Last fall, in the days after Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel, Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York appeared ready to make a hard public break with the Democratic Socialists of America.
Mr. Bowman condemned a rally promoted by the group “in the strongest possible terms” after some members glorified the slaughter of 1,200 Israelis. His office also took the opportunity to publicize for the first time that he had let his own D.S.A. membership lapse amid earlier disagreements over funding for Israeli defenses.
But in a private video meeting with the group late last month, Mr. Bowman insisted he had never actually left, shifting his story as he sought to mend fences with the small but influential group amid a primary challenge that has become a symbolic test of his party’s divisions over Israel.
“I’m still a member,” the congressman said in a recording of the May 26 meeting that was obtained and verified by The New York Times. “I didn’t let my dues lapse.”
Pressed by members to explain why his office had publicly stated otherwise, he added: “Media has a tendency to talk about B.S., and not focus on the race. And we wanted to make sure we were focusing on our race at that time and getting re-elected.”
It was not the only time Mr. Bowman appeared to break with an earlier stated position related to Israel during the half-hour meeting. He told the D.S.A. members that he no longer supported funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system and that he would soon come out in favor of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, bending closer to the group’s positions.
He also implored them to help him fight off a “common enemy” in the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby spending nearly $3 million a week to defeat him ahead of the June 25 contest.
“We have a common enemy right now, which is AIPAC, so let’s form Voltron” and “destroy them,” Mr. Bowman said, underscoring his urgency with an expletive.
The reassurances paid off. After a yearslong estrangement, the D.S.A.’s New York City chapter voted to give Mr. Bowman its endorsement days later, calling him “one of the strongest voices against genocide and for peace as many of his colleagues rush to warmonger.” The group’s members quickly began setting up phone banks and door-knocking campaigns for Mr. Bowman.
But Mr. Bowman’s candid private assessments of one of the United States’ closest allies, which have not previously been reported, are also likely to fuel more attacks from AIPAC and prompt further scrutiny about his relationship with an organization that was alienating many Jewish Democrats.
In a statement, Mr. Bowman’s opponent in the Democratic primary, George Latimer, accused the congressman of lying about his relationship with the D.S.A., a group he called “extremists,” and singled out the B.D.S. movement as antisemitic.
“In our democracy, truth still matters, and Mr. Bowman needs to explain why he keeps relying on falsehoods to justify his re-election,” Mr. Latimer said.
Mr. Bowman’s campaign manager insisted he had not been trying to mislead anyone but offered a different explanation than the one Mr. Bowman delivered to D.S.A. members.
The manager, Gabe Tobias, said that Mr. Bowman had indeed stopped paying dues sometime in 2021 or 2022 during a period of intense disagreement with the D.S.A. and had “assumed” he was no longer a member. But when the two sides re-engaged about Mr. Bowman’s current race, he said, the group’s leaders “informed us that in accordance to their own rules — that we were unaware of — Bowman could start repaying his dues and once again be a member in good standing, a standing that would apply retroactively even to the times his dues had lapsed.”
Jeremy Cohan, a leader of the socialist group, offered a similar account, stressing that Mr. Bowman had agreed recently to rejoin the group and begin paying dues.
The estrangement and re-endorsement underscores how Mr. Bowman’s attempts to balance the conflicting interests of fellow socialists dedicated to the Palestinian cause and Jewish constituents loyal to Israel have evolved.
Mr. Bowman, a former middle-school principal in his second term in Congress, joined D.S.A.’s Lower Hudson Valley chapter in 2019 when he was running a long-shot primary against Eliot L. Engel, a three-decade incumbent and staunch ally of Israel. The group endorsed him, Mr. Bowman won, and as one of only a handful of democratic socialists in Washington, he gladly backed shared priorities around climate change and health care.
Until recently, though, he had staked out more nuanced positions on Israel than had some of his allies on the left. Stressing the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, he criticized Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and its actions in Gaza, but supported funding Jerusalem’s ability to defend itself from rocket barrages, too.
In 2021, some D.S.A. members called for his expulsion after his Iron Dome vote and a trip to the region with J Street, a center-left Israel lobby. The fallout prompted Mr. Bowman to stop paying his dues.
Yet in the weeks that followed the Oct. 7 attack, Mr. Bowman emerged as one of Israel’s most forceful critics in Congress in ways that have brought him in closer alignment with socialists. After condemning Hamas’s actions as “abhorrent,” he has been among a small group of lawmakers who have publicly accused Israel of committing “genocide” and called for the United States to cut off all offensive military aid.
In the May endorsement interview, Mr. Bowman went further. He explained that he had voted to fund the Iron Dome to reassure Jewish constituents still getting to know him. “I didn’t want my ‘no’ vote to be misinterpreted as ‘I want Jews to be killed,’” he said.
But, he added, times have changed. “Now, there’s no way I could support any of that, because there’s a genocide happening in Gaza,” he told the group.
Similarly, Mr. Bowman told the group that he was personally supportive of the B.D.S. movement, contradicting his public opposition. The D.S.A. has endorsed the program, which aims to marshal political and economic pressure on Israel to improve conditions for Palestinians, but Democratic Party leaders oppose it.
In the meeting, Mr. Bowman indicated that he had been trying to delicately broach his views to his district, which is home to a “large Jewish population, large Zionist population, large pro-Israel population, large AIPAC population.”
He said that he wanted to go public with his position “at some point” to open a more direct conversation about the issue and how to secure “peace and justice and safety and humanity for all people.”
“B.D.S. is a nonviolent protest opportunity to hold Israel accountable,” Mr. Bowman said. “And I think Israel needs to be held accountable. And so I’m ready, willing and able to collaborate with you all to figure out what’s the best way to do that.”
Mr. Latimer supports funding for the Iron Dome and opposes B.D.S.
Mr. Latimer and many of his constituents, including two dozen local rabbis who helped recruit him into the race, have been alarmed by the forcefulness of Mr. Bowman’s commentary. J Street rescinded its endorsement. Mr. Bowman’s critics charge that he too quickly moved past the atrocities visited on Israel and has not done enough to fight a spike in antisemitism.
But with the D.S.A. members, Mr. Bowman made clear that he sees things differently. He said Hamas’s initial attack last fall was not “unprovoked” and that he had immediately signed on to a cease-fire resolution because he believed members of his party were prioritizing Israelis and Jews over Palestinians.
“What I saw was immediately everyone recognized the humanity of the people of Israel, and the Jewish people, and completely dehumanized the Palestinians,” he said. “From the president, to the governor, to the mayor here, to everyone in my district.”
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