Left-wing radical incumbent Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO1) lost her Democratic primary yesterday to Wesley Bell, a more moderate progressive. The margin of victory was tighter than the massive rout suffered by fellow alt-left squad member Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) a few months ago.
Bell was able to overcome Bush’s incumbent advantage due to the turnout in the suburbs of St. Louis where he had a wide margin of victory. In the city of St. Louis, Bush had an 8.4% margin of victory where 48,886 people voted, but Bell had a 14.7% margin outside the city where 74,203 voters turned out.
The suburbs, which had 60.3% of the overall voters, voted for a more moderate progressive. This was true in New York’s 16th Congressional District as well. Bowman crushed the more moderate progressive George Latimer by 67% in New York City, while Latimer had a 27% advantage in the suburbs. As the suburbs accounted for 89.6% of the voters, Latimer sailed to a 17% margin of victory.
Both Bowman and Bush were deeply flawed candidates beyond their extreme political stances. They took their losses to further fight a war on Jews and the Jewish State, as Bush said in her concession speech “AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down!”
The media and antisemitic voices will paint the “squad” losses as a matter of the “powerful AIPAC lobby” coming for people of color in an attempt to inflame Jew-hatred among minorities much like Bush and Bowman are doing. But the critical factor was the contours of the districts being majority suburbia which do not embrace the fanatical woke extremism which is more popular in American cities.
Alt-left radical group Justice Democrats claim that Zionists are attempting to destroy democracy after loss of Cori Bush to another Black progressive, as posted on X, August 6, 2024
The anti-Zionist group IfNotNow was formed in July 2014 at the end of a war between Hamas and Israel. It concluded that Israel was an apartheid state that must be dismantled, as must American support for the racist Zionist project.
The goal of the organization is one state, in which Arabs and Jews live together. They want a complete “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel, with a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
IfNotNow website
Even after the savage October 7 massacre of Israelis by Palestinian Arabs, the organization has doubled down on its hypothesis, and is aggressively pushing its goals onto college campuses and into politics.
RACIST: Jewish Organizations and the Jewish State Are Right-Wing and Racist
INN believes that Jewish organizations are rife with “Ashkenazi dominance.” They believe that racism and antisemitism is only found among White people, and American Jews have been fed lies of “right-wing talking points” which have separated Jews from Arabs and people of color around the world.
INN believes that leading Jewish and Israeli institutions like the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC and Conference of Presidents “exploit traumatic events of our past and present” to support and “protect Israel’s system of apartheid.” The organization believes that powerful White Jews are suppressing everyone else, including Jews of color and Palestinians.
This is anti-white racism and antisemitism.
First, Israel does not practice “apartheid”. It is the most liberal country for 1,000 miles in any direction.
Second, white Ashkenazi Jews account for less than one-third of Israelis, even after the mass migration from the former Soviet Union.
Further, why should someone’s skin color automatically make them a racist? INN believes that all White people – whether Jewish or non-Jewish – are “white supremacists”, while simultaneously believing that no people of color are racist. That’s absurd and racist.
Additionally, the idea that Jews are “powerful” has long been used to foster antisemitism and INN’s philosophy and advocacy directly feeds to more antisemitic attacks.
BLIND: A Movement of Mutual Liberation
IfNotNow thesis is that in the face of white racist Jewish institutions protecting a white racist Jewish State, “mutual liberation” was needed. American Jews must fight and mimic movements such as BlackLivesMatter. It also wants to be like the Jewish prophet Moses, fighting for the liberation of his people and the “liberation of all people.”
This is ridiculous.
The BLM movement was specifically about Black people; it was not about “mutual liberation.” Moses went to Egypt to specifically free the Jewish people. These were particular movements and not intertwined with other groups.
Moses did not free Jews from slavery without “a mechanism of destruction.” Egyptians were set upon with plagues and its army drowned in the sea. INN doesn’t know if it’s for particularism or universalism; for violence or non-violence.
LOST: October 7 Massacre Is Israel’s Fault
Many Jews were horrified by the October 7 massacre, not only for the horrible and massive loss of life, but additionally that it undermined the notion that Jews-with-power would be safe.
IfNotNow was horrified for a different reason: that Jews were fighting back.
On October 7, IfNotNow blamed the government of Israel for the slaughter of its own people. It bemoaned the Palestinian terrorists who were killed alongside their victims.
Within days, it was attacking Israel for using “grief… [to] justify revenge or genocide.”
Rather than reconsidering their thesis that Jews and Arabs can get along – after thousands of Palestinian Arabs burned Jewish families alive and mutilated women, old and young – INN doubled down that Jews should not use their power to seek justice for the slaughtered civilians and to protect Israelis from a regime sworn to its destruction.
Even the anti-Zionist group Code Pink was appalled by the October 7 bloodlust of Palestinians. But not INN and other jihadists who seek the end of both Jews and the Jewish State.
Politics and Colleges
INN has aligned itself with groups like Justice Democrats and Democratic Socialists of America in trying to elect anti-Zionist people of color like Rep. Cori Bush and Rep. Jamaal Bowman. They have signed onto the “Reject AIPAC” tagline and smeared white progressive politicians like George Latimer “a racist,” because he’s a white man taking a black man’s job.
The anti-Zionist group was very active on college campuses during the 2023-4 school year promoting anti-Israel actions. Even at campuses which saw wild antisemitic activity like Columbia, Barnard, NYU and CCNY, INN was proud to stand in support of the anti-Israel activities.
It will likely continue such activities in the next school year.
IfNotNow is part of the socialist-jihadi alliance which is becoming more active in politics and college campuses. INN wants Israeli Jews to shed their means of protection despite their lived experience. They similarly want white Jewish organizations to stop protecting white Jews in Israel and America to become a defenseless minority-minority which history has shown is easy fodder for attack.
Now that Jews have a country and army for the first time in 2,000 years, IfNotNow wants to see both dismantled. Now that some Jews have stature in the diaspora, IfNotNow wants them to renounce any power or privilege.
Rather than advancing the cause of non-Whites and Palestinians, IfNotNow wants to target and tear down Ashkenazi Jews and the Jewish State.
October 7 and the subsequent rise of antisemitism has left alt-left anti-Zionist groups like IfNotNow blind and lost like Samson before his death, and like the Jewish prophet, INN is intent on bringing down the Jewish people with them.
Megilat Esther tells a 2,400 year-old story of a raging antisemite named Haman who managed to obtain power of a king in ancient Persia. With this power, he managed to secure an edict calling for the genocide of the Jews in the kingdom. Fortunately his plan failed, due to people close to the king confronting the plan as well as having a history of doing good works for the emperor. The event is celebrated in the Jewish holiday of Purim, from the Hebrew word pur, meaning lottery, as Haman chose the date for genocide randomly.
There are lessons to be gleaned for diaspora Jewry, and it is the exact opposite of randomness and involves a topic of which many are uncomfortable: power.
There have always been, and will always be, antisemites who seek to kill Jews. What differentiates the rouge madman from a Haman or Hitler is power. Hamas achieved its October 7 barbarity as the democratically-elected majority party in the Palestinian parliament which has had complete rule over Gaza since 2007. Evil ideology plus power is a grave threat to Jews.
Therefore, it is incumbent on Jews to befriend people in power, to keep bad people from obtaining power, and to perform good deeds at all times that benefit society.
In the United States, the broken election system has fostered a political class increasingly made up of extremists. Whether right-wing or left-wing, they often come for Jews. This primary season, it is imperative to support the challengers of the extremist incumbents in congress:
In NY-16, extremist Rep. Jamaal Bowman is being challenged by Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Donate to Latimer here.
In MO-1, extremist Rep. Cori Bush is being challenged by public defender Wesley Bell. Donate to Bell here.
In MN-05, extremist Rep. Ilhan Omar is being challenged by Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels. Donate to Samuels here.
In PA-12, extremist Summer Lee is being challenged by local legislator Bhavini Patel. Donate to Patel here.
There are other extremists like antisemite Rep. Rashida Tlaib in Michigan, but she is running unopposed. It is nevertheless important to share her vile antisemitism and extremism widely, especially as the liberal press gives her a large platform.
Members of the extremist “squad” including Reps. Bowman, Omar, Pressley, Bush, Lee
There is a reason that this war in Israel feels much more frightening for American Jews: your local antisemites feel empowered by an increasingly anti-factual, anti-Jewish school curricula and by shrill antisemites in positions of power. We are not powerless to stem the tide of hatred. Work to get them out of power in the upcoming primaries.
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