help to pour massive amounts of infrastructure resources into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, internal State Department emails obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show. The effort would occur in collaboration with both Qatar's Hamas-friendly government and Israel's then left-leaning government, the former leader said.

Daschle—who represented South Dakota in the upper chamber for 18 years and led the Senate Democratic Caucus from 1995 to 2005—wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken's chief of staff in October 2021 to ask for Blinken's help transferring goods into Gaza. His email was subsequently "tasked" to the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs "for appropriate action" and forwarded to officials throughout the building.

*** Money, always money.

[boldlygoing-nowhere]

I’m not Jewish but I was raised Christian in the South and I know a lot about Evangelicals. For those that don’t know, a lot of non-Jewish support for Israel is intrinsically linked with Christian Zionism-a conspiracy theory regarding the rapture that requires Israel to exist to bring about the end times/rapture and explicitly requires the death or conversion of all Jews. It’s inherently and dangerously antisemitic but even the biggest proponents of Christian Zionism won’t admit it. There’s been a lot of discussion on Colonialism, but this needs to be a MUCH bigger discussion. The US (and other countries) is allowing Israel to commit genocide based on a far-right, white supremacist Christian belief. Not to mention Zionist neo-Nazis who want Israel to exist so that Jews won’t exist outside of it.

Zionism can be antisemitic. Many, many Christians are both Zionist and antisemitic. Being antisemitic towards Jews who do not have any say or control in what Israel is doing is not helpful, but calling out Christian Zionists in power is.

There are 37 Jewish people in congress. Guess how many Jewish people are on the pro-Israel “Caucus for Advancement of Torah Values”? It’s 0. The current speaker of the house is a proud Christian Zionist. Jerry Falwell was hugely pro-Israel. Trump is a Zionist, Steve Bannon is a Zionist. Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Taylor Green is a Zionist.

Christians United for Israel is the largest Christian Zionist organization in the U.S. with 7.1 million members (the American Jewish population is about 7.6 million btw). It’s founder, John Hager is notoriously antisemitic.

The organization Democratic Majority for Israel ran antisemitic attack ads against a progressive Jewish candidate, Sara Jacobs.

The US (it’s both sides of the political spectrum, but the right is far, far worse and more dangerous about it) is using Jewish people/support for Israel as a prop to further an antisemitic apocalypse conspiracy because now it’s turned into a genocide that is inherently linked with Islamophobia (though not all Palestinians are Muslim).

Tens of thousands of people have died. People’s homes and futures and hopes and dreams have been completely obliterated.

Non-Jews should be calling out Zionism, especially Christian Zionism. You SHOULD be skeptical of American support for Israel. Not only is it Anti-Arab, Anti-Palestinian, and Islamophobic but it’s antisemitic.

As a note, this is a condemnation of Israel’s war crimes. This is not in support of Hamas’ actions.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Corey Walker

A caucus affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a left-wing political organization that counts members of the US Congress among its ranks, has issued a public endorsement of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. 

The Red Star Caucus, a self-described “Marxist revolutionary” faction of the DSA, published an article on Friday glorifying the actions of Hamas, an Islamist organization that launched the war in Gaza on Oct. 7 by slaughtering more than 1,200 people throughout southern Israel. The caucus argued that lending support to the terrorist group is necessary to secure “Palestinian liberation.”

“To support a resistance without Hamas is to support something which does not exist. It is to support no resistance at all,” the group wrote. “And in turn, to spend our time on criticism of Hamas as an organization validates the widespread opinion that Hamas is an existential danger (too extreme for even the communists!) and lends credence to Israel’s justification of its onslaught. When we hear every anti-Palestinian group call for the destruction of Hamas, do we lend our voices to those calls, or stand with Palestine and its resistance?”

The group added that support for Hamas’ genocidal ambitions against Israel are necessary to secure a socialist future. 

“We must recognize what our struggle for socialism entails, and who our allies are. Those allies will be the resistance movements which actually exist, the opponents of capitalism and imperialism around the world!” the Red Star Caucus added. 

The Democratic Socialists of America, one of the country’s premier leftist political advocacy organizations, has mobilized in recent years to elect anti-Israel members to Congress. Influential lawmakers such as US Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Greg Casar (D-TX), and Cori Bush (D-MO) are all current members of the socialist organization. Others such as Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Summer Lee (D-PA) are former members.

None of these lawmakers responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment on the Red Star Caucus’s endorsement of Hamas.

However, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), a staunch supporter of Israel, slammed the Red Star Caucus as “antisemitic” on X/Twitter. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Shuham at HuffPost:

The national group representing college Democrats released a statement Tuesday standing with pro-Palestinian campus protesters and criticizing President Joe Biden for his “bear hug” of what the group called “the genocidal acts of the far-right radical extremist Israeli government.”

The statement, released by the College Democrats of America, illustrated a break with the Democratic Party — of which it is an official arm. It was approved by an 8-2 vote of the group’s executive board, which is made up of national leadership that has been elected by representatives of campus and state college Democrats chapters across the country. “Since the beginning of this conflict, College Democrats and students from every walk of life have had the moral clarity to see this war for what it is: destructive, genocidal, and unjust,” the CDA statement read. It commended the “bravery” of students facing arrest and disciplinary action for their protests, and condemned college administrators for those responses. Across the country, student protesters have called for an Israeli cease-fire in Gaza, and institutional transparency and divestment with regard to investments in Israeli firms, or those linked to American military aid to Israel.

The statement also called for the “release of all hostages” and condemned the rise in domestic antisemitism and Islamophobia in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent invasion and air barrage of Gaza, saying Jewish and Muslim students had no control over the conflict. Still, it said, “it should be abundantly clear that calling for the freedom of Palestinians is not Antisemetic [sic], and neither is opposing the genocidal acts of the far-right radical extremist Israeli government.” The statement’s harshest criticism was directed at the president and his reelection campaign. The White House, according to the CDA, has pursued a “cold shoulder strategy for its own base and all Americans who want to see an end to this war.” “Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent ceasefire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party,” the statement read. It earned praise from progressives across the country including Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and the former Ohio state legislator and prominent Bernie Sanders supporter Nina Turner.

[...] The national College Democrats group began working on the statement after Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, called in police to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus two weeks ago; overnight Tuesday, Shafik called in police again, this time to clear a building where protesters had set up camp after Shafik began suspending students for their protest. Both instances resulted in several dozen arrests. Pyarali cited other campus protests as inspiration as well, including at Indiana University, where police snipers were stationed above protesters. “It’s insane, it’s not a war zone, it’s a college campus,” he said.

The statement doesn’t necessarily represent the thousands of Democratic college students whose campus chapters fall under the larger College Democrats umbrella. Rather, the only binding vote on its release was held by the CDA executive board. Two members of that body opposed it. One of them, Joshua Martin, the former student body president at the University of Houston, commented on social media: “The only way to bring peace is to destroy Hamas, who through years of terror have subjugated Palestinians to decades of violence.” Allyson Bell, a Meredith College graduate student and chair of the College Democrats Jewish Caucus — and who collaborated with Pyarali in a December call for cease-fire — told HuffPost in an email that earlier statements focused on condemning instances of campus antisemitism had been “voted down by the executive board and replaced with what was released.” She called the final statement “one sided.”

The College Democrats of America's response to the nationwide protests against Israel's genocide campaign on Gaza that criticized President Joe Biden for being too close to Israel Apartheid State government is spot-on.

[tomorrowusa]

Terrorists sticking together.

Quote from Hamas: "[We] appreciate Russian President's position regarding the ongoing Zionist aggression against our people and his rejection of the Gaza siege, the cutting of relief supplies, and the targeting of safe civilians there." Details: On Wednesday, Putin called on both sides in the fighting between Israel and Hamas to "minimise or reduce to zero" civilian casualties, and on Friday, the Foreign Ministry of Russia made similar calls for peace.

Putin sees no hypocrisy while he continues to conduct genocidal war crimes in Ukraine.

Putin and Hamas have both engaged in unprovoked terrorist attacks against civilians.

Remember Putin's 2022 massacre at Bucha? Russian war criminals at the Kyiv suburb of Bucha murdered more civilians there than were murdered by Hamas at the Nova Music Festival in Israel.

Russia is an ally of Iran which is the main underwriter to Hamas.

Putin could not be more delighted with a war in the Middle East because he thinks it will distract the world's attention from his illegal invasion of Ukraine.

In cahoots with Putin is the Putin Caucus in the US House of Representatives. These are extremist MAGA Republicans like Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene who are obsequiously doing the bidding of Donald Trump.

If you are represented in the House by a Republican from a swing district, contact your representative and tell him or her to join with Democrats and break the legislative logjam on aid to Ukraine.

Find Your Representative | house.gov

[eretzyisrael]

This evening, the House of Commons voted to pass a shameful motion on the Israel-Hamas war, brought forward by Jagmeet Singh’s NDP and supported in an amended version by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Government.

While the motion doesn’t change Canada’s formal foreign policy, elements of its text are disturbing and unacceptable. Some provisions ultimately reward Palestinian extremists and undermine the security of the people of Israel—a democratic Canadian ally—including:

A call for an arms embargo on Israel, precisely when Israelis are fighting a defensive war launched by a recognized terrorist group; and

Reaffirmation of Canadian funding for UNRWA, despite evidence that UNRWA staff participated in the October 7th atrocities.

Tonight’s vote needs to be condemned for what it was: a slap in the face not only to our allies in Israel, but also to Jewish Canadians—just five months after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

But our community can draw strength from our strong, united response in this moment of truth for Canada’s leaders.

In recent days, Jews and allies across Canada mobilized against the motion, including through the efforts of UJA, our advocacy agent the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), partner Federations, and other Jewish organizations. As just one example of our community’s strength, in a matter of days we collectively sent more than 900,000 emails to MPs through CIJA’s action alert system.

This strong, vocal stand was instrumental in ensuring a key clause—unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state—was cut from the motion in a last-minute amendment. This removed a critical demand of the anti-Israel movement, one that would have contradicted Canada’s longstanding policy that Palestinian statehood can only be reached through Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Importantly, the motion was also amended to call for the release of all hostages and demand that Hamas lay down its arms.

Despite these changes, tonight’s vote reflects something we’ve seen far too often since October 7th: the shameful accommodation of radical voices. But our community will never stop fighting for the truth, for our values as Jews, and for the principles that have been core to Canadian democracy. Because to be Jewish has always meant to fight for what’s right, even when the odds are against us.

We will do so with profound appreciation for those MPs who opposed tonight’s motion—particularly Pierre Poilievre's Official Opposition Conservatives, as well as several members of the Liberal caucus.

Adam Minsky President & CEO

Mar 19, 2024