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6 months after her father was killed at Bondi Beach, Sheina Gutnick has become a leading antisemitism advocate in Australia
(JTA) — MELBOURNE — Six months ago, Sheina Gutnick was a 31-year-old mother of three at the end of her maternity leave. She had degrees in social science and psychology, and several years of experience worked at a Jewish school. She was an average mother looking to get back into a 9-to-5 routine after her baby started daycare.
Then, on the first night of Hanukkah, everything in her life changed.
Gutnick was at a Hanukkah party in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and three children when she crossed paths with a friend from Sydney. He looked ghostly white and told her there had been a shooting at a Hanukkah party in Bondi. Her parents, who were visiting Sydney from their home in Melbourne, had been planning to attend.
“I immediately called my dad, but he didn’t answer. Then I called my mum and she answered and I could hear shooting, and she was screaming and told me they are shooting people on the beach and that my dad is running after the terrorists,” said Gutnick.
Her father, Reuven Morrison, would be one of 15 people murdered on Bondi Beach that night. Before he was killed, Morrison was filmed throwing a brick at the terrorists, charging toward them with whatever he could find, trying to shield his community with his body. The footage of his bravery against the terrorists would be seen around the world within hours. After diverting the terrorist’s attention from others, Morrison bled out on the beach after being shot 11 times. He was 62.
“At 7:13 p.m. I found out that my dad is no longer alive, and my first reaction was to tell my husband to get me on a plane to Sydney,” she said. “As I was standing at the doorframe to leave the house before I went to the airport, I turned to my husband and said, ‘This is the day our lives have changed.’”
Gutnick boarded the last flight from Melbourne to Sydney that night. She couldn’t stop crying, and a flight attendant asked what was wrong. “I told her that my dad had just been killed in Bondi,” she recalled. “She didn’t really know what to say, but told me, if you need vodka let us know, we’ll sort you out.”
Six months after the attack, the deadliest antisemitic incident in Australia and one of the bloodiest anywhere in recent history, Australia is still reeling. A royal commission is unearthing searing allegations of antisemitism and accounts of Jewish fear, and has started rolling out recommendations designed to shore up public safety and cohesion.
Gutnick, meanwhile, has vaulted into public view not just at home but abroad. This week, Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted a picture of himself with Gutnick on social media.
“I was honored to meet with Sheina Gutnick, daughter of Bondi hero Reuven Morrison z”l,” Greenblatt wrote. “Since Sheina’s father and 14 others were murdered by terrorists on Bondi Beach during Hanukkah, Sheina has tirelessly and relentlessly demanded that Australia take action against antisemitism. She is an inspiration.”
After throwing herself into speaking about her father, her experience and the challenges facing Australian Jews, Gutnick has now joined an international coterie of advocates transformed by their proximity to historic antisemitic violence.
“I get people saying to me, ‘Aren’t you exhausted?’” she said. “But the truth is, I get energy from it. I’m not a person that can sit when something has happened to me.”
The path that made Gutnick who she is was forged first in the former USSR, which Reuven Morrison left at 14 for Australia. Like many Soviet Jewish emigres, he knew little about Judaism when he arrived and for a time did not have much connection to Jewish practice in his new country, either.
But he became more religiously observant later in life, affiliating with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement that emphasizes outreach to Jews of all levels of observance. He became heavily involved in building Chabad of Bondi, a synagogue and community center in Sydney’s iconic beachfront neighborhood, helping to fight several legal battles while getting the building permits approved.
More than a decade ago, he moved to Melbourne. But the Sydney Jewish community, and especially Chabad of Bondi, remained close to his heart and he visited regularly. Its Chanukah by the Sea celebration, he decided, was one he would not miss.
Gutnick arrived in Sydney at 10 p.m., just a few hours after two men opened fire on the celebration, killing 15. Her father’s body still lay on Bondi beach, covered by a sheet, unable to be released for burial until all evidence had been collected from the scene of the massacre by Australian homicide detectives. She made her way to her uncle and aunt’s home, where her traumatized mother was waiting.
That night, nobody slept — and stories began trickling in.
“When I got there, we began hearing that my dad threw a brick at the terrorists. A lot of people started messaging me that he saved their lives based on actions that he took that night,” Gutnick recalled. “My mum had been on the beach and saw him running, and she saw when he went down, and she saw no one was helping and he ran to step in, but she hadn’t seen what he had actually done.”
An Australian homicide detective arrived at 1:30 a.m. to formally advise Gutnick and her mother Leah that Reuven had been murdered, and to explain the process for releasing his body back to the family for burial. It was slightly complicated, the detective told them, because this was Australia’s first major terrorist attack. The protocol was still being clarified.
“At this point, pure adrenaline and pure rage was running through my body, that this had actually happened. The fact that it was Bondi and it was my dad,” Gutnick recalled.
Gutnick returned to the apartment her parents owned in Sydney, situated right behind the Chabad of Bondi building, to collect a few things her mother needed. Outside, members of the Sydney Jewish community stood on the footpath alongside news crews and photographers. People on the street were crying.
Inside, Gutnick found her parents’ dog Simba who had come to Sydney with them, hungry and bewildered that he had been left alone since the night before. According to Jewish law, a Hanukkah menorah must be lit by each person in the place where they are spending the night. Reuven Morrison had set his up before leaving for the beach. On the table, it sat exactly where he had placed it, ready, unlit.
All the while, Gutnick’s phone kept ringing, with journalists asking her for comment. She felt, she recalls, like she was floating outside her own body.
“My mum was completely broken. Her world was torn apart; she has been with my dad for 42 years,” she recalled. “Every semblance of normal life was gone, she’s all of a sudden alone, she’s impacted in this way that is not humanely possible to comprehend.”
With dozens of media requests already flooding her phone, Gutnick ignored all of them — until she spotted one that was framed very differently.
The message came through Facebook from a producer at CBS News in the United States on Monday night, more than a day after the massacre, and it changed her life.
“I still hadn’t spoken to any media. They prefaced their message and said that they needed to help tell the world about my dad’s bravery, that they had seen the footage of him throwing a brick at the terrorists and they wanted to publicise it, so everyone knew about him and what he had done,” Gutnick recalled.
She felt compelled to respond: “It hit me so crushingly hard there is no one else to tell my dad’s story but me, so if I don’t do this, no one will hear about him and his bravery.
She messaged back, saying they could come to interview her the next morning. But CBS suggested they come right over immediately, in the middle of the night, so her interview could be aired on American prime time news. At 1 a.m., a full media crew arrived and Gutnick sat in front of lights that made her room feel like it was the middle of the day.
In the hours that followed, she wrote a personal reflection about what she believed her father’s death represented: a direct result of an Australian government that had been weak on antisemitism. After she circulated it, a prominent local Jewish figure whom she did not then know, the former treasurer of Australia, Josh Frydenberg, shared it on X, and it was republished widely. More media requests started flooding in and Gutnick started speaking about her dad.
“I realized how much I have on me to carry on my father’s legacy,” she said.
In between the interviews, she and her husband were on the phone to the Australian coroner and the chevra kadisha, the Jewish burial society, demanding that Australian authorities release her father’s body. A family friend, not knowing when the body would be released, flew his private plane from Melbourne to Sydney, ready to accompany Morrison home the moment his body was released. When that finally happened, a special flyover was arranged with the air controllers in Sydney so that the private plane with Morrison’s body could circle over Bondi Beach, in a final farewell to the place where Morrison had met his wife 42 years earlier.
Nobody who knew Sheina Gutnick Dec. 14 would have predicted what she’s done since. She says wouldn’t have predicted it either.
When Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese initially declined to call a royal commission into the Bondi attack and the broader rise of antisemitism in Australia, Gutnick, alongside other victim families, went to the front page of all of Australia’s major newspapers and called on him to reconsider. After weeks of lobbying, the prime minister relented.
When the royal commission convened, Gutnick was the first witness called to testify.
She described hearing “Free Palestine” shouted on the streets of Melbourne, chants that she said “not political expression but is explicit, targeted hatred and is designed to intimidate.” She recalled fearing the treatment her child would receive while undergoing surgery at a hospital where nurses had been fired after posting a viral video saying they would not treat Israeli patients. And she recounted being called a “f—ing terrorist” by a man she said had pointed at her Star of David necklace.
It was only one of countless stops to share her story. In the last six months, Gutnick has taken dozens of flights to meet with parliaments and groups to speak about her father and about Australian antisemitism. She has written in major national and international newspapers about her father and spoke at the Sydney reception for Israeli President Isaac Herzog.
She and her mother received condolence letters from across Australia and beyond. The one from King Charles, she said, was especially comforting. “He has an excellent team around him clearly, because it was such a beautiful, personalized letter, the one we received,” she said.
Her advocacy has been noticed at some of the highest levels within Australia’s Jewish community. “Sheina Gutnick never sought the public spotlight. She was thrust into it by the horrific murder of her father, and has responded with remarkable courage, dignity and moral clarity,” Jeremy Leibler, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, told JTA. “Her advocacy has resonated because it is authentic.”
Alex Ryvchin, the co-chair of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the peak body for Australian Jews, knew Reuven Morrison for years before he was killed. “He was an outstanding human being and now Australia knows him as a hero who gave his life to save others,” he told JTA. “Sheina honours his memory and legacy and I’m proud to stand with her in the fight against antisemitism.”
Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, the rabbi of Chabad of Bondi, whose son in law Rabbi Eli Schlanger and many close friends and congregants were murdered Bondi Beach also has deep appreciation for Gutnick’s advocacy.
She “emerged as one of the most compelling and eloquent new voices in Australia’s fight against antisemitism, transforming personal tragedy into sustained public advocacy,” he said.
After booking dozens of engagements independently, Gutnick was offered a role as the first public affairs officer of the recently established Australian branch of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, an international advocacy organization.
The group’s supporters argue that CAM is responding to a genuine rise in antisemitism and see it as trying to address problems that existing Jewish groups have failed to solve. They also argue that the group’s efforts to push back against anti-Israel sentiment are justified because anti-Zionism is often used as a vehicle for anti-Jewish prejudice.
CAM has indeed attracted criticism from other Jewish groups and civil liberties advocates who argue that it takes an overly broad approach to antisemitism and too often conflates anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
In Australia, the organization has also faced scrutiny over its political alliances, including relationships with some conservative and right-wing groups, as well as criticism that it imports American culture-war politics into debates about antisemitism.
Gutnick is aware of some of this criticism but isn’t really bothered by it. “Every organization has its controversial moments, so this stuff — it doesn’t really concern me,” she said. “The work CAM is doing now is so relevant in our lives in a post Oct.-7 world and a post-Bondi world,” she said.
In fact, she is grateful for the many connections they have helped her with both in Australia and around the world as well as their extensive research into antisemitism. “They gave me the ability to tell my dad’s story in many public spaces,” she said. “I continuously say, as Jews, we need to know the facts and figures on the ground about antisemitism, and what resolutions and legislation we need to have in place, and as an international org, CAM has the ability to help me do this.”
The royal commission has presented its first recommendations, designed to improve the processes that left the Bondi Hanukkah celebration with inadequate police protection despite the known threats. Soon, it is expected to say more — with a backlash to follow from those who believe that antisemitism is getting outsized attention and who say that efforts to address it will likely inappropriately constraint anti-Israel protest.
Gutnick doesn’t know exactly what the future will hold for her, but she knows that she will never return to where she stood six months ago — a spot that, in retrospect, feels like it may have been on the sidelines of the fight for Jewish security.
“As Jews, we are being faced with so much darkness,” she said. “I have gone through the worst thing — my father was killed for antisemitism — so I have become stronger, wanting to spread the message that no matter what happens, as the Jewish people we are one people, part of one faith, and although it’s terrible, this is something we have faced before.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 6 months after her father was killed at Bondi Beach, Sheina Gutnick has become a leading antisemitism advocate in Australia appeared first on The Forward.
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Discover Your Ultimate Smooth at Sets on Corydon: Nanoplasty vs. Keratin vs. Japanese Straightening
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- The Big Benefit: It is completely permanent on the hair that is treated. Rain, humidity, and workouts will not change it. Only your new root growth will need touching up.
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Jewish groups plan to protest Ben-Gvir’s arrival in NYC. Will he show?
(New York Jewish Week) — Jewish groups are readying for the arrival of Israeli far-right Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir in New York City next week.
Several progressive Jewish organizations have planned a protest at a plaza outside the United Nations, where Israeli media reported that the minister would be attending a conference on policing. Meanwhile, other left-wing groups have planned their own demonstrations and circulated an open letter with thousands of signatures calling for State Attorney General Letitia James to prosecute Ben-Gvir for war crimes upon his arrival.
But it’s unclear whether Ben-Gvir is coming at all.
“To our knowledge, Minister Ben-Gvir is not coming to New York at the moment,” a staffer for the Consulate General of Israel in New York wrote the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an email on Thursday.
Separately, a UN official confirmed to JTA on Thursday that Ben-Gvir was not yet registered for the UN Chiefs of Police Summit, which brings together ministers and law enforcement leaders from around the world. The conference is taking place on July 7 and 8, though it is still possible for him to register in the coming days.
Ben-Gvir, a highly controversial figure in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Cabinet, is the leader of the country’s far-right “Otzma Yehudit,” or “Jewish Power” party. Before he entered the Knesset he was convicted of supporting a terrorist group and other offenses, and since taking office he has advocated for policies such as renewed Jewish settlement in Gaza and has been sanctioned for allegedly “inciting extremist violence” against Palestinians in the West Bank.
Liberal Jewish groups have come out in vocal opposition to the idea of him setting foot in the Big Apple following Haaretz’s initial reporting that Ben-Gvir was coming.
“It’s really important for people, both American Jews and Israelis, to say that extremists like Ben-Gvir aren’t accepted in our community,” Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the progressive rabbinic human rights group T’ruah, told JTA in an interview. “He just doesn’t belong in New York, or in the Israeli government, or espousing his views anywhere in Jewish society,”
T’ruah is co-organizing a protest outside the UN’s summit on Tuesday, along with close to a dozen other liberal Jewish groups. Among them are New York Jewish Agenda, J Street, Israelis for Peace and the Union for Reform Judaism.
Jacobs said she believes the demonstration will be particularly impactful because it’s coming from “people who are not looking to destroy the state, who are not anti-Israel in any way,” but who envision a “place of both Israelis and Palestinians being safe.”
Another planned protest scheduled just hours later at the same plaza is being led by left-wing groups more sharply critical of Israel. Anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace is among the organizations promoting it. Their open letter calling on James to prosecute Ben-Gvir has more than 6,500 signatures.
The last time Ben-Gvir visited New York City, just over a year ago, his presence drew a series of heated protests and counter-protests. A few of them took place in Crown Heights, the neighborhood where he visited 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Chabad Hasidic movement.
He also made pit stops at another Chabad institution and the gravesite of the movement’s late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, as well as at a Midwood kosher restaurant, where he drew a friendlier crowd. A number of other planned events during that trip were canceled the week before.
The same coalition of liberal Jewish groups held a rally last year outside a Wall Street restaurant where Ben-Gvir was speaking. New York Rep. Jerry Nadler introduced legislation during that rally aimed at combating settler violence in the West Bank.
Margo Hughes-Robinson, who’s now the executive director of NYJA, co-emceed last year’s demonstration. She said in an interview on Thursday that she hopes that elected officials attend this year’s and make clear that “what he represents, and his worldview, is anathema to our Jewish values, it’s anathema to the vision of Israel that we support.”
Ben-Gvir was slated to make another trip to the U.S. more recently for a wedding, though he ended up canceling the trip after he was asked to provide his fingerprints in order to obtain a visa.
Unlike during Ben-Gvir’s last visit, New York’s mayor is now an anti-Zionist who has vowed to arrest Netanyahu if he steps foot in Israel due to his outstanding International Criminal Court arrest warrant, even though the US is not a party to the ICC. (There is no reported ICC arrest warrant for Ben-Gvir.) Following the election of Zohran Mamdani, Ben-Gvir described the result as “a moment when antisemitism triumphed over common sense.”
Mamdani’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
A number of local officials spoke out following the most recent appearance of a far-right Israeli minister in New York, condemning finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who attended the Israel Day parade. None have weighed in so far on Ben-Gvir’s possible return next week.
The post Jewish groups plan to protest Ben-Gvir’s arrival in NYC. Will he show? appeared first on The Forward.
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Races to watch: As staunch Israel critics notch wins, these candidates could be next
(JTA) — A wave of left-wing candidates with sharply critical Israel stances have won their Democratic primary this year and are set to head to Congress. Who else of like mind could join them in the coming months?
Several candidates who fit the bill have benefited from the endorsement and vast volunteer infrastructure of the Democratic Socialists of America. Others are simply meeting the moment for the growing number of Democratic voters who think the U.S. government is too supportive of Israel. Meanwhile, some Jewish groups and other critics have been concerned that their campaign rhetoric in this election cycle has at times veered into antisemitism.
Last week’s New York City results showed the power of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s endorsement and alarmed some Jewish leaders who watched as two pro-Israel incumbents lost their seat. Some onlookers questioned whether those victories could be replicated in other parts of the country, but Melat Kiros’ decisive win in Tuesday’s Colorado Democratic congressional primary for a district representing Denver answered the question with a resounding yes.
With just over two months left in the primaries, here are the upcoming races featuring left-wing insurgents whose results may hinge, at least in part, on sentiment toward Israel, Zionism and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group.
Arizona: 4th Congressional District (July 21)
Democratic Rep. Greg Stanton is facing a primary challenge from activist Kai Newkirk in Arizona’s 4th District, which covers parts of Phoenix and Maricopa County.
Stanton, who took office in 2018, is pro-Israel and has picked up the endorsement of AIPAC — support that Newkirk, whose activism has largely focused on campaign-finance reform, has blasted.
Newkirk’s platform includes imposing a complete arms embargo on Israel and ending all military subsidies to the Jewish state, which he accuses of committing genocide. He identifies as a democratic socialist (though he’s not endorsed by the DSA), and is backed by a number of progressive organizations, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ group Our Revolution and Track AIPAC.
“Kai is Israel Free and has fought to get money out of politics his whole life,” wrote Cenk Uygur, the host of the Young Turks, who has spread conspiracy theories about Israel.
Newkirk spoke out against last year’s killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. “I stand always with my beloved Jewish siblings against the scourge of antisemitism just as I will never stop in the nonviolent struggle to end the genocide in Gaza, release all hostages, and open the way to just, lasting peace,” he wrote.
Missouri: 1st Congressional District (Aug. 4)
Former Missouri Rep. Cori Bush is running for Congress in St. Louis again, two years after AIPAC’s super PAC poured millions into her race to oust the former “Squad” member from the House. Bush, who was first elected to Congress in 2020, will now take on Wesley Bell for the second time in the Democratic primary.
Bush, who supports the movement to boycott Israel, has alarmed a number of Jewish leaders in St. Louis over her positions on Israel.
She has expressed reluctance about calling Hamas a terrorist group, saying in a 2024 interview that racial justice protesters in Ferguson were also called terrorists. Bush was one of two members of Congress to vote against a measure to deny entry into the United States to Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 massacre.
Her opponent, Bell, a supporter of the U.S.-Israel relationship, has the backing of a number of Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including AIPAC, the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, as well as the Congressional Black Caucus.
Bush, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, former New York Rep. Jamaal Bowman — who was ousted the same year as Bush in a race with heavy spending by AIPAC — St. Louis’ DSA chapter and the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace.
Missouri: 4th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
Tenant organizer and radio host Hartzell Gray is running with the DSA’s backing in a Democratic primary in hopes of supplanting AIPAC-backed GOP congressman Mark Alford in the November general election in a solidly Republican district that includes some of Kansas City and its suburbs.
During a recent interview with Hasan Piker, Gray said that American elected officials, including Alford, are “catering to Israel, not to our folks here at home,” and broke down his views on the issue that he called “very much at the core of who I am.”
“I’m very honest. Listen, Israel’s apartheid ethnostate has been committing genocide to Palestinian people since before the Nakba,” Gray said. “They’re committing ethnic cleansing in Lebanon as we speak. We should be ending all ties — all diplomatic ties — with Israel.”
Gray had raised close to $170,000 as of March 31, according to FEC filings, by far the most of the seven Democrats in the running (none of whom are elected officials).
Michigan: U.S. Senate (Aug. 4)
The race for an open U.S. Senate seat between former county health executive Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, Rep. Haley Stevens and the trailing State Sen. Mallory McMorrow has been one of the country’s most closely watched primaries, with Israel and AIPAC at its center.
A physician and former public health official, El-Sayed, who led Stevens by 5 percentage points in the latest poll, has made Medicare for all a core plank of his campaign.
He is also a staunchly pro-Palestinian candidate who’s campaigned alongside fellow hardline Israel critic Hasan Piker. A number of major left-wing figures are backing El-Sayed, including Sanders and a handful of Congress’ most outspoken pro-Palestinian members, such as Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and California Rep. Ro Khanna. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added her endorsement on Thursday.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has spent more than $2 million on ads boosting Stevens, who describes herself as a “proud pro-Israel Democrat.”
In a recent interview with Semafor, El-Sayed called Stevens “a suit with a large AIPAC bank account,” adding that he hopes AIPAC finds “some way to teach her how to string together two coherent sentences.”
Following the attempted attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, earlier this year, El-Sayed drew criticism from some Jewish leaders — including the synagogue’s rabbi — for releasing lengthy remarks that discussed Israel’s war in Lebanon, after initially condemning antisemitism in a statement.
Michigan: 13th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
State Rep. Donavan McKinney could be the next to join the wave of DSA-backed insurgents heading to Congress. He has the backing of major democratic socialists Sanders and Tlaib, as well as Metro Detroit DSA.
Unlike many DSA congressional candidates, McKinney has not made Israel or Gaza a primary focus of his campaign. On his campaign website, AIPAC is not mentioned by name in the section on “getting big money out of politics,” and Israel is not cited in the foreign policy section.
PAL PAC, an anti-AIPAC pro-Palestinian organization, endorsed McKinney. He thanked the group and said that his policies “reflect the growing majority of Americans who want to end US tax funding of weapons to Israel to destroy Palestinian communities, and instead invest resources back into American working families.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar, the incumbent looking to stave off McKinney, is backed by pro-Israel groups AIPAC and DMFl, and has supported military aid to Israel since joining Congress in 2023.
AIPAC mobilized against Thanedar when he ran in 2022 because of legislation he once co-sponsored in the Michigan House that described Israel as an “apartheid state” and urged Congress to end U.S. aid to Israel. Thanedar later walked back his legislation, telling Jewish Insider that it had been an “emotional reaction” to the 2021 conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and that he would support Israel in Congress.
Michigan: 7th Congressional District (Aug. 4)
A Democratic primary between three major candidates is unfolding in a swing district in Michigan, with its winner hoping to unseat Republican Rep. Tom Barrett in November.
William Lawrence, 35, is occupying the race’s left lane, with endorsements from Sanders, Khanna and Tlaib. He co-founded Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy organization, in 2015. (The group, which he left in 2020, has since become increasingly vocal in advocating for Palestinians.)
Lawrence is facing off against retired Navy SEAL Matt Maasdam and former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink, who’s said she resigned because Trump “kept siding” with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.
At a candidates’ forum in June, Lawrence was the only participant to refer to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as genocide. Lawrence opposes weapons sales and American military aid to Israel. Though not endorsed by the DSA, Lawrence is a member of the left-wing group.
Wisconsin: Governor (Aug. 11)
In the crowded Democratic primary for Wisconsin’s open gubernatorial seat — a seat that is seen as winnable by either party in November — state Rep. Francesca Hong has established herself as the left-wing candidate, with backing from two DSA chapters in the state.
She introduced statewide legislation earlier this year that would repeal a 2018 law banning state contracts with businesses that boycott Israel. In March, Hong criticized outgoing Gov. Tom Evers after he signed into law the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Progressives have criticized the definition for characterizing some criticism of Israel as antisemitism. Hong wrote that adopting it “will compromise free speech across the state and academic freedom at our universities.”
She recently appeared on both Hasan Piker’s show and on the stream hosted by Michael Beyer, an influencer known as “Mike from PA” who came under fire after saying that Jewish identity is “a constructed ethnicity, this demonic ethnicity, wholly invented.”
“If Wisconsin is going to be a state that actually values human rights, then we have to ensure that we’re supporting, we’re fighting for the pro-Palestine movement,” Hong said on Beyer’s show.
The race’s most recent polling, conducted in March, had Hong leading with 14% of votes ahead of former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, at 11%. Sixty-five percent of voters were undecided.
Florida: 25th Congressional District (Aug. 18)
Oliver Larkin, a 34-year-old democratic socialist, has made an effort to compare himself to Zohran Mamdani.
Larkin is up against the staunchly pro-Israel, AIPAC-backed Rep. Jared Moskowitz in the district that includes Fort Lauderdale and Boca Raton. Larkin is being backed by DSA and advocates for the suspension of U.S. military aid to Israel, which he accuses of committing genocide. His platform also includes the right of return for Palestinian refugees.
Now, some of the energy generated by the Mamdani-backed candidates’ success in New York appears to be lifting Larkin’s candidacy: His campaign reportedly raised $115,000 in the week after the New York primaries.
In an appearance on Piker’s show, Larkin differentiated his policies on Israel from those of Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, the anti-Israel, fringe GOP candidate who has courted the online far right.
“The key difference is that when we talk about banning U.S. military aid to Israel, banning U.S. colleges and government from investing in Israel bonds, we’re talking about universal economic benefits,” Larkin said, meaning those tax dollars would go toward domestic programs for all.
November’s general election for the recently redistricted seat is seen as a toss-up. Should Larkin win the primary, his candidacy could serve as a test of how left-wing candidates fare in swing seats as opposed to moderate Democrats.
A recent poll showed Moskowitz with a 32-point lead; 72% of voters were unfamiliar or had no opinion of Larkin.
Massachusetts: 4th Congressional District (Sept. 1)
Rep. Jake Auchincloss, another staunchly pro-Israel Democrat, is facing a primary challenge from AI and policy researcher Jason Poulos.
Poulos’ platform calls to end U.S. support for Israel by signing onto legislation like the Block the Bombs Act and Tlaib’s bill stating that Israel is committing genocide. He also calls for AIPAC and DMFI to register as foreign lobbying groups.
Poulos told the Newton Beacon that Israel was an animating force in his entrance into politics.
“What really was radicalizing for me was watching the United States send tens of billions of dollars in military arms to Israel and watch them participate actively in the genocide of the Palestinian people,” Poulos said. He also said that he sided with the campus pro-Palestinian encampments in 2024 and their aim of lobbying the schools to divest from Israel.
Poulos has slammed Auchincloss for his endorsement from AIPAC. At a recent town hall, Auchincloss said it “concerns” him that there are numerous lobbying groups influencing politics, but only “one group of people get pummeled above all others.”
The next day, Poulos called Auchincloss “comically out-of-touch.”
“The reason why AIPAC is singled out is because it has already poured nearly $50m into congressional races nationwide, is bankrolled by MAGA mega-donors, and is in lockstep with the foreign policy interests of a foreign gov’t,” he wrote.
The post Races to watch: As staunch Israel critics notch wins, these candidates could be next appeared first on The Forward.
