Dem Rep Bowman Pledges to Back BDS in Primary Knife Fight
Embattled Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) did a 180 on a crucial foreign policy issue—support for the controversial Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement aimed at Israel—in his bid to secure the endorsement of the Democratic Socialists of America, according to video of a campaign event last month.
Bowman, who represents a swath of the Bronx and the New York City suburbs, previously rankled some fellow DSA members by opposing the push to economically penalize Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians.
A visit to Israel, and a vote to underwrite the country’s Iron Dome missile defense system, nearly got Bowman booted from the left-wing group in his first term in Congress, even though he had warned the organization in a 2020 questionnaire that symbolic declarations of support for the BDS policy “will not advance our cause of liberating oppressed people from colonialism.”