Democrats’ Anti-Israel ‘Squad’ Looks Set To Surge

The next generation of Democratic office-seekers is coming into focus as primaries are decided and candidates set — and the trend is shocking. Seemingly every day brings news of another candidate moving closer to holding office — to wielding political power — on a platform centrally devoted to antagonism to the Jewish state. When it comes to the oldest prejudice, the Democrats are increasingly eschewing taboos and erasing red lines.Take the nomination last week of Dr. Adam Hamawy as the Democratic candidate at New Jersey’s 12th congressional district. Supported by the likes of Senator Bernie Sanders and Congressman Ro Khanna, Dr. Hamawy was financed to the tune of $2 million by a new political action committee, American Priorities, that is devoted to anti-Israel candidates. In 1995, he testified on behalf of the so-called “Blind Sheikh,” Omar Abdel-Rahman.Abdul-Rahman, an arch-terrorist of the last century, was convicted of seditious conspiracy following the first bombing of the World Trade Center. Dr. Hamawy traveled with Abdul-Rahman and served as a translator for him. The United States Army surgeon volunteered for an al-Qaeda linked group in Bosnia and at the European Hospital at Gaza, which he called “benign.” Israeli forces eventually found Mohammed Sinwar in a tunnel underneath it.Then there is Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who the Washington Post reckons is “surging” in Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary. Like Dr. Hamawy’s campaign, his is focused on the accusation that Israel has committed “genocide.” He has enlisted the podcaster Hasan Piker — he has declared that America “deserved” 9/11 — on the hustings. On Friday he was endorsed by the United Auto Workers as “ready, eager, and well-equipped” to push a leftist agenda.Dr. El-Sayed was asked last month if he could bring himself to acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state. He responded that “I often struggle with the question that people ask in this particular scenario.” In an interview with CNN he used the same word to describe Hamas and America’s foremost ally in the Middle East — “evil.” He described the attack on a Michigan synagogue, Temple Israel, as one where “hurt people hurt people.”That was in reference to the man, Ayman Ghazali, who while wielding an assault-style rifle crashed his pickup truck into the synagogue. He was inspired by Hezbollah and counted two of his brothers as commanders in the terrorist group’s tank division. The children of one of them, Ibrahaim, were killed alongside their father in an Israeli air strike. The FBI called Mr. Ghazali’s act a “targeted act of violence against the Jewish community.”Or take the overwhelming front-runner for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Maine, Graham Platner. He too has made hay of the “genocide” libel. In 2014 he praised an attack by Hamas that killed Israeli soldiers as a “damn fine looking” operation. For decades, Mr. Platner, whom Senator Elizabeth Warren has called “my kind of man,” sported a Totenkopf or “death’s head,” image on his chest. He denies knowing the insignia festooned SS uniforms.So crucial is anti-Israel sentiment to Mr. Platner’s campaign that in the wake of last week’s cascade of accusations from women with whom he has been romantically involved his first response was to allege that the Republican incumbent, Senator Susan Collins, is “bought and paid for by Benjamin Netanyahu, and she votes accordingly.” The Wall Street Journal reckons that Mr. Platner taps into the “ugly anti-Israel sentiment curdling in American politics.”Last week Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Darializa Avila Chevalier for a congressional seat against a Democratic incumbent, Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Ms. Avila Chevalier attended a Democratic Socialists of America rally on October 8, 2023, that was so vile that it was even condemned at the time by Mr. Mamdani and another anti-Israel candidate this cycle, Brad Lander. The Squad, it appears, is primed for a boon in membership.

Democrats’ Anti-Israel ‘Squad’ Looks Set To Surge

Democrats’ Anti-Israel ‘Squad’ Looks Set To Surge

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