In August, left-wing Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush of Missouri lost her primary race to St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell by a five-and-a-half-point margin in a race predicted to either be a bellwether of Democratic support for the far-left—or an indication of the electoral muscle of pro-Israel groups that spent heavily to oust Bush.
And while the race was a clear win for AIPAC and its allies, it remains to be seen what high-profile spending by pro-Israel groups against Black candidates such as Bush, Jamaal Bowman, Nina Turner and Donna Edwards—over their positions on Israel—will mean for Black-Jewish relations.
Rep. Bush, a nurse and civil rights activist, rose to prominence in 2020 after unseating ten-term incumbent Lacy Clay in St. Louis’ heavily urban, heavily Democratic 1st Congressional District. Running a campaign focused on economic and racial justice issues, Bush had the backing of progressive organizations, including IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace, as well as the endorsement of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
In the intermittent years, Bush has taken stances, particularly on Israel, that have ostracized her from elements of her constituency and made her a target of the Israel lobby. A supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, Bush was one of the first in Congress to call for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war. She has characterized Israeli operations in Gaza as “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes,” and she accused the State of Israel of genocide and apartheid.
Bush also faced more local criticism regarding her relationship with the Jewish community. A Jewish Insider report noted that Bush’s office had been dismissive of or outright ignored communications from Jewish leaders in her district. In March 2024, more than 30 rabbis came together to write a letter condemning Bush and endorsing Bell, accusing the congresswoman of having “continually fanned the flames with the most outrageous smears of Israel.”
This made her a prime target of pro-Israel lobbying groups, who used Bush’s weak standing in the district—she was accused of using her position as a “Squad” member to fundraise and grandstand rather than address the needs of her constituents—to support Bell, a progressive county prosecutor and one-time ally of Bush’s.
Overall, AIPAC donated some $600,000 to Bell’s campaign. However, AIPAC’s associated political action committee, the United Democracy Project, spent an order of magnitude more, earmarking $5.2 million in ads targeting Bush and $3.35 million for those supporting Bell. While the campaign expenditures by pro-Israel groups largely centered on Bush’s focus on national politics at the expense of the local issues, as well as the congresswoman’s alleged misuse of federal funds, the Israel issue simmered in the background. Bell at one point voiced his support for continued U.S. support to Israel, but he did not highlight it as a key theme of his campaign. In the end, Bell defeated Bush, 51.2 percent to 45.6 percent.
This is the second high-profile win for Israel advocacy groups this election season, having pumped $15 million into a campaign to defeat progressive New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman. Fellow Squad member Ilhan Omar of Minnesota survived a competitive primary challenge, but her race did not see heavy investments by AIPAC or other pro-Israel organizations.
But that’s hardly the end of the story. These high-profile campaigns have highlighted tensions in the Black-Jewish political relationship, long characterized by cooperation on issues of civil rights and ballot access but strained by differences on Israel-Palestine and by pro-Israel lobbyists’ spending in races against Black candidates.
Race Forward Executive Vice President Eric K. Ward describes the long relationship between Black and Jewish leadership as “a grand alliance” that has historically fought against racist and antisemitic laws. This cooperation was particularly robust during the civil rights era, perhaps most famously exemplified by the images of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Selma to Montgomery marches, but also demonstrated by legislative wins such as the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
But since that golden age, relations have changed. Part of it, explains Ward, is a matter of proximity. As Jewish Americans have assimilated into “quasi-whiteness,” he says, American Jews have “distanced themselves in proximity from the Black community,” which has in turn led to the two groups’ political interests diverging.
Likewise, disparities in leadership positions may have caused disillusionment among Black activists, argues Terrence L. Johnson, Harvard Divinity professor and author of Blacks and Jews in America: An Invitation to Dialogue. While Jews have been well represented on the boards of Black organizations like the NAACP and SNCC, African Americans have not likewise been represented on the boards of Jewish organizations.
Additionally, frictions have emerged over many African Americans’ embrace of the Palestinian national movement. This phenomenon started as early as the 1960s, notes Johnson. The confluence of emergent Black nationalism and a desire to reach out to international allies led to an increased salience of the issue of Palestine among left-wing Black activists in particular. “Prior to George Floyd and BLM [Black Lives Matter], criticism of Israel primarily took place in elite circles, primarily among Black academics and activists,” says Johnson. But since then, themes of anti-colonialism and anti-Zionism have become increasingly prevalent in the political discourse.
[Read: “How The Black Lives Matter and Palestinian Movements Converged”]
Ward bemoans AIPAC’s recent strategy, arguing that the group “has taken what is a divide in opinion on Palestine and Israel, this pseudo-intellectual debate that we see framed around Zionism and anti-Zionism in this country, and it has framed it as a Black-Jewish divide.” And, while he doesn’t contend that AIPAC is intentionally targeting Black candidates, he notes that white candidates with similarly anti-Zionist positions have not been targeted to the same degree as Bush or Bowman. “Unintended consequences are still consequences, and that is one thing that is troubling.”
“AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” Bush said In her concession speech on August 7, explaining that, “all they did is radicalize me, so they need to be afraid.” And while left-wing lawmakers like Bush and Bowman may be unseated, Johnson sees these wins by the Israel lobby as unlikely to dampen progressive energy surrounding the issue. “In these communities it can reinforce negative tropes about powerlessness,” said Johnson, adding that such defeats will only provide “another opportunity to speak truth to power.”
So what’s the path forward? That can be hard to see. In the immediate term, resolution seems unlikely. Ward believes a revival of the grand alliance could help start to bridge the gap on the issue of Israel-Palestine, but also help to address larger issues of racism and antisemitism in America. “We have to come to understand that our job is to relieve the terror, to relieve the displacement, to help support the ending of the war, not hardening our positions.” Johnson likewise argues that, “for Black Americans, the idea of a landless people, an overlooked people—those images really ring loud for them, so it’s hard to imagine a conversation about Israel that doesn’t lead to structural changes with regard to the Palestinians.”
All that is not to say that there is a crisis in Black-Jewish political relations. The opposite can be seen in the working relationship between Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, for example, as well as the recent electoral successes of candidates such as Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia and their work on voting rights legislation. But as AIPAC and other groups commit to more spending, and Black political and ecclesiastical organizations like Black Lives Matter and the African Methodist Episcopal Church harden their positions, reconciliation on issues of Israel-Palestine seem very far off.
Featured image: Bush (right) with Rep. Ilhan Omar (left). Photo credit: Chad Davis via Flickr.
The new African Jewish Alliance may help. American Blacks sympathetic to Palestinians and other Muslim based groups may start to realize that African Muslims are kidnapping Blacks in Africa and selling them into slavery, as well as murdering, torturing, and raping Black Africans, both Christian and sometimes Muslim. This is going on in 10 African countries. The attacks are very much like Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Check out the alliance between founders Simon Deng and Charles Jacob’s.