Bowman Must Denounce DSA to Have the Moral Standing to Represent District
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
Early on Oct. 7, while most Americans were asleep, Jews experienced their bloodiest day since the Holocaust.
Hamas terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israel, crashing through the border fence and paragliding into a music festival. They went on to kill at least 1,300 Israelis, almost all civilians, in a matter of hours, a day 10 times bloodier than Kristallnacht.
Worse than the number of fatalities – the equivalent of ten 9/11s, per capita – was the unthinkable barbarity and nihilistic joy Hamas invaders took in slaughtering innocent human beings. Women were raped next to the dead bodies of their friends, then executed. Babies were beheaded, children burnt alive.
This evil and cowardice caused almost universal horror here at home. Almost.
Amid all the condemnation, there was one political group gleefully celebrating the rape and slaughter of innocent women and children – the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). While the bodies of innocent babies were still warm, DSA called for a rally in Times Square to celebrate the massacre.
“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” one Hamas/DSA supporter said at the rally, referring to the terrorists that mowed down 260 innocent Jews in an orgy of rape and slaughter. DSA later issued a non-apology.
In the spirit of “Never Again,” it is important to call DSA what it is and always has been – a hate group cheering the murders of innocent Israeli and American Jews, the rape of women and the burning of babies.
That brings us to lower Westchester’s own congressman, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-Yonkers), who rode DSA’s endorsement to his 2020 primary upset over former Rep. Eliot Engel, a longtime defender of the Jewish state. Bowman, who condemned the rally, says he’s no longer affiliated with DSA and told The New York Times that he let his DSA membership lapse last year, but apparently never told anyone until after the group’s pro-Hamas rally.
I’m sorry, congressman, but that is not good enough. You cannot launch your political career with the support of a group that refused to call the Hamas attack an act of terrorism, and then sneak out the back door when their depravity is unveiled for the world to see.
The DSA did little to hide their hatred and support for anti-Israel terrorism before the attacks. As recently as July, a DSA working group tweeted that there are no such things as Israeli “civilians” and praised “resistance groups deploying violence to liberate themselves.”
Was Bowman unaware, in the years he was a DSA member, that these were the kinds of people that would celebrate the murders of Jewish babies?
In Congress, Bowman has been one of the chamber’s most anti-Israel members despite representing a heavily Jewish district. He was one of just nine Democrats to vote against a bill condemning anti-Semitism and declaring that Israel, a pluralistic society in which Arabs and Jews enjoy equal rights, is not a racist or apartheid state.
He initially backed legislation supporting the Abraham Accords, or normalization pacts between Israel and its Arab neighbors, but later withdrew his backing. One wonders whether DSA pressure played a role. He joined Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) in calling the establishment of Israel a “Nakba,” or catastrophe, and signed a misleading one-sided letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken urging a shift in U.S. policy away from Israel.
To be sure, these acts are all deeply misguided but a far cry from DSA’s fervor for the murder of innocent Jews; terrible policy is not proof of anti-Semitism or Hamas sympathy.
Bowman has clashed with DSA on his support for funding Iron Dome, Israel’s missile defense system, on his 2021 trip to Israel and the West Bank and on his refusal to support the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. DSA almost gave him the boot in December 2021, but ultimately backed down, citing the threat he posed to the “Zionist lobby.”
And his response to last Saturday’s massacre, though at times uneven (his first statement after the attack was mealy-mouthed), was far stronger than his far-left “Squad” colleagues.
His Oct. 10 tweet condemning the attack and the Times Square rally, and another that day calling a BLM affiliate’s post praising the violence “disgusting,” were a welcome departure from the silence and victim-blaming of some of his fellow leftists.
In a statement to The Examiner, a spokesperson said Bowman “no longer has a DSA membership and is not endorsed by the organization.”
“He’s forcefully condemned the rally in Times Square, condemned Hamas, and all hate speech,” the statement read. “His policy positions are determined by his commitment to invest more in education, affordable housing, and his district over militarization. There is no group that dictates any of his policy positions besides his constituents. The Congressman firmly believes in a peaceful two-state solution and believes Israel should exist.”
It is a good start, but Bowman must do more. He must renounce not just the DSA rally but the DSA itself, as his Michigan colleague and fellow Democrat Rep. Shri Thanedar has done, and must apologize for having been a member of such a vile organization.
Otherwise, he has no moral standing to represent New York’s 16th Congressional District.
Andrew Vitelli is the former editor of The White Plains Examiner and The Putnam Examiner. He has a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Tel Aviv University and was a Fellow for Israel’s Government Press Office in 2012.
