Palestine champion wins in New York

[yankeedoodle]

Supporter of Palestinian rights wins huge upset in New York election

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/supporter-palestinian-rights-wins-huge-upset-new-york-election

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez scored a huge political upset by unseating longtime incumbent Joseph Crowley in the Democratic primary for New York's 14th congressional district.

Her victory Tuesday is a titanic blow to the party establishment that backed Hillary Clinton from the progressive wing that rallies around Senator Bernie Sanders.

It is also another indicator of the dramatic shift in the base of the Democratic Party towards support for Palestinian rights.

Ocasio-Cortez has strongly condemned Israel's slaughter of civilians in Gaza.

She is a 28-year-old running for office for the first time. Ocasio-Cortez will now face a Republican opponent in the November general election and, if she wins, would be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress.

Crowley was one of the top-ranked Democrats in Congress and seen as a likely successor to Nancy Pelosi, the party's leader in the House of Representatives. That would have positioned him to be speaker – the most powerful post in the House – if Democrats were to regain control in November's midterm elections.

Ocasio-Cortez is a former organizer for Sanders' presidential run and a member of the left-wing organization Democratic Socialists of America.

Her campaign, fueled by grassroots enthusiasm, and a clear commitment to redistributive policies including universal healthcare, guaranteed housing and jobs, and abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, carried the day.

Despite being vastly outspent by Crowley, Ocasio-Cortez sprinted home with 57 percent of the vote. She is considered all but certain to win November's general election in the heavily Democratic district covering parts of New York City.

Born in the Bronx to working-class parents and a mother from Puerto Rico, Ocasio-Cortez is seeking to become the first person of color to represent a district that is 70 percent non-white.

Ocasio-Cortez was congratulated by Cynthia Nixon, the actor who is mounting a progressive primary challenge to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Nixon has herself been attacked by the Israel lobby for expressing critical views about Israel's policies. The Democratic gubernatorial primary will be held in September.

"Moral courage"
As if all that is not enough, Ocasio-Cortez's win blows a hole in the conventional wisdom that you can't run for Congress and support Palestinian rights.

Recently, she has been unabashedly critical of Israel's killings of unarmed Palestinians taking part in Great March of Return protests in Gaza.

"This is a massacre," she tweeted on 14 May, the day Israel killed dozens of Palestinians. "I hope my peers have the moral courage to call it such."

"There is no justification," Ocasio-Cortez added. "Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can't be silent about this anymore."

Ocasio-Cortez reaffirmed those criticisms in an interview earlier this month with The Intercept's Glenn Greenwald. She told Greenwald she was compelled to speak out on "moral grounds," because "I can only imagine if 60 people were shot and killed in Ferguson, or if 60 people were shot and killled in the West Virginia teachers strikes."

She also compared the situation of Palestinians to the colonial reality of Puerto Rico as a US territory that is "granted no rights."

Ocasio-Cortez said a lot of people in her district thanked her for speaking out. Watch that interview at the top of this article.

Although Ocasio-Cortez does not appear to have spoken on the issue directly, Democratic Socialists of America last year overwhelmingly endorsed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

Emboldened by grassroots support, Bernie Sanders, who has a mixed record when it comes to supporting Palestinian rights, has become increasingly vocal about the dire situation in Gaza.

A video posted by his campaign showing Palestinians describing life in the besieged territory has gained nearly a million views on Facebook.

By contrast, Crowley, the incumbent defeated by Ocasio-Cortez, like the vast majority of Democrats in Congress, has said nothing critical of Israel's actions in Gaza.

In 2016, Crowley condemned a UN Security Council resolution criticizing Israel over its West Bank settlements that are illegal under international law.

In a debate during the campaign, a stand-in for Crowley reportedly said the congressman backed the US move of its embassy to Jerusalem. "The community was in shock," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

AIPAC's worry
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only candidate who has been openly critical of Israel.

In South Carolina, Mal Hyman made support for Palestinian rights a prominent theme of his campaign.

On Tuesday night Hyman won almost 49 percent of the vote, just short of what was needed to beat his opponent for the Democratic nomination for the state's 7th congressional district.

Late Tuesday night, Hyman was still not giving up.

Members of Democratic Socialists of America also congratulated Gabriel Acevero, a candidate the group endorsed, on winning in the primary for a seat in the Maryland state legislature.

In 2014, Acevero was strongly critical of Israel's massive assault on Gaza, calling for accountability.

"Acevero would be the first openly gay man of Afro-Latino descent elected to the General Assembly if he were to win in November," according to The Washington Blade.

Also in Maryland, war crimes whistleblower Chelsea Manning and Palestinian rights supporter Jerry Segal both challenged incumbent Democratic US Senator Ben Cardin in the primary.

Cardin is the main sponsor of the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a pending bill that has been condemned by the American Civil Liberties Union as a violation of First Amendment free speech rights.

There, however, Cardin saw off the challengers, taking 80 percent of the vote on Tuesday.

Nonetheless, in March, the leadership of the powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC publicly fretted that progressives were deserting their cause in droves.

Ocasio-Cortez's stunning win in New York – and Hyman's impressive performance in South Carolina – prove that they are right to worry.

[maz]

Being anti-Israel is popular on the left, but they are not counter semitic.

I have interacted with some anti-Israel Bernie types online and they are scared to touch Jewish power in the US.

Maybe it has something to do with Bernie being Jewish, but I doubt that many of them even know that Bernie is Jewish.

[yankeedoodle]

Progressive Democrats increasingly criticize Israel, and could reap political rewardshttps://abcnews.go.com/Politics/progressive-democrats-increasingly-criticize-israel-reap-political-rewards/story?id=56383943

For decades it was seen as too politically risky, but this midterm cycle a growing number of Democratic candidates have begun openly criticizing some of Israel's policies.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the first-time candidate who upset 10-term incumbent Rep. Joseph Crowley in last month's Democratic primary, incorporated criticism of Israel's actions into her campaign, condemning what she called a recent "massacre" in Gaza and calling on more Democrats to focus on the struggle of Palestinians.

"There is no justification. Palestinian people deserve basic human dignity, as anyone else. Democrats can't be silent about this anymore," Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in May.

In 2018 alone, more than 100 Palestinians have been killed during clashes with Israel's security forces. In May, at least 58 protesters were killed demonstrating against the U.S. opening a new embassy in Jerusalem.

Ocasio-Cortez's tweet drew the type of condemnation and backlash that politicians could expect whenever saying anything negative about Israel. The Republican Jewish Coalition, for instance, immediately took a shot at Ocasio-Cortez, calling her victory "a harbinger of the decline of Democrats' support for Israel."

Still, Ocasio-Cortez won the primary, causing shockwaves throughout the Democratic Party. She is one of several progressives who has increasingly called out Israel's actions -- and the political gamble seems to be paying off.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders condemned Israel, arguably clearing a path for Democratic candidates to break with party tradition and criticize the U.S. ally.

During a debate in New York, Sanders, who is independent, called Israel's intervention in Gaza "disproportionate" and called on the U.S. to "treat Palestinian people with respect and dignity."

This midterm cycle, Sanders' legacy political organization, Our Revolution, backed a Democratic candidate in South Carolina's 7th Congressional District, Mal Hyman, who had spent time working on human rights in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.

Hyman was an outspoken critic of Israeli actions during his campaign, tweeting that actions from the country's security forces this summer were "unconscionable" and "a massacre."

Hyman, who ultimately lost his party primary in a runoff, said he saw a new trend, driven in response to President Donald Trump's actions in the region.

"More people are seeing the need to speak out and be a bit more frank with their criticisms. We are seeing a surge of response from progressives on this issue," Hyman told ABC News.

Some progressive groups have long championed the Palestinian cause, but they were often perceived as on the fringe of the Democratic Party and its platform. James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute and former advisor to Reverend Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns, has been pushing Democrats to support the Palestinian cause for over 30 years.

Zogby said recent political developments in both countries have triggered a shift. He credits Sanders for showing that candidates can succeed while embracing grassroots support of the Palestinian cause.

"Bernie's campaign was significant because, not unlike Jackson, he sort of rode a wave and realized that there was actually a wave to ride. It was a clear bell ringer that something was going on out there and that this issue was going to resonate," Zogby said in a phone interview with ABC News.

Sanders himself has continued to press on the issue, highlighting it in his social media messaging. Last month, he released a seven-minute video featuring the voices of Palestinians living in Gaza and describing their conditions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government has courted controversy among Democrats, too, by fostering close ties with the Republican Party, actively opposing former President Barack Obama's efforts to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, and lobbying President Trump to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

President Donald Trump meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House on March 5, 2018, in Washington, D.C.more +
It was during the Obama administration that Democrats' once-united position on Israel began to fragment. The tepid relationship between Netanyahu and Obama led to voters increasingly splitting along party lines on the issue, with Democrats growing unhappy with the connection between Republicans and the Israeli government.

Over the last few decades, a handful of left-leaning Democrats have previously shown open support for Palestinian causes and regularly criticized Israel's political and military actions. Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney of Georgia was arrested by Israeli authorities for her participation in an effort to send a flotilla to provide aid to Palestinians in circumvention of Israel's 2009 Gaza blockade.

Shibley Telhami, a professor at the University of Maryland and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, has polled on American attitudes toward the conflict for over a quarter century. He believes that as public opinion has shifted on the issue, Democratic candidates have responded to their voters and have become less afraid of the repercussions of criticizing the Israeli government.

"Congressional candidates and politicians who embrace Israel or fail to criticize Israel will not be punished by and large by their constituents," Telhami said. "Those candidates who take on the Israeli government's specific policies could be rewarded."

Public opinion polling shows that sentiments have indeed shifted, especially among Democrats. According to a Pew Research poll conducted earlier this year, Democratic voters sympathize about equally with the Israelis as the Palestinians, with sympathy for Israel dropping 16 percentage points in the last two years.

Telhami said Democrats have increasingly seen the conservative Israeli government as one that has an opposing set of values.

"Democrats, even separate from the partisan issue, have basically seen [the Palestinian] issue as part of their value system," Telhami said. "They increasingly see their values as not a part of the values of Israel."

Palestinian demonstrators run from tear gas fired by Israeli troops during a protest against U.S. embassy move to Jerusalem and ahead of the 70th anniversary of Nakba, at the Israel-Gaza border east of Gaza City May 14, 2018.more +
Even as Democratic voters drifted away from their previous steadfast support for Israel, Democrats in elected office have been slower to follow their base. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has continued to take ardently pro-Israel stances, as he was one of just four Senate Democrats to vote against the Iran Deal in 2015.

Earlier this year, Schumer sponsored legislation that would criminalize boycotts against Israel that he has derided as "an anti-Semitic movement."

Nevertheless, several Democratic candidates with ties to the party's progressive wing have still faced some controversy for associations with causes critics deem "anti-Israel." They have not, however, lost support from prominent Democratic officials and organizations.

Scott Wallace , the Democratic challenger in Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional district, maintains his endorsements from the Bucks County Democratic Committee and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, even after a report last month from the Forward found Wallace's fund donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to causes associated with the controversial Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Wallace has received an endorsement the Democratic Jewish Outreach Pennsylvania, a local Jewish activist group, after he penned a letter reaffirming his support for Israel and disavowing the BDS movement.

In Virginia, 5th District House candidate Leslie Cockburn faced allegations from local Republicans that she was "virulently anti-Semitic" for a 1991 book she co-wrote that was strongly critical of Israel and its intelligence ties to the United States. Cockburn's campaign has denied that her book was anti-Semitic and since engaged with the local Jewish community.

Nevertheless, Cockburn has not backed down from her criticism of the Israeli government's actions. She still enjoys endorsements from leading Democratic and progressive groups like EMILY's List and the League of Conservation Voters.

Minnesota State Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democratic candidate for the Minnesota congressional seat vacated by outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison, has gone a step further, defending her 2012 tweet in which she alleged Israel has "hypnotized the world" and committed "evil doings." Omar, a Somali-American Muslim and former refugee, is looking to replace Ellison, the first Muslim-American elected to Congress.

In an interview with ABC News, Omar addressed charges of anti-Semitism from conservative critics.

"These accusations are without merit. They are rooted in bigotry toward a belief about what Muslims are stereotyped to believe," Omar said.

The criticism of Israel's actions from these progressive candidates have drawn the ire of more conservative Jewish advocates. Neil Strauss, a spokesman with the Republican Jewish Coalition, told ABC News that he worries that the rhetoric has already become mainstream by the Democratic Party.

"They've jumped right now from some cautionary-type language to outright hostile language on Israel," Strauss said. "These people are becoming the standard bearers in the Democratic Party and it's unfortunate."

Zogby, of Arab American Institute, though, believes the current political environment and the ties between Israel and the Trump administration will help this recent shift maintain itself in the years ahead.

"I don't think it goes away at this point. If anything, the Netanyahu-Trump marriage has contributed to making it an uncomfortable position for progressives and liberals to feel comfortable with the sort of business as usual on the issue," he said.

[yankeedoodle]

The pressure begins:

Ocasio-Cortez hedges criticisms of Israel– 'I may not use the right words'
https://mondoweiss.net/2018/07/ocasio-cortez-criticisms/

Rising Democratic star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the congressperson-to-be for a district in the Bronx and Queens, famously tweeted "This is a massacre," after Israel's slaughter of 60 Gazans on May 14, and said Democrats must not be silent anymore about Israeli human rights violations, and opposed the embassy move. Since her surprise victory over a Democratic leader in the primary last month, she's gotten a lot of pushback from the establishment.

More came on Friday night on PBS Firing Line, and Ocasio-Cortez seemed to walk back her comments. She wrote that tweet as an "activist," she said — she's not an activist anymore, now she's about to be a congressperson representing a broad district (with many Zionist Jews in it), and she promised to "learn and evolve." Ocasio-Cortez vowed that she supports the two-state solution, she seemed flustered when asked why she used the term "occupation," and she apologized for herself, saying that she's not an expert on Middle East issues. "I may not use the right words."

Here's the three-minute exchange. Margaret Hoover (a veteran of the Bush White House) says that Ocasio-Cortez's "massacre" tweet became controversial, then asks:

What is your position on Israel?

AOC: Well, I believe absolutely in Israel's right to exist. I am a proponent of the two state solution. And for me this is not a referendum I think on the state of Israel. For me, the lens through which I saw this incident, as an activist, as an organizer: If 60 people were killed in Ferguson, Missouri, if 60 people were killed in the South Bronx– unarmed– 60 people were killed in Puerto Rico, I just look at that incident more through– through just, as an incident and to me it would just be completely unacceptable if that happened on our shores. But–

Of course the dynamic there in terms of geo politics and the Middle East is very different from people expressing their First Amendment right to protest.

AOC: Well, yes, but I also think that what people are starting to see in the occupation of Palestine is just an increasing crisis of humanitarian conditions and that to me is just where I tend to come from on this issue.

You use the term the occupation of Palestine, what did you mean by that?

AOC: Oh– I think, what I meant is that the settlements that are increasing in some of these areas and places where Palestinians are experiencing difficulty in access to housing and homes.

Do you think you can expand on that?

AOC: Yeah I think — I am not the expert on geo-politics on this issue. You now, for me, I'm a firm believer in finding a two-state solution in this issue [Hoover nods approvingly]. And I'm happy to sit down with leaders on both of these... for me, I just look at things through a human rights lens, and I may not use the right words– I know this is a very intense issue.

That's very honest and you're gong to — and when you get to Washington and you're an elected member of Congress you'll have an opportunity to talk to people on all sides and visit Israel and visit the West Bank.

AOC: Absolutely. And especially with the district that I represent, I come from the South Bronx, I come from a Puerto Rican background. And Middle Eastern politics is not exactly at my kitchen table every night. But I also recognize that this is an intensely-important issue for people in my district, for Americans across the country. And I think at least what is important to communicate is that I am willing to listen. And that I'm willing to learn and evolve on this issue as I think many Americans are.

Ocasio-Cortez is just 28 and it shows. Give her a couple years and I am sure she will show more firmness and strength on these answers. Oh, and wait till she visits "Israel and... the West Bank."

BTW, Hoover worked in the Bush administration but is also a supporter of some liberal causes.

[maz]

She knows but she cannot say. She knows that she cannot even chew around the edges about BDS let alone talk about Israel killing Palestinian boys and harvesting their organs. These new progressives are going to find that using Israel as a way to get votes is going to fail very badly because they are marrying it with crazy pet issues like "abolish ice" or "open borders."