But Bowman also recklessly stepped on an ideological mine. One of his biggest mistakes was claiming that reports of Israeli women being raped on October 7 were a “lie” used for “propaganda.” (He later apologized.) Although he said he continued to support a two-state solution, he fell into the leftist habit of using “Zionist ” as an insult, such as when he refers to “the Zionist regime we call AIPAC. ” Talking to politicshe complained about the “decision” some Jews had made to segregate themselves, which some saw as an insult to the Orthodox community in his district. I suspect Bowman doesn’t know what the idea of being Jewish is family is an anti-Semitic trope, but when you have a lot of Jewish voters, understanding their sensibilities is part of the job.
To be clear, Bowman is not the only one showing insensitivity. The campaign against him has been vile and at times frankly racist. Latimer accused Bowman of only caring about his “Black and brown” voters and having an “ethnic” advantage. After the candidates’ first debate, Westchester County Democratic Committee vice chair named Bowman a “lying, angry black man” on Latimer’s Facebook page, adding that she would be happy to see him have a stroke. Ahead of Friday’s rally with Sanders, which took place in the picturesque village of Hastings-on-Hudson, several residents sent out a letters for local leaders worried about the threat of “paid agitators” endangering communities.
They have nothing to fear; The protest, on a sultry afternoon, was quite small, with a maximum of 200 people in attendance. The modest turnout was a reminder that the majority of Bowman’s fans live outside the district. “Ultimately, the political viability of whatever you’re talking about has to come from having a base that keeps you in office,” he said. writer and organizer Micah Sifry, who helped found the Jewish group for Jamaal, although he is no longer involved with the group. Bowman’s weakness, Sifry said, was “a combination of neglecting the hard work of building relationships with your critics, which is the majority of the Jewish community here, as well as difficulty in building bases with other local communities. ”
Bowman is right to be frank about the suffering being inflicted on Gaza. But recently, when he turned to anti-Zionist rhetoric — calling Israel, for example, a “settler-colony project” — I sometimes wonder if he has given up trying to win, instead considering himself a political martyr . After October 7, he condemned the Democratic Socialists of America for promoting a rally in which some speakers praised the attacks and he said that he had let his membership Your membership in the group lapses. But like the New York Times reportedLast month, he sought the group’s endorsement and promised, in a private video conference, to join the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel. The decision puzzled me. The Democratic Socialists of America would not help him win many votes in the 16th District, where Sanders did worse in 2020 than he did in New York overall. And by siding with the anti-Zionist boycott even as he publicly said he still believed Israel had a right to exist, Bowman confirmed the fears of many of his local critics.
