Support for Israel has emerged as one of the deciding issues in a battle between two liberal candidates for North Carolina’s 4th Congressional District.
Support for Israel, or lack thereof, has turned the Democratic primary into a messy affair. The newly drawn Chapel Hill and Durham-area district, an academic and scientific research hub, is one of the safest blue seats in the nation. The overwhelming odds are that the winner of the May 17 Democratic primary will take over retiring Democratic Rep. David Price’s seat and help steer the internal direction of the party.
The campaign platforms of Nida Allam, a 28-year-old former Bernie Sanders campaign leader, and Valerie Foushee, a veteran of North Carolina politics, are very similar. Both want to make abortion access a priority, stand up for immigrants, combat racial discrimination, and work to address climate change. Allam is the first Muslim woman elected to public office in North Carolina, while Foushee has been a trailblazer for black women throughout her decades of public service.
ILHAN OMAR OPPOSES SANCTIONS FOR RUSSIA BECAUSE RUSSIA IS NOT ISRAEL
Foushee has the support of local officials. But Allam has collected high-profile endorsements of the most radical wing of the Democratic Party, including Sen. Sanders and members of the “squad,” including Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Those two endorsements haven’t helped Allam when it comes to her relationship with Israel.
Allam has been vocal about her distaste for the Jewish state and veered into anti-Semitic territory with a 2018 tweet calling America “the United States of Israel” during her campaign for the Durham County Board of Commissioners. In the tweet, she said she opposed “the dehumanization of Palestinians through the US’ tireless support of Israel’s illegal colonization & occupation.”
Omar and Tlaib have similarly landed in hot water regarding Israel and anti-Semitic remarks. Allam was a co-signer on an open letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi urging her not to reprimand Omar when the congresswoman seemingly accused Israel of having an outsize influence on U.S. politics, encouraging an anti-Semitic trope of Jewish world dominance.
In December, Allam walked back on some of her rhetoric surrounding Israel in an op-ed.
“In the past, I regrettably and unintentionally invoked anti-Semitic tropes in a tweet attempting to call attention to the United States’ withdrawal of humanitarian aid from the Palestinian people,” she wrote, adding that she “deeply apologize[s],” though she stands “by the urgent need to end Israel’s illegal, violent occupation of the Palestinian people.”
But it was too little too late to calm the fears of Israel supporters, who, during the first quarter of 2020, made a hefty donation of about $165,000 to Foushee through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to hedge on Allam’s defeat.
This, in turn, caused the Progressive Caucus of the North Carolina Democratic Party to withdraw its endorsement of Foushee, citing AIPAC’s support for Republican candidates who supported Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. AIPAC is a bipartisan entity focused on strengthening the ties between the United States and Israel and endorses candidates on both sides of the aisle.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“No American candidate should be accepting funds from an organization that provides financial support for those seeking to destroy our democracy,” PCNCDP President Ryan Jenkins said last week.
Allam’s appeal as a young-buck liberal has allowed her to outraise Foushee by about $200,000 in the first quarter with $676,000 compared to Foushee’s $483,000.
Until recently, support for Israel had robust bipartisan support in Congress, but members of the far-left squad have challenged this status quo. The results of the midterm elections will show how much sway this faction has over the Democratic Party as a whole and if it will veer left to follow its lead.
