On May 15, Democratic House candidate Brad Lander stood before Friday prayers at the al Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, and introduced himself as a proud Jewish New Yorker.

Then he told the room that Israel’s so-called “genocide” in Gaza was a desecration. That every Palestinian child there was as divine as his own beloved children. That in Congress, he would not vote for another dollar of American military aid, not for the bombs, not for the occupation in Lebanon, which he said was on its way, potentially, to being a genocide as well.