For opposing genocide, Bowman is framed as antisemitic — by liberal Zionists (2024)

Today is primary day in New York and the marquee race is the effort by the Democratic establishment and the Israel lobby to destroy the political career of Rep. Jamaal Bowman because he dared to criticize Israeli “genocide” of Palestinians in Gaza.

The effort against a sitting congressperson, who is a member of the Squad, is now the most expensive in U.S. political history — with a mind-boggling $23 million-plus being spent on ads so far, almost all of that money being pro-Israel. Ads by the Israel-right-or-wrong group AIPAC hide its agenda, accusing Bowman of not supporting Joe Biden’s policy — putting the “entire economy at risk”.

Bowman’s opponent in the Bronx/Westchester district, George Latimer, “was recruited to run by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC),” says ABC News, citing a NYT article. And duly, Democratic Party heavyweights have fallen into line with the lobby and savaged the incumbent. Hillary Clinton, an AIPAC darling, said, “we need strong, principled Democrats in Congress more than ever.”

While former governor Andrew Cuomo said this morning that Bowman will be soundly defeated and “The message is clear: anti-semitism in any and all forms will not be tolerated in New York.” And Bowman can’t call himself a “progressive.”

The shock of the race — and really, it shouldn’t be a shock — is that, once again, liberal Zionist media are joining in the pileup on a progressive who dared to criticize Israel. The liberals are echoing the antisemitism charge from the Israel lobby, or trying to justify it.

Bowman has earned this smear because he is one of the few figures in the Democratic Party who has refused to back down in calling the Gaza genocide a genocide. By standing up for Palestinian humanity, Bowman has, in fact, echoed the Democratic base– which overwhelmingly believes that the Israeli slaughter is genocidal (Israel has now killed 37,000 people, most of them civilians, with another 10,000 under the rubble of Gaza, in response to the Hamas atrocities of October 7).

It really is the “many versus the money,” as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said at a rally for Bowman over the weekend — to which pro-Israel advocates in the party respond: that’s an antisemitic trope.

Let’s look at the liberal media. Jonathan Chait in New York magazine (as quoted by the Jewish Insider) denounces Bowman for caving to the “progressive” wing and ignoring “liberal” Jews.

“Bowman has simply gotten so carried away with the logic of progressive-movement politics that he’s lost all sight of the practical opportunities to build an electoral coalition rooted in the liberal side of the intra-Jewish debate…Bowman seems almost to crave political martyrdom. But if he does lose, it would be more accurate to attribute his demise to political suicide.”

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As if Bowman is a fringe figure. When that progressive wing is the Democratic base on Israel.

Amy Walter on the PBS News Hour also threw Bowman under the bus, saying he was a newbie who is vulnerable because he hasn’t supported Biden enough. Walter thereby bought into the cover for the giant ad buy, whose true agenda is Israel Israel Israel.

Worse is Michelle Goldberg in the New York Times, in essence accusing Bowman of antisemitism: through his rhetoric on Israel, Bowman has confirmed “the fears of many” of his critics.

Goldberg has herself been highly critical of Israel, but here she returns to the liberal Zionist brand. Anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and if you’re for boycott, a traditional tool against oppression, you don’t like Jews:

“Bowman has also been reckless in stomping on ideological land mines…Though he says he continues to support a two-state solution, he’s fallen into the left-wing habit of using ‘Zionist’ as an insult,

Bowman is right to be outspoken about the suffering being inflicted on Gaza. But recently, as he’s leaned into anti-Zionist rhetoric — calling Israel, for example, a ‘settler-colonial project’ — I’ve sometimes wondered if he’s given up trying to win, setting himself up instead as a political martyr… last month he… promised, in a private video meeting, to come out for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. This decision baffled me… [B]y aligning himself with the anti-Zionist boycott movement, even as he says publicly that he still believes Israel has a right to exist, Bowman confirms the fears of many of his local critics.”

Notice that Bowman is “right to be outspoken about the suffering being inflicted on Gaza”? This is an understatement, but typical of liberal Zionists. The progressive base is horrified by the unending slaughter of children with U.S. armaments and the trapping of whole families under the rubble of ruined cities. Bowman has stood up for decent, moral, human values, and refused to back down. It is a noble stand and deserves praise by liberals and progressives.

Goldberg accuses Bowman of leaning into “anti-Zionist rhetoric,” again suggesting he’s antisemitic. Here she singles out the boycott movement. But it should be honorable among liberals to advocate for boycott — as progressives did in Montgomery in 1955 and in South Africa in the 80s and 90s. It should also be perfectly acceptable in the U.S. discourse to attack Zionism. After all, Zionism is the Jewish nationalist ideology that has produced apartheid and ethnic cleansing and that today claims that it is right to kill hundreds of Palestinian civilians in order to free four Jews.

“Fundamentally Goldberg thinks that because so many American Jews are wedded to Israel, this takes precedence over everything else,” media critic Donald Johnson writes to me. Or, as the right-wing Jewish News Syndicate reminds us this week: “Zionism is part and parcel of Judaism.”