The cameras panned across the crowd at Zohran Mamdani’s victory celebration — the newly elected mayor of New York City, surrounded by socialist activists, digital influencers, and the self-congratulating left. It was meant to be a night of triumph for the “movement.” But what stood out for those watching was not unity, or even politics. It was who was cheering.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, laughing and hugging, were Jamaal Bowman, Hasan Piker, and Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan — three men whose names have become synonymous with the moral collapse that followed the Hamas atrocities of October 7.
Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan at the Mamdani victory party with Hasan Piker and Jamaal Bowman. (start at 52:00)
Bowman, the disgraced former congressman, made his name shouting on New York’s streets that Israeli women were not raped on October 7 — that the accounts of mass sexual violence by Hamas terrorists were fabricated. He wasn’t a lone crank in an internet comment section; he was a member of Congress using his platform to publicly deny the humanity of Jewish victims in the streets of his district.
Hasan Piker, meanwhile, mocked the entire subject on his Twitch stream, telling his millions of followers that he didn’t care if the women on October 7 were raped. That flippant cruelty — that casual dismissal of atrocity — has become a feature, not a bug, of a corrupted culture that cloaks moral degeneracy in “anti-imperialist” rhetoric. His anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric had become so toxic, that Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Latin-Black gay Congressman, wrote a letter on October 29, 2024 to the CEO of Twitch to have Piker removed.
And then there was Mehdi Hasan, who publicly argued that early reports of “mass rape” on October 7 were overstated and politicized, arguing that the allegations had been “weaponized by supporters of Israel.” At Mamdani’s party, he stood smiling with Bowman and hugging Piker as the pain of Jews was being amplified and normalized.
And celebrated.
The spectacle was a black mirror of a broken city — a city that once prided itself on tolerance and moral clarity now relishing Jewish trauma.
New Yorkers didn’t just elect a socialist. They elected a symbol of moral inversion — a man whose supporters include those who laughed at, ignored, or explained away the rape and murder of innocents.
When the applause dies down and the speeches fade, one question will remain for the city that crowned Mamdani: What kind of people celebrate with rape deniers and those that revel in the pain of the most persecuted minority-minority?
Major socialist groups have taken aggressive anti-Israel stances, both before and after the October 7, 2023 brutal massacre of people in Israel by Gazans. These socialists are aggressively working their ideology into America’s public schools.
Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) Is Anti-Israeli Jews
The Democratic Socialist of America of New York City demanded that politicians not visit Israel to be considered for its endorsement in 2020, even though the local municipal elections had nothing to do with foreign policy. In July 2023 – months before the October 7 massacre – DSA posted that Israeli Jews could not be considered “civilians,” essentially making all of them legitimate targets for violence, endorsed ethnic cleansing.
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a radical jihadi group, praised DSA’s stances and called for the group to “discover your humanity and your love in revolution.” The DSA has fallen in line with its jihadi revolutionary comrades, and issued a statement while the slaughter and 1,200 people and raping of women in Israel was ongoing, that the group is “steadfast in expressing our solidarity with Palestine.”
These vile and violent attitudes are being pushed into the public schools.
Infiltration Into Public Schools
The socialist publication Jacobin made the point clearly in January 2024 when it praised the DSA which “passed a resolution encouraging local chapters to run candidates for school boards” during its summer 2023 convention. It noted that school board elections are “small-scale enough that grassroots organizing” can swing elections, and socialists are particularly adept at such activity. It argues that “by connecting with other progressive groups that have been working on education issues in New York for decades, each in their own silos, DSA might be able to cut through the antidemocratic structures and confusing messages” and take over schools to advance their preferred narratives.
The effort is deliberate and focused on public schools. One of the drafters of the DSA resolution to pursue school boards wrote “unlike federal elections, school boards are also races we can have a clear impact in…. By concentrating our efforts on these races, we can have an outsized effect…. By electing socialists into those seats, we can set new model policies.”
The ultimate goal of the DSA is to build its own political party apart from the Democratic Party, and it believes that these school board seats lay the foundation for such long term goal by building communities and indoctrinating the youth.
One can see this happening right now, in races for the head of the teacher’s union and the school board in New Rochelle.
United Federation of Teachers (UFT)
Amy Arundell is currently running to become the president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), a union with about 200,000 members. She was temporarily removed from her post heading UFT in Queens for insisting that the word “terrorist” be dropped from the UFT statement denouncing the October 7 attacks, even though Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization. If raping women and burning families alive is not terrorism, it is unclear if anything is.
The UFT, which represents New York City public school teachers, issued a statement after New York City Department of Education’s chancellor, David Banks, sent an email to district staff stating: “I unequivocally condemn these horrific acts of violence, and I want to offer my deepest condolences and steadfast support to those in our New York City Public Schools (NYCPS) community impacted by the killings and kidnappings.” The UFT statement read “Chancellor Banks’s statement last Tuesday solely centering the needs of Israeli families, and UFT President Mulgrew’s dismissal of Queens Borough Rep Amy Arundell for speaking in support of Palestine are but two examples of the erasure of our Palestinian students, staff, and families.” It recommended educators use a virulently anti-Israel website TeachPalestine as a tool in their classrooms and push the anti-Israel narrative into classrooms.
Amy Arundell marked “revolutionary liberation” movements as her face to the world
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) rallied to its socialist-jihadi colleague and issued a statement that “penaliz[ing] their representative for actively seeking an inclusive statement that considers pro-Palestinian narratives is reprehensible.” It is bewildering to imagine how dropping the word “terrorist” from the worst terrorist attack in modern history is a “pro-Palestinian narrative.”
New Rochelle School Board
In the City of New Rochelle in Westchester County, just north of New York City, Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is running for the local school board. She is endorsed by disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman who also wrote a foreword for her book on “radical care.” DSA proudly endorsed Bowman.
Rivera-McCutchen was interviewed in March 2025 on the Progressive News Network by Howard Horowitz, a leader of anti-Israel group WESPAC which supports PYM, part of the DSA socialist-jihadi alliance. WESPAC also supports Students for Justice in Palestine, which has fostered antisemitic environment and attacks on American college campuses.
If socialists win seats on local school boards and elections for union leadership, the situation for American Jewry will likely become stark. Get involved.
So why start another PAC that does the same thing? It’s not as though Bowman’s PAC is going after conservative non-White voters; it’s using the same alt-left agenda as Justice Democrats, including supporting Gazans who initiated and supported a jihadi genocidal massacre against Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023.
Bowman knows he has a terrible record. His brand is so tainted that he needed to go around the country including California and Virginia with other members of Congress to try to raise money during his failed primary run.
A new congressional run – perhaps this time for Rep. Ritchie Torres’s seat in NY-15 if Torres decides to run for governor against the unpopular Kathy Hochul – would require money that may not be so forthcoming to a censored former politician. As such, creating a new PAC BEFORE he announces his intention to enter a race, could give him several advantages:
He may be able to market the cause more successfully if it isn’t about him personally
He gets practice stumping and meeting donors without being forced to disclose his numerous failings
Bowman can use the Zeteo platform with Mehdi to go even more viciously anti-Israel than Justice Democrats may be willing to go, perhaps unlocking deep jihadi pockets
Disclosure rules are more lax for PACs. Pro-terrorist groups have easier times giving money to blind pools than individual candidates. Bowman can court antisemitic donors with greater ease
Should Bowman enter the race, he may attempt to repurpose this PAC to himself. This is a tactic that was used by Rick Scott who took over the New Republican PAC in 2016. Scott’s moves in this regard brought multiple investigations. As the non-partisan group OpenSecrets stated about the issue, “Federal law would prohibit an announced federal candidate or campaign from coordinating with either state-level committees or federal super PACs, which can take unlimited corporate money that federal candidates are not permitted to receive.” Campaign Legal Center wrote at that time “Campaign finance laws are in place to prevent schemes like this one that hide information from voters about which wealthy special interests are spending big money to secretly influence our votes and our government.” Imagine these aren’t “wealthy special interests” seeking profit but groups out to destroy America and its allies.
Built to Win PAC may become the alt-left anti-Israel piggybank for Bowman and his co-host on Zeteo, Cori Bush, who made their losses all about the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC rather than their own failings.
Bowman’s reemergence on two platforms: Zeteo to engage the public in race-baiting, and with a PAC to draw in unlimited monies, is potentially a cause for serious alarm for the country, especially Jews in the midst of a horrifying spike in antisemitism.
On November 5, 2024, New York’s 15th Congressional District once again elected Ritchie Torres to serve in Congress. With broad support from the Latin, Black and Jewish communities in the area, the consensus candidate was a shoe-in.
In the weeks following the sweep of Republicans to the Executive Office, Senate and House, Torres attacked the far-left of the Democratic Party for foolishly advocating for non-common sense positions. He has taken particular aim at New York’s Governor Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat whom he seems intent on challenging in the Democratic primary of 2026.
On November 21, Torres said there was a “poverty of governance in New York” as well as a “leadership crisis.” The next day he called Hochul “the new Joe Biden” who is so clueless about “her vulnerabilities as a Democratic nominee,” that allowing the Democratic machine to prop her up will “give us a Republican Governor in 2026.”
Torres has not officially declared he will run for state Governor but his attacks on a fellow Democrat are not subtle. The following week he called Hochul a liar and hypocrite.
While Torres represents the poorest district in the United States, he has built strong relationships with many wealthier sponsors including Jews and pro-Israel advocates who appreciate his strong fight against antisemitism and supporters of Hamas. Torres should be able to stage a strong fight against Hochul, if he can build support around New York State.
The next question becomes who is best positioned to take his seat in Washington, D.C. should Torres move on to Albany. The likely contenders are former Congressmen Jamaal Bowman and Mondaire Jones.
Bowman has strong roots in the Bronx. He defeated Eliot Engel in the Democratic primary in 2020 and then rapidly lost hold of the district when new lines were drawn which replaced much of the Bronx with lower Westchester County. While Bowman lost in his 2024 Democratic primary, he faired well in Co-op City in the Bronx.
Jones has bounced around a few districts after his seat in Rockland and Westchester counties were redrawn. After a single term in 2020, he failed in his attempted run for office in lower Manhattan in 2022, and then again running in 2024 for the lower Hudson Valley in NY’s 17th district. He would need to build a new strong ground team to take on Bowman in his comfortable turf.
Or a newcomer could enter the race, perhaps someone Hispanic as the district is 53% Hispanic and 31% Black.
Will the Democratic Party rally to the disgraced Bowman who was censured for pulling a fire alarm, putting many lives at risk? For chanting to a crowd that there were no rapes of Jewish women by Palestinian Arabs on October 7, 2023, in a #DontBelieveJewish Women moment?
The Jewish community that invested so much in Torres and wants to see him succeed in his political aspirations will be outraged and appalled if Bowman comes back to Congress to represent them. It must therefore work with the Democratic power brokers, Mondaire Jones or another rising candidate from the Bronx immediately, to prevent the return of the toxic squad.
The parents of one of the hostages stolen to Gaza on October 7, 2023 spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last night. The parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, hailed from Chicago and spoke in anguished voices in their hometown. They made clear that the return of their music-loving son was not an issue of politics but of humanity.
The parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin mentioned the 22 nationalities of the hostages and their multiple religions. They made an appeal to bring all the hostages home and end the suffering of innocent people in Gaza. It was an apolitical speech.
Yet it made the anti-Israel socialist-jihadi alliance apoplectic. Why wasn’t a Palestinian invited to speak they asked?
Rep. Jamaal Bowman wanted Palestinians to speak at DNC
Members of the socialist-jihadi “squad” said that the DNC was “erasing ” and “dehumanizing” Palestinians by not giving equal time to Palestinians impacted by the war [that Palestinians launched and support].
Arab and Muslim influencers like Mehdi Hasan and James Zogby pushed for much the same.
Perhaps the DNC may have been able to find a Palestinian-American somewhere who wants to live peacefully alongside the Jewish State. Perhaps the Democrats could have given a platform to a Palestinian who would show empathy for both Israelis who were hunted and tortured, as well as Palestinians who suffer because their leaders hide like cowards in tunnels and refuse to surrender.
To what end? The speech by the Israeli-Americans was not political so didn’t require a “balanced” counterpoint.
As it relates to politics, the DNC released its 2024 platform which reiterated “America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel and our unrivaled ability to leverage growing regional integration among U.S. partners to counter Iranian aggression.” The Polin-Goldberg parents speech went directly to that important point of providing the Jewish State with the means to defend itself so such atrocities would not be repeated by Iranian-backed sponsors of terror.
Israel has killed roughly 17,000 terrorists so far in the defensive war it never wanted. It has managed to do this with the support of the Democratic administration in power.
While it is deeply tragic that roughly a similar number of civilians have died according to Hamas sources, how does giving a voice to the innocent Arab victims advance the current DNC platform of peace and security? The Israeli-American parents spoke of the suffering of Palestinians, which is also part of the Democratic platform, which specifically calls out “the worth of every innocent life, whether Israeli or Palestinian.”
But the socialist-jihadi cabal wants to undermine Israel’s security. It seeks to strip the Democratic Party of its policy of supporting the Jewish State. The goal of showcasing the unfortunate suffering of Palestinians is not an attempt at balance but whitewashing the genocidal intent of Hamas.
The socialist-jihadi alliance wants to veil the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The true socialist-jihadi spokesperson is Yahya Sinwar himself, a man committed to destroying Israel and the United States regardless of cost.
Yahya Sinwar, Palestinian leader of Gaza, Hamas and orchestrator of the barbaric October 7 massacre takes the podium
Alternatively, if Palestinian voices will not be heard, the socialist-jihadi alliance demands that Zionists be silenced. They want relationships with Zionists to be “denormalized”, as showcased with greater frequency in liberal cities.
Protestors shut down Brooklyn event because liberal Jewish speaker is also a Zionist, August 2024
It is a deeply abnormal situation that parents must plead for the release of their innocent child held in captivity for nearly a year. It is also horribly tragic that Americans are attempting to normalize the deplatforming of Zionists.
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.
The “Squad” of far-left American politicians pulled out all of the antisemitic dog whistles in their fight to defend the unpopular congressman Jamaal Bowman in the New York Democratic primary. In response to his resounding defeat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said “I think we need to have a real conversation about AIPAC,” the pro-Israel group supported by many Jews.
In truth, all the alt-left did was talk about AIPAC for the prior months and did so in the most vile and slanderous manner. As such, we must have a conversation about alt-left politicians’ repulsive antisemitism.
The smears were:
AIPAC is a bunch of White supremacist racist MAGA billionaires
AIPAC doesn’t want Black and Brown people to have positions of power
AIPAC supports genocide of Black and Brown people
The people behind AIPAC are operating in the shadows
AIPAC is buying off politicians and congress
AIPAC and backers are seeking to oppress minorities around the world
The Squad is operating to defend working class people from the AIPAC racist money machine
It’s a war of us versus them
This is repulsive and mimics Nazi propaganda against Jews in the 1930s and 1940s. These are carefully organized scripts to inflame a war against Jews in the United States and around the world.
White Supremacists and Racists
Bowman’s posts on X were replete with calling the backers of his opponent George Latimer, himself a progressive, as racists of the worst sort, who try to keep Black people down.
Comments included:
“White supremacists… targeting me, our first Black Representative with racist attacks & dog whistles… don’t want to see people like us in power.” [note that lower Westchester voted for Mondaire Jones, a Black gay progressive in 2020]
“Big-money groups like AIPAC don’t like seeing people like me in power.”
“AIPAC and their MAGA billionaires don’t want to see us in power. They don’t want to see Black and brown working class people rising up.”
“We’re fighting against AIPAC and their Republican billionaires… trying to buy NY-16… our communities are not for sale.”
Billionaires Buying Politicians
Bowman, AOC and Sen. Bernie Sanders made the fight about a handful of racist billionaires buying politicians, rather than discuss issues.
Comments included:
“AIPAC and their right-wing billionaires are trying to buy this district like they bought my opponent. They don’t want to see people in power.”
“AIPAC and their Republican billionaires are spending millions to try to buy our district… their money will never defeat the people.”
“My opponent sold out to AIPAC and their right-wing billionaires. They’re spending millions to try to buy our district.”
“He’s [Latimer] so bought out by AIPAC… pawns for special interests.”
“Fight back against AIPAC and right-wing billionaires.”
“AIPAC has already spent $6 million against us. Why? because we stand for peace and justice! MAGA Republicans are trying to buy NY-16… we decide the future of our district, not them.”
“Defeat MAGA billionaires trying to buy NY-16”
AOC wrote “Big money, from AIPAC to Wall Street have poured millions to buy this election.”
Bernie Sanders wrote “tell billionaires and their corporate PACs that no, they cannot buy our democracy.”
UAW wrote “The billionairess are coming for Jamaal Bowman because he stands up for the working class… they think they can buy off Congress.”
AIPAC Supports Genocide
Bowman and friends made clear that these wealthy racists are genocidal, coming for Black and Brown people in the U.S. and Israel.
Comments included:
“AIPAC’s attack campaign against us is breaking spending records every week… Our movement is scaring their pro-genocide, pro-Netanyahu, racist MAGA donors.”
“The Israeli government is committing a genocide and OUR taxpayer money is funding it. Why do we have billions to send to mass murder”
“This election is a working class educator… against a multimillionaire handpicked by MAGA to support genocide.”
“We won’t let AIPAC stop us from fighting for peace and justice.”
“Our struggles are all connected. The same evils harming our communities here are harming communities across the world.”
Comrade Rashida Tlaib shared “Palestinian liberation and Black liberation are interconnected. From Detroit to Cleveland to Gaza.”
AIPAC Is Coming After Black And Brown Communities
Bowman framed the primary race of two progressives, one Black who is extremist and anti-Israel, and the other White and pro-Israel, as an existential battle between peace-loving working class minorities against evil nefarious forces. It’s appalling and ridiculous as Latimer has decades of strong relationships and dozens of endorsements from Black and Brown politicians, and AIPAC is focused on Israel, not local race relations.
Comments included:
“AIPAC, a right-wing lobby… don’t care about us or our communities.”
“Big money doesn’t belong in our communities Reject AIPAC”
“Black and Brown communities have been left behind for too long. We don’t need more career politicians who only cater to their billionaire friends.”
Bowman retweeted “Thanks to funding from right-wing billionaires, AIPAC is targeting progressives of color”
The Working Families Party shared the article “No One Should Be Surprised a Black Politician Is the Canary in AIPAC’s Coal Mine”
Bowman added “The people are rising up against AIPAC and their republican billionaires. We won’t let them buy our communities in NY-16 or anywhere!”
Hiding In The Shadows
AOC made clear that these racist billionaires keeping minorities down are being funded by “dark money.”
Bowman retweeted AOC comments including:
“Dark money has spent the largest sum in history to unseat Jamaal Bowman… these lobbies don’t care about the Bronx and Westchester.”
“we rallied 1200 people in the Bronx to take on dark money”
“It’s time to fight back against AIPAC and their megadonors.”
The Alt-Left Against AIPAC
The far-left wing demonized a pro-Israel group as the epitome of evil: racist White supremacists who support genocide against minorities in the U.S. and Israel and who don’t care about anyone. They are agents who do not belong in the district or to have a voice in American politics.
Rep. Cori Bush said that these pro-Israel people “meddle in our Democratic elections,” meaning that they do not belong.
As such, they all ran under a banner of RejectAIPAC; to rally against a bipartisan organization that supports the only liberal democracy in the Middle East. To demonize the only Jewish state. To call anyone involved in pro-Israel activities pro-genocidal maniacs who should be cast from society. To strip the beleaguered Jewish State of all defenses.
No lobbying group is tarnished in such fashion by politicians. We don’t call Americans who are involved with the National Rifle Association or Planned Parenthood as “genocide supporters.” Elected officials do not slam teacher’s unions as “dark money” that “meddle” in the political process.
But the far-left has called open season on Jews loudly and repeatedly. It’s us versus them.
And it’s a completely manufactured lie. A vicious antisemitic campaign attempting to vilify Jews and push them from the public square.
We need to have a conversation about the vile antisemitism that is rife at woke colleges and among far-left politicians.
The most expensive primary race in America concluded this week in New York’s 16th Congressional District with Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeating incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman. The narrative found in mainstream and social media would have one believe that Republican billionaires funded a random White racist to defeat a popular Black politician who had the nerve to combat the Democratic establishment’s backing of Israel in its war against Hamas.
That is a complete fiction. The reality is that:
Bowman was a very flawed extremist politician
Bowman cared little for the vast majority of his district and he was quite unpopular amongst his constituents
Latimer is a very well-known and liked progressive politician in the majority of the district
Latimer likely would have won with a fraction of the spending
Mainstream and social media picked up far-left talking points tainted with antisemitic dog whistles, rather than focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates
The race is unpacked here, as some of the lessons relate to other races featuring members of the squad as well as the deeply flawed Vice President Kamala Harris.
NY’s 16th Congressional District
Bowman won his NY16 seat in 2020 when the district’s boundaries covered northern Bronx and some of southern Westchester County. When congressional district lines were redrawn in 2022 after the 2020 Census, NY16 was almost completely lower Westchester with a small nub of the Bronx.
In 2020, a good potion of lower Westchester was located in NY17, which voted for another Black progressive politician, Mondaire Jones. However, when the lines were redrawn in 2022, Jones opted to run for congress in Manhattan and left Bowman to run in NY16 with the expanded lower Westchester in the district.
Many people in the 16th district wanted to oust Bowman in 2022 for a range of actions and statements including voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, calling for defunding the police, his stated aims for destroying capitalism and abolishing the immigration center. At that time, some Jews in the district asked AIPAC to get involved in the primary but the pro-Israel group refused because two contenders were already facing Bowman, Catherine Parker and Vedat Gashi. As predicated, those two ended up dividing the anti-Bowman votes, and Bowman sailed to an easy primary victory with only 20,000 votes. After the primary, in September 2022, AIPAC suggested to people in NY16 that it find a single popular candidate early who would clear the field of other Democratic politicians in the next election, which they did as described below in early 2023.
In 2024, the district lines were redrawn slightly, with Co-op City swapped in for the Wakefield section of the Bronx. With the adjustment, there were roughly 252,600 voters in the district of which 41.7% were White, 26.9% Hispanic, 21.3% Black and 6.6% Asian. Jewish groups estimated that the Jewish voting age population in the district was about 25,800, or about 10.2% of the total voter universe.
Tally from the 2024 Latimer-Bowman democratic primary
Latimer won the primary with about a 17 point spread, or 13,300 votes, on the strength of his turnout in Westchester where he secured 64% of the votes. Bowman did well in Co-op City, but with a relatively small number of voters.
Jewish voters made a difference.
The Jewish Vote
Westchester Unites, a division of the Orthodox Union assembled to get out the vote effort under a tagline “Antisemitism is on the ballot.” The group stated that it brought 14,871 Jewish voters to the polls (as of 7:30pm on election night), presumably almost all of which voted for Latimer, a sum which exceeded the margin of victory. Remarkably, that figure is 57.7% of the eligible Jewish voters in the district, an incredible figure for a primary. The number also doesn’t include many of the non-Orthodox and non-affiliated Jews in the district which did not want to be part of the WU effort.
With more mail-in votes being collected in the days post-election, it is fair to estimate that Jews made up as much as one-third of Latimer’s votes.
The incredibly high rate of Jewish voters participating in a primary could not have been achieved solely with WU or AIPAC backing. Jews inside the district had been preparing for this primary battle for over two years.
The Orthodox community was particularly strong in rallying for Latimer. Estimates are that roughly 2,000 people in NY16 changed their party affiliation from Independent or Republican to Democrat to vote in the 2024 primary. Additionally, WU estimates that over 80% of the Orthodox eligible voters participated in the election, a much higher figure than for non-Orthodox.
The question is why Jews in Westchester, which had voted for Mondaire Jones, a Black progressive politician in 2020, turned on another Black progressive in Bowman a short time later, and why Jones himself opted to endorse Latimer over Bowman.
Bowman, Prioritized Blacks And Absent On Antisemitism
The press will say that Jews were offended by Bowman’s pro-Palestinian positions but while true, it misses the mark. Bowman was absent on antisemitism while he served only his preferred base of constituents in his district, the Black and Brown communities.
Instead, Bowman came to White Plains on the day he condemned antisemitic vandalism at Goldman’s office, and told a crowd that Israelis are lying that Palestinian Arabs raped and sexually abused women as a matter of “propaganda.” For some reason, Bowman believes it’s progressive to “believe women” as long as they aren’t Jewish, and to decry antisemitism against colleagues but not constituents.
Beyond ignoring Jews and Jew-hatred, Bowman stressed the Black and Brown communities.
When Bowman discussed student debt, he didn’t discuss it for all his constituents but focused on the Black and Brown communities. Repeatedly.
Similarly when Bowman discussed poor young people in his district, he focused on “Black and Brown kids,” downplaying poor Whites and Asians.
Bowman believes that “his” community is the Black community, which is not a problematic position for an individual, but deeply troubling for a politician when they ignore everyone else.
Bowman established a reputation for not serving all of his constituents during his two terms. He was noticeably absent in Westchester while his challenger, George Latimer, had decades of serving every community in the county.
Latimer secured a complete sweep of Democratic endorsements in Westchester with the sole exception of New Rochelle. Bowman had endorsed that city’s new mayor Yarida Ramos-Herbert when she ran for office, but she did not return the favor as she saw the writing on the walls that Bowman was a flailing politician. New Rochelle opted to not endorse anyone.
Bowman was so unaware of and unfamiliar with his constituents, that the day before the June 25 election, he held a rally in the South Bronx, miles away from his district, with politicians from outside the district like Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont. How asinine and emblematic of a failed candidate, unless Bowman had already conceded the race and was setting a stage to run in against Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY15) in two years.
It begs the question of how the narrative became so skewed. Jews in the district tried to get rid of Bowman well before the October 7th Hamas massacre. Latimer is a well-known progressive who was endorsed by Mondaire Jones, not some “random white dude.” All the Democratic committees in Westchester endorsed Latimer, not “far-right Republicans.” He got his money from inside the district while Bowman funded his campaign from outside.
Israel, AIPAC and October 7
Bowman was a poor politician who cared little for his non-minority constituents. His shenanigans of pulling fire alarms in congress made him the butt of jokes and censure in congress. His extremist rhetoric and craving of drama made him more like a 16-year old looking for likes on Tik Tok than a serious politician.
He was an easy target for any challenger.
While Latimer was initially approached to run for congress in April 2023, he didn’t formally announce until December as he canvassed the political landscape of the district measuring support. His timing of joining the race after a visit to Israel in November made it appear that he was coming after Bowman because of the congressman’s anti-Israel positions after October 7.
Bowman’s backers in the extreme far-left group Justice Democrats saw the antisemitic protests on American streets and leaned in. It launched a “Reject AIPAC” campaign, making the group appear nefarious, trying to serve as a red herring so people would forget Bowman’s ineptitude and make the primary race about the Israel-Hamas war.
Bowman loved the narrative, and used antisemitic language that AIPAC was “dark money” and were a bunch of “baby killers” in lines lifted from medieval blood libels (see concession speech 3:00 as an example).
AIPAC became Bowman’s boogeyman. In Bowman’s concession speech (9:28) he said “We should be outraged when a super-PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people about things about me that aren’t true. You should be outraged when unfortunately, some so-called Democrats are aligning themselves with radical racist right-wing Republicans.” It was an echo of fellow squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments that “Israel has hypnotized the world – may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Of course, every one of AIPAC’s comments about Bowman was true; he had long proven himself to be unfit for office. In facing a well-known popular progressive politician in Latimer, Bowman knew he was doomed and decided to reframe the discussion away from his incompetence to declare himself a martyr for minorities.
Bowman’s left-wing allies under the Justice Democrats umbrella took to the airwaves and declared AIPAC to be enemy number one for coming after Bowman. They slandered the group repeatedly at rallies, in interviews and on social media, in a fictitious narrative that rich racist Jews were coming after a poor Black man.
And the press bought the bait-and-switch.
The Press Ignored Bowman’s Incompetence
The press went out of its way to absolve Bowman for his years of incompetence.
The Associated Press said that Bowman had “stumbles” portraying his actions as accidental, such as pulling the fire alarm, even though videos show that he did it on purpose.
The New York Times referred to Bowman’s “clumsy and sometimes inflammatory comments about Oct. 7,” making it sound that Bowman’s intentions were noble but poorly phrased, when in fact, his comments were deliberate and abhorrent.
A Times opinion piece discussed Bowman’s vicious actions as mere “unforced errors.”
So when the polls closed on June 25, and the obvious became public, The New York Times didn’t talk about the censured eak politician who never got to know his constituents, and instead blamed Bowman’s demise on a “flood of pro-Israel money.”
As did the BBC and other outlets.
The Jewish Vote Broadly
American Jews generally do not vote in a block. Orthodox Jews tend to vote more conservatively while non-Orthodox denominations are typically liberal. Some are pro-Israel and some are anti-Zionist.
But there are moments in time and there are politicians who can galvanize this minority-minority into a voting force.
As the bad news kept coming, many woke liberals needed to turn away to protect themselves and their families. Repeated appalling comments by Jamaal Bowman made J Street rescind its endorsement in January 2024, an action it had never previously done.
And NY’s 16th district was J Street country. Non-Orthodox rabbis in the community were on the rabbinic board as well as other left-wing groups like the New Israel Fund. If Bowman could offend people who spent a lifetime looking away from anti-Zionist comments, he had lost the whole community.
Bowman was so far in the extreme, that only radical fringe anti-Zionist groups like Bend the Arc and If Not Now continued to support him through the primary season.
Ramifications For Other Members of the Squad, Kamala Harris
Bowman was deeply unpopular – not only among Jews – and he would likely have lost an online poll of the 252,000 potential voters in the district by a wide margin. All that AIPAC’s money did – much sourced from inside the district – was help get out the vote; it likely changed few opinions.
The far-left’s vilification of AIPAC is both a red herring to distract from unpopular policies like a broad redistribution of wealth and power, as well as an antisemitic dog whistle to cement the jihadi-socialist alliance.
Bowman suffered from three critical matters: 1) he was broadly unpopular in the district; 2) he was up against a single well-known and liked challenger; and 3) there were enough Jews in the district to make a difference in the vote.
As people consider Cori Bush (D-MO1), a voting clone to Bowman, in her fight with Wesley Bell, those are critical factors to evaluate, even more than the amount of money spent by AIPAC to get out the vote. Similarly, as Democrats ponder a possible replacement for President Biden, they must consider the far left extremist policies of VP Kamala Harris when she was a senator, and her terrible polling numbers.
Jews know that extremism, whether from the left or right, is dangerous for their very beings. They see it has found a home in the diaspora and the media is loathe to call it out, instead choosing the lazy approach of parroting the antisemitic propaganda.
While AIPAC did spend millions of dollars on the Latimer-Bowman race, those who frame the primary as powerful Jewish billionaires trying to silence a poor Black man – which is the precise language of Justice Democrats – are engaging in vile antisemitism, in an attempt to dress up their policies as just and popular. Their use of Jew-hatred as a political tool should make clear that they are deeply anti-American, and should be shunned in society.
ACTION ITEM
In MO-1, extremist Rep. Cori Bush is being challenged by public defender Wesley Bell. Donate to Bell here.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman has long ignored the Jewish residents in his district and vilified the Jewish State. As the Democratic primary neared on June 25, he opted to raise the temperature on a hot day, riling up a crowd in the South Bronx to go to war with Westchester County, and for the Black and Brown communities to go to war with the Jews.
Bowman went to a park in the Bronx and started cursing and slamming chairs on stage. Calling himself the “hip hop congressman,” he got the crowd to chant about the south Bronx. He then said “We are gonna show f*cking AIPAC the power of the mother-f*cking South Bronx.”
He continued “People ax me why I’ve got a foul mouth. What am I supposed to do? You comin’ after me! You comin’ after my family. You comin’ after my children. I’m not supposed to fight back? I’m not supposed to fight back? We gonna show them who the f*ck we are!” He then started to jump up and down and throw his arms around in circles.
“We gonna show them who the f*ck we are! Bowman! Bowman!“
And it’s all a lying and dangerous circus. No one ever said anything about Bowman’s family and children. It was Bowman who repeatedly over many years came after Jews and the Jewish State, yet he inverted the entire cause-and-effect of the primary battle.
The unhinged rant from the deeply unpopular congressman continued his embarrassing and appalling tenure in congress. Despite being the incumbent, his challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer received almost all of the endorsements of the Democratic Party, including from:
Hillary Clinton (former Secretary of State and Senator from New York)
Mondaire Jones (former Congressman for lower Westchester County 2021-2)
Nita Lowy (former Congresswoman for lower Westchester County)
Eliot Engel (former Congressman for the Bronx)
David Paterson (former Governor of New Jersey)
and a very long list of state and county legislators
The sick rantings of Bowman are even starting to bring current members of Congress to endorse George Latimer, including Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). More may follow as we enter election day on June 25.
But Bowman wasn’t alone in his antics.
Alexandria “Big Money” Ocasio-Cortez joined Bowman’s rants with her own fist pumping as she yelled “I am ready to fight!”
She asked the crowd “Are we ready to take on AIPAC? Are we ready to kick some Wall Street ass?! Good!“
Not satisfied with slamming a bipartisan group which backs many Black and Latin progressives, AOC went on to continue to lie about Latimer. “He [Bowman] is being primaried by racism. He is being primaried by greed. He is being primaried by corruption of our politics. And we cannot let them win.”
The statement is beyond preposterous. Latimer is a long-time civil servant who works closely with people of all races and religions. Many Black and gay leaders in Westchester have decades of experience working with him and have endorsed him.
AOC added “The Bronx is built different. We are built different…. There’s a reason this borough [the Bronx] sent Jamaal Bowman to congress.”
But it didn’t. With redistricting, NY’s 16th district consists of 87% lower Westchester County and 13% of the Bronx. Bowman won in 2020 with very different lines that had much more of the Bronx.
AOC’s and Bowman’s claims that Latimer is being funded by outside money is another inversion of facts. The vast majority of Latimer money is coming from inside district 16 while only 10% of Bowman’s contributions are local.
The alt-left is angry that it cannot do a quick massive redistribution of wealth and power from the Westchester towns which are predominantly White with a significant Jewish population, to the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in the Bronx. So they are inciting riots.
Jamaal Bowman and AOC have declared a war between the South Bronx and Westchester, as well as between the Black/Brown Majority-Minorities and the beleaguered Jewish Minority-Minority. How is this progressive? Why are these alt-left extremists in office?
First One Through 