Read the full article in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency here
Brad Lander has ousted incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in New York City’s 10th Congressional District in a Democratic primary Tuesday night where the candidates’ views on Israel were a key issue, according an NBC News projection.
Lander, a former city comptroller backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, had 55,060 votes, or 65.8 percent, and Goldman had 28,445 votes, or 34 percent, with 92 percent of the ballots counted. NBC News projected Lander the winner four minutes after the polls closed at 9 p.m.
Lander, 56, perched his campaign on a refusal to take money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobbying group. Goldman, an attorney who led the first impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump, was hailed for his efforts on that front, but his more supportive views on Israel have proven increasingly unpopular in his lower Manhattan and Brooklyn district in recent years.
“Democrats are painfully divided by our differences over the U.S. relationship to Israel and Palestine, and we have to face up to it squarely,” Lander said in his victory speech. “Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden’s ‘hug Bibi strategy’ was a catastrophic failure.”
He invoked the famous words of Rabbi Hillel in Pirkei Avot: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, what am I? And if not now, when?”
“I will be one of the Jewish members of Congress most willing to stand up loud for Palestinian human rights,” Lander added. “I will stand firmly against bigotry aimed at Jews as well. That’s not two different jobs — that’s the same job. That’s the same job Rabbi Hillel gave us 2000 years ago.”
Lander continued, “We cannot keep paying for Netanyahu’s wars with our tax dollars. Democratic voters across the country are saying this loud and clear. What we need instead is a politics of shared safety: one that sees Palestinian kids in Gaza and the West Bank as created Betzelem Elohim — in the image of God just as much as Rosa and Marek,” he said, referring to his two children.
...
Lander ran for New York City mayor last fall and cross-endorsed with Mamdani in an effort to thwart former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani then encouraged Lander to run for Congress and endorsed him in February in a video calling out AIPAC. He was also endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, New York City Councilmember Shahana Hanif, former Manhattan Borough President and activist Ruth Messinger, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, IfNotNow, the Sunrise Movement, United Auto Workers and other progressive groups.