Progressive “Squad” member Summer Lee won the Democratic nomination in Pennsylvania’s 12th congressional district on Tuesday night after relentlessly criticizing Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack of October 7.
Lee handily defeated moderate challenger Bhavini Patel after a primary race that came to be defined by the incumbent’s hostility to Israel.
After Israel launched its military operation in Gaza in October, Lee hammered the Jewish state for carrying out airstrikes over the territory, calling for an immediate cease-fire before the IDF had the chance to significantly degrade Hamas. Patel quickly seized on Lee’s anti-Israel comments, arguing that the progressive incumbent is out of touch with her suburban district, which is home to the Tree of Life Synagogue where Jewish congregants were murdered by an antisemitic gunman in 2018.
“We’re responding to something that is evil — the murder, rape, kidnapping of children, men, women and grandparents,” Patel told the New York Times shortly after the Hamas attacks. “There shouldn’t be any equivocation on this.”
Lee said her campaign won the messaging battle against multiple interest groups, including the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee.
“Our victory is a rejection of right-wing interests and Republican billionaires using corporate Super PACs to target Black and brown Democrats in our primaries — be it AIPAC or Moderate PAC or any other MAGA billionaire in Democratic clothing,” Lee said in a statement. “Western PA is the blueprint for the future all of America deserves.”
The results of Lee’s primary contest will likely encourage fellow far-left progressives who have ramped up their criticism of Israel in recent months, over the objections of centrist Democrats who believe their hardline stance represents a political liability for President Biden.
Lee was not the only Squad member to draw a pro-Israel primary challenger.
St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell bailed on his campaign to challenge Senator Josh Hawley next November, choosing instead to seek to unseat Representative Cori Bush, who suggested Israel was partially to blame for the October 7 massacre.
“Our world is in a dangerous place, and we need steady and effective leadership,” Bell said. “And we’re not getting it.”
Representative Ilhan Omar drew two challengers, Air Force veteran Tim Peterson and Minneapolis defense attorney Sarah Gad, who accused the congresswoman of being too soft on terrorism.
“This isn’t the first, or last time, Ilhan will parrot Iran’s talking points,” Peterson said. Gad said that Omar’s “divisive rhetoric” served only to “inflame the situation,” the Washington Post reported.
Representative Jamaal Bowman, who voiced opposition to normalization agreements between Israel and its Arab neighbors, in December received a primary challenge from Westchester County executive and staunch Israel supporter George Latimer for New York’s 16th district.
Some Democratic donor groups have gone on offense against the more extreme Squad members, deploying expensive ad campaigns focused on the incumbents’ anti-Israel positions.
The Democratic Majority for Israel purchased a six-figure ad buy for a spot airing in Detroit that knocked Representative Rashida Tlaib over her drawing moral equivalences between Israel and Hamas following the massacre. The ad, aired in her Michigan district, specifically targeted Tlaib’s vote against a bill to replenish Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system in 2021 and against a solidarity resolution with Israel after it was invaded.