A left-wing political club in Manhattan that endorsed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has declined to do so for Darializa Avila Chevalier, a Democratic Socialist challenging Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) in the June 23 Democratic primary for New York’s 13th Congressional District, citing her refusal to condemn Hamas and the terrorist attacks it led in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The Broadway Democrats wrote in its newsletter on June 18 that it will be endorsing Espaillat, stating that it wasn’t “an easy choice for us.”
“That is because Espaillat’s chief challenger, Darializa Avila Chevalier, refuses to condemn Hamas or anything about it, its Oct. 7th and hundreds of other murderous assaults on Israeli people, its execution of its own political dissidents, its theocratic view of government and what a society is, its misogyny, its homophobia, its racism,” the group stated.
“These statements about Chevalier’s positions are not mere rumor,” the political club wrote. “At our own endorsement meeting, when asked to condemn Hamas and its Oct. 7th attacks, she point-blank refused, turning the question into yet another attack on Israel.”
During the March 12 endorsement meeting, the 32-year-old said the question of condemning Hamas in Gaza and Oct. 7 “ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were living under before this genocide began.”
For its part, the Broadway Democrats stated that it doesn’t defend Israel’s actions, accusing it of “excessive slaughter in Gaza,” “illegal and hateful West Bank settlements” and “fascist statements of several of its cabinet members.”
Still, members said, “we also see much good in Israel and its people, as there is much good in the Palestinian people, and we still believe we can have two states co-existing in Israel/Palestine. To achieve this, we will need—here and there—leaders of vision and peace, not of hatred and war.”
At a June 4 primary forum, the candidate was asked why she hasn’t condemned Hamas. Chevalier responded: “What I will not do is let a question be used to distract us from the documented reality that over hundreds of thousands of people, Palestinians specifically, have been killed.”
“While, yes, I do condemn Hamas, the problem is that our country, the thing that we can control, is where our money and our tax dollars are going,” she said. “Right now, it is going towards indiscriminate slaughter.”
On Friday, she wrote, “I’ve fought for a free Palestine for years. I’m running to invest our taxes in our babies here at home, not in bombs to kill kids abroad.”
Mamdani endorsed Chevalier earlier this month.
Chevalier’s endorsers include the Democratic Socialists of America; the Sunrise Movement; Track AIPAC; the Council on American-Islamic Relations Action; Jewish Voice for Peace Action; and multiple New York City council members and New York State assembly members.
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During an interview with the New York editorial board published on Thursday, Chevalier was asked if she’s ever talked to pro-Israel people in her district.
“Yeah, I do. I do,” she said. “The thing about the organizing I do around Palestine is that I’m constantly engaging with folks from all perspectives on this issue. You know, I’m someone, I’ve been organizing for a really long time, with organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace, organizations that are Palestinian-led, organizations that are—”
The interviewer interrupted her to say, “Those are the folks who agree with you.”
“Yes, and a lot of the work that JVP does is actually engaging with their community who holds a very different view,” she responded.
A former Columbia University student activist, Chevalier helped organize the school’s 2024 anti-Israel encampment and co-founded Columbia University Apartheid Divest. She has also faced backlash for attending a Times Square demonstration against Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, one day after the Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel.
Asked if she thought that her participation in protests, as well as the way the word “Zionist” was used by anti-Israel activists, contributed to the “toxic” conversation around Israel and Palestine, she replied, “I think Zionism is an ideology that is looking to create a political system where one group of people has more standing before the law than another group of people.”
“And I understand that there are folks who don’t view it that way, but that is the origins of the ideology of Zionism,” she said.
Her activism reportedly led to her conversion to Islam three years ago.
Most recently, she was arrested during an anti-Israel demonstration outside the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
The June 23 primary will determine the nominee in the heavily Democratic district, which includes Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.
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