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A Jewish-Muslim art show builds ‘little bridges’ of coexistence
Hannah Finkelshteyn and Aakef Khan spent a lot of time in the same building even before they met. Khan’s filmmaking classes at Rutgers’ Mason Gross School of the Arts often met on the same floor where Finkelshteyn, a drawing major, had her studio.
But their paths wouldn’t cross in earnest until after Oct. 7 — when they would become unlikely friends and later co-curators of an exhibition bringing together Jewish and Muslim artists. The result is “Open Archways: by the light of the same moon,” opening Thursday at the Bowery Art Collective in Metuchen, New Jersey.
Finkelshteyn, 23, was born in Brooklyn and raised in East Brunswick, New Jersey, in the Modern Orthodox community, attending Jewish schools up until college.
“Oct. 7 and the reaction to Oct. 7 completely shifted my entire experience of college and my ability to learn and my ability to be a part of the Rutgers community,” she told me at a coffee shop in Manhattan. She and Khan took the train into the city together when we met before Thanksgiving.
The first several days after the attacks went by in a haze, Finkelshteyn recalled. She scrolled through articles, and texted and called her many family members and friends in Israel, where she spent a gap year, to ask, “Are you okay?” and “Are you alive?”
“Grief was palpable” among the Jewish community on campus, she said. But as the days went by, she became increasingly aware of responses and social media posts from other classmates that left her feeling confused and isolated. She even dropped a small group course in part because of what she saw her peers saying online.
“I can’t be sitting here being terrified for my family while this person who’s sitting across from me thinks Oct. 7 was a good thing,” Finkelshteyn said.
The only one in that room who she felt she could have an actual conversation with was a Palestinian classmate. “I asked her if her family was okay, and she asked if my family was okay,” she said. “And we both talked about just not being able to focus on anything.”
Finkelshteyn, who graduated last spring, wanted to talk and to listen, to understand and be understood. But there didn’t seem to be a space for that on campus — until a friend of her then-boyfriend (now husband) suggested they start an “Open Dialogue Table” like one he’d seen elsewhere.
The three of them, along with other like-minded students, began setting up a table on campus in shifts with a sign inviting passersby to come talk about Israel and more. “Once a week, every week, we sat at this table, and we had conversations. And honestly, it made things feel a lot less foggy,” she said.
One day, Khan came over and sat down.
Becoming friends and co-curators
Raised in a religious Muslim family of Pakistani descent, Khan, 22, went to public school during the week and to Saturday school at the mosque in South Brunswick, New Jersey, where he grew up. He first heard news not about the Hamas attacks on the Gaza envelope, he said, but about Israel cutting off water and electricity to Gaza. He and Finkelshteyn were on the same campus, but ensconced in their own communities and vastly different news ecosystems. Khan’s conversations and group chats afterward were full of talk about boycotts and encampments.
“It felt like a big gray cloud was over Rutgers for months,” Khan, who is currently a senior, told me. But as someone who had always felt the urge to ask, “Why?” and challenge his own beliefs, he said he found it unsettling to be surrounded by only one slice of opinions. So he began actively searching for others. “I was looking for a place to feel like I can belong and speak without feeling like I had to censor myself,” he said.
“I need to stand somewhere where I can see both perspectives,” he said he realized, which led him through the doors of Hillel and steered him toward the Open Dialogue Table.
When Khan first sat down, he started chatting with Finkelshteyn’s boyfriend, who quickly made the connection that both Khan and Finkelshteyn were art students. And then the two artists were off, chatting about filmmakers and LiDAR camera technology.
“It started with me trying to be like, ‘All right, like, what is up with Israel?’” Khan said. “But it ended up being, ‘Wow, I just made two new friends.’ And I think once I started to look at it that way, things became a lot less scary.”
He began carving time out to go to Shabbat dinners. It was uncomfortable at first to walk into such an explicitly Jewish space, Khan recalled, but it helped to hear Finkelshteyn or her boyfriend shout his name from across the room and enthusiastically motion him over to sit with them and meet their friends.
Khan and Finkelshteyn kept talking — about art, religion, language, community and current events. “Once we can talk about other things that we’re passionate about, now we can sort of hear each other out on Israel-Palestine and all those things, and be willing to see each other’s perspectives as valid, even if ultimately we don’t align,” Khan said.
They became artistic collaborators and genuine friends. “I never expected that I would invite someone I met at the Open Dialogue Table to my wedding,” said Finkelshteyn, who got married this past summer. But she did, and Khan came out to celebrate the special day — his first Jewish wedding — with his new friends.
In the months since, Khan and Finkelshteyn have been hard at work pulling together a larger group of Jewish and Muslim artists around them from Rutgers and beyond to meet, talk, create and show their work together.
“Open Archways” is their small way of trying to lift the heavy fog of tension and misunderstanding that marked their college experiences post-Oct. 7. “I believe that starts with grassroots work like this of creating spaces where Muslim and Jewish people can intermingle and create friendships,” Khan said. “They may not agree on everything, but at least they can see the other side as human.”
Living ‘by the light of the same moon’
Khalid Khashoggi has always had Jewish friends, he said. He was born in Beirut in 1965, but hasn’t returned to Lebanon since he was 10, when the civil war broke out and his family left for Europe.
At the English and Swiss boarding schools he attended, he found it easier to bond with Jewish students than the other boys. Reflecting back decades later, he said he thinks it’s because “there is more in common between Jewish and Muslim/Arab cultures than with any Anglo-Saxon culture.” He’s remained close ever since with two of those friends, who he said treated him like a brother.
“I just want other members of my culture to experience that warmth,” Khashoggi, who moved to the U.S. for college and settled here afterward, told me on a video call. He’s been running an SAT prep school for 25 years and, more recently, working with young artists and curators as founder and director of the Bowery Art Collective. The latter began right before the pandemic, when Khashoggi noticed all the art portfolios the test prep students were carrying around and suggested they use the school’s space to have an exhibition.
When the war threatened to make connections like his boarding school friendships all the more improbable, and as he witnessed “scary” incidents of antisemitism that were more “mean and violent” than he’d ever seen before, he came up with the idea of a joint exhibition.
“I could tell that both sides were getting pushed apart,” he said, recoiling at the idea of being placed in a stance of immutable opposition against people he considered friends. As he put it: “Don’t tell us who we need to hate.”
“Let’s use the magic of art to reconnect these communities, even if it’s just 10 people,” he said. “There’s no way we can solve the world’s problems,” he added. “But at least if we can make some friends while we’re doing this — across two communities that have been told not to be friends — then that would be great.”
“There’s nothing like friendship to dispel stereotypes,” Khashoggi said.
He and Arianna Astuni, his co-CEO at the test-prep company and BAC’s executive director, quickly found Finkelshteyn, at the recommendation of another student who’d worked with BAC. She was in, without hesitation. But their first call for a Muslim co-curator was met with a lot of opinions and no applications.
“We got some backlash at first,” Astuni told me on a joint video call with Khashoggi. “People get so caught up in the largeness of political issues, and then they’re yelling large things that they really don’t know and they really couldn’t possibly feel.”
For Astuni, who said she was used to watching connections being cultivated in their small gallery and community, the response was surprising. And for her longtime test prep and art collective colleague, it was dispiriting.
“I remember having conversations with friends and saying, I don’t know. I think I’m insane,” Khashoggi said. “Everyone’s telling me that what I’m trying to do is not doable. Or they would be like, yeah, it’s a beautiful idea, but it’s just not the time to do that. It’s not the time to normalize relationships.”
Instead of giving up or waiting for some elusive right time in the distant future, they reworked the ad for a Muslim curator and tried again. This time, applications came in for them to consider. Among them was one from Khan, whom Finkelshteyn had encouraged to submit.
Ultimately, Khashoggi felt, “Aakef was the best applicant. It also helped that he had worked with Hannah before, and knew her, and they had a good dynamic,” he said. “That was really important.”
Together, Finkelshteyn and Khan came up with the exhibition’s subtitle: “by the light of the same moon.” In an environment that tends to emphasize only the differences and tensions between the Muslim and Jewish communities, they wanted to speak honestly about the difficulties while also illuminating points of intersection and understanding.
One of those intersections is the lunar calendar, which both religions follow. “The moon governs when we fast,” Khan said, and determines when Jews and Muslims celebrate holidays and perform certain rituals. More than that, Finkelshteyn added, “it’s something that Muslims and Jews have in common that general American culture does not.”
“The waxing and waning of the moon has welcomed Ramadans and Yom Kippurs, Mawlids and Passover Seders. Its cycle has determined which day we gather in the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah, and which nights we fill the mosque for Taraweeh,” reads the exhibition description they developed. The artists, it says, are exploring “the intersections between Muslim and Jewish culture that begin with the use of the moon as our clock.”
Showing up
“Open Archways” isn’t like most exhibitions, in part because it brings together supposed arch-enemies. That presented a challenge, even among artists interested in interfaith collaborations. “People get worried like, ‘Oh, is there a specific political agenda? If I sign up for this, am I signing my name next to a certain thing that I don’t want to sign my name next to?’” Finkelshteyn said.
But the project veers from a more typical format in other ways, too. Group shows often come together behind the scenes, with curators putting out a call, artists submitting pre-existing work and the selected pieces being presented side-by-side without their creators ever speaking, save for maybe a quick hello at the opening reception. Here, the goal was to facilitate artist meetups as a fundamental part of the process and for these interactions to build little bridges across communities and help inspire the work on display. In practical terms, this meant artists had to be willing to engage and able to make the time commitment.
The curators ultimately assembled a group of 15 Muslim and Jewish artists with diverse religious and geographic backgrounds. The Muslim artists have roots in Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Syria, Burma and Bangladesh, and their Jewish counterparts in Poland, Austria, Romania, Russia, Azerbaijan, Yemen, Israel and more.
They met as a group twice this fall, first in October at the BAC space in Metuchen with a structured agenda — Khan and Finkelshteyn had everyone sit in a circle, introduce themselves, and share something about their culture that they love, before letting everyone mingle and explore the gallery. The second meetup, at a non-alcoholic “anti-bar” and cafe in the East Village in November, was a little more casual, and allowed the conversations about identity, religion, diaspora, gender and art to expand.
“A lot of it was really oriented around, like, what has your experience been? What is your identity to you? What does it mean?” Miki Belenkov, a participating artist, told me on a video call. One of the themes that emerged in the discussion, they recalled, was around “how do we balance our deep emotional and historical connections to these identities, while also navigating being modern people.”
Belenkov, 28, a queer Jewish artist and art therapist in New York City whose parents were refugees from the Soviet Union — their father is from Muslim-majority Azerbaijan — was raised on ideas of “coexistence and mutual respect and appreciation and sharing of traditions,” they said. “It was exciting to see that here there are people trying to build conversation and space for Muslim and Jewish artists.”
After Oct. 7, which happened while Belenkov was in grad school, “I had to make entirely new friends,” they said. “Pretty much just everyone that I had built a community with did not see me as a community member anymore, because of my identity.” They’ve since focused on attending events that “create joy” and forming “community connections with equally peace-loving people.”
Their large-scale textile work in the exhibition, a tablecloth, references both the struggles of the last couple years — including mezuzahs stolen off doorposts and formerly close friends who’ve blocked them on Instagram — but also focuses on “being able to come together in the midst of all of this and still find joy and light.”
Another Jewish artist, Micah Steinerman, 22, is a senior at Rutgers studying drawing and animation whose family’s roots are in Eastern Europe and Yemen. He created a small triptych depicting the holy sites of Jerusalem, foregrounded by a blossoming fruit tree in the center. This is flanked by smaller canvases on either side: One says shalom, as in peace, and the other adapts a quote from his namesake book in the Bible: “Every person will sit under their own fruit tree, and no one will make them afraid.”
But perhaps the highlight of his experience was a collaboration with Khashoggi that melded Arabic and Hebrew calligraphy. “I had become more closed off about my Jewish identity,” he told me on Zoom. Over the course of several sessions with Khashoggi, who taught him some Arabic and oil painting basics, he realized they both related to “having to feel hidden.”
“The painting experience with Micah reconnected me to my own religion, my own culture, my own language. It was something I’d shoved in a box” after leaving Lebanon as a kid, Khashoggi said. “Micah said, ‘Hey, no, let me look in that box, it’s cool.’” That genuine display of interest by someone from another culture, he said, was “healing.”
Building little bridges
On a recent tour to pick up everyone’s finished artwork for installation, Khashoggi was heartened to see a small sign of the project’s success. One of the Muslim artists came along to assist with pickup, and Khashoggi watched as she greeted one of her Jewish colleagues. You can see “the strength of the connection from the way they hug each other,” Khashoggi said.
“I don’t imagine all of a sudden that all Arabs and Muslims and Jews around the world will start hugging each other the way our artists are,” he said. Still, he said, “we have 15 little bridges that we built.”
Khashoggi’s hope, he said, is that “one or two of the people coming to visit will have the wherewithal, the influence, to allow us to open up another show;” he dreams of another “Open Archways” in New York or Paris or Tel Aviv that would expand the circle of Muslim and Jewish artists who are meeting, talking and collaborating.
The BAC gallery where the exhibition is currently installed is dotted with couches and chairs. On opening night, there will be tea and other refreshments and, the curators hope, an opportunity for people to start conversations — maybe a little bit like the one Finkelshteyn and Khan had at the Open Dialogue Table. The art might help.
“You’re looking at the same thing, and you can talk about that thing,” Finkelshteyn said. “I hope there are a few people who come to this exhibit, who come to this reception, or even who just hear about this reception, and think, ‘Oh, people can talk to each other.’”
That doesn’t mean they’ll always be on the same page. She and Khan aren’t, and they said that was scary at first, as they navigated their fledgling friendship. The first time they didn’t agree, Khan recalled, “it felt like the whole place was burning down.” But they soon realized they can still talk and be friends, while also disagreeing.
They, along with Khashoggi, Astuni, and the participating artists, appear clear-eyed about the scale of change this one show is likely to make. But that micro-movement in the right direction seems to be exhilarating to them all the same.
Ali Saracoglu, 30, a New York City–based Muslim artist who moved to the U.S. from Turkey, put it most poetically. “When we check the news, it doesn’t look good,” said Saracoglu, who works in Ebru art, a traditional Turkish form of paper marbling. “In those moments, I remind myself, for a room to be dark, darkness needs to surround everywhere. But if light finds a tiny crack to come in, that’s usually good enough to illuminate the whole room.”
“This exhibit,” he said, “is a step toward finding that crack, or opening that crack ourselves, for the light to come in.”
The post A Jewish-Muslim art show builds ‘little bridges’ of coexistence appeared first on The Forward.
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Boston suburb votes to divest from Israel
(JTA) — SOMERVILLE, Mass. — The City Council in this city north of Boston voted 10-1 Thursday night to ban the municipality from doing business with companies complicit in humanitarian violations, specifically naming those operating in “Israel and Palestine.”
Councilor Kristen Strezo cast the only opposing vote on the 11-member board.
Opponents of the ordinance fear that in execution it would be akin to a boycott of Israel, and as such would create a negative environment for the city’s Jewish and Israeli residents. The ban only involves companies that work with the municipality and does not impact companies that operate privately in Somerville. It also excludes sole proprietors (individuals operating as companies).
Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson’s office said given that the ordinance passed with a veto-proof majority, the measure is now considered final.
The ordinance was originally introduced in June by Councilors Ben Ewen-Campen and Ben Wheeler, after the City Council voted in November 2025 to implement ballot Question 3 on Israel divestment, which had been approved by 55.7% of voters earlier that month. Question 3 spoke of banning businesses that sustain “Israel’s apartheid, genocide, and illegal occupation of Palestine.”
During his campaign in 2025, Wilson did not endorse Question 3.
Nine councilors on Thursday night offered comments in advance of the vote.
Ewen-Campen, who wrote and revised the ordinance along with Wheeler, spoke about the importance of a Massachusetts city passing an ordinance about a country across the world, especially at a time when the federal government has clamped down on pro-Palestinian student protesters, noting two incidents of protesters being detained by ICE allegedly for speaking against Israel.
“I think the reason that people want us to be quiet about it is because when you do talk about it, there is just no way to justify it,” Ewen-Campen said.
“I am not under any illusion that Somerville is going to have some enormous impact on the world [by passing this ordinance], but I do think that all of us collectively deciding to be silent about this does have an impact on the world,” he said. “That is why I think it is worth it to have taken this action, and that is why I have asked for all of your support tonight.”
Strezo invoked the Holocaust to explain why she considered the ban antisemitic, referring to Kristallnacht, the Nov. 9-10, 1938, pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria.
“A few years before Kristallnacht, the Nazis worked to deter the public from shopping at Jewish businesses,” she said. “Their efforts started in moments like tonight.” On behalf of her Jewish community, Strezo emphasized that the ordinance “makes us feel targeted. It makes us feel unsafe. It makes us feel unwelcome.”
As she spoke, members of the group Somerville for Palestine (S4P), who had gathered outside City Hall for a rally in advance of and throughout the meeting, could be heard through the window, the chanting getting increasingly louder until the words were clearly audible over Strezo’s speech: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
“This ordinance will do nothing to solve the real conflict in the Middle East,” Strezo said. “What it will do and has been doing is make Jewish people and Israelis feel less welcome in our city spaces.”
One councilor pointed out that the ordinance, while worth passing, was not what she’d hoped. Councilor Emily Hardt said, “Supporting Palestinian human rights and standing firmly against antisemitism are not contradictory positions. I believe that both are essential to our commitment to human dignity.” She went on to say that she would have preferred an ordinance that was focused on the actions of the U.S. government, “our government,” but given that this was the ordinance up for the vote, she would support it. “I appreciate the attempts to align use of our resources with our commitments to the rights and dignity of all people, in Israel and Palestine and around the world,” she said.
When the vote was finalized, members of the group Somerville for Palestine and other supporters of the ordinance, many wearing keffiyehs, stood up and cheered as they left the chamber. Shalom Somerville members and others opposing the ordinance, many of whom wore white shirts with blue square pins and had stickers with “I’m not welcome here” on their chests, stood silently as most of the room emptied.
“It’s disappointing seeing councilors knowingly abdicating their responsibility,” said Sam Gechter, president of Shalom Somerville, the local community group that has been active in opposing both the 2025 ballot question and the ordinance. “[Mayor Wilson] made several promises that he would veto it during the campaign. He said he would veto anything that named a country, so we would love to see him do that.”
“It feels so clear that this is what the majority want given that ten of our councilors voted yes,” said Mo Katz-Christy, a member of S4P’s leadership and Jewish Caucus. S4P was a major advocate for the original ballot Question 3 and worked with Councilor Ewen-Campen on the ordinance.
“They passed a strong ordinance that named Israel and Palestine, that named the genocide,” Katz-Christy said, as the S4P group played music in celebration behind them. “It’s targeting companies that are really bad actors.”
Under the ordinance, any vendor who is submitting a bid for the city’s business would have to certify it meets the criteria outlined in the ordinance. If their certification is contested, the city will consult the findings of a number of international organizations and lists, including the database of business enterprises maintained by the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the divestment short-list database maintained by the American Friends Service Committee’s Investigate Project. The ordinance specifies that a company could be excluded from this prohibition should the director of finance deem that their services “are essential to the operation of the city, including by avoiding a significant financial burden.”
In the final Legislative Matters Committee meeting discussing the ordinance on Oct. 27, chief procurement officer Angela Allen, echoing the earlier sentiments of City Solicitor Cindy Amara, expressed concerns that the ordinance “would likely not sustain a legal challenge.” She noted that the city does not have the legal authority to debar bidders (prospective vendors) and that she was unsure who would be responsible for making the final call on whether or not a company met the criteria in the ordinance.
“This adds another layer of complexity that I am concerned, from a practical standpoint, could cause confusion and delay that would not be in the best interest of the city,” she said.
The vote came after several rounds of negotiations in the city’s Legislative Matters Committee, during which councilors debated the ethical and financial merits of the ordinance. The final ordinance that was voted on included updates in language that specified the companies that would be included in the ban must be “directly, knowingly and consistently” enabling or facilitating violations of humanitarian law, including in “Israel and Palestine.”
Longtime Somerville resident and Shalom Somerville member Kate Auspitz, who was present at the meeting, said, “I will never vote for any of them [city councilors] again except for Kristen Strezo… I do think it’s antisemitic, whatever they say. I think it’s denying Jews self-determination.”
Outside, in line to enter the City Council chambers, Willie Burnley Jr., a member of Boston Democratic Socialists of America who ran for mayor against Wilson last year and supported ballot Question 3, said: “I’m here to support my neighbors who are fighting for a better world, who are trying to get their city councilors to fight for the will of the people.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries calls for ‘dramatic change’ in Israel policy
(JTA) — U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat poised to become the chamber’s speaker in January, called for a significant shift in the U.S.-Israel relationship but stopped short of opposing defense partnerships.
“The status quo is unacceptable, and we need dramatic change,” Jeffries told reporters at a Thursday press conference.
Jeffries expressed a need for such change with respect to the West Bank, to Gaza and to a memorandum of understanding with Israel over military aid set to expire in 2028. That agreement, signed by the Obama administration in 2016, pledged $38 billion in military aid for Israel from fiscal years 2019 through 2028.
President Donald Trump has said he will wind the aid down before it is set to lapse, citing Israel’s unpopularity, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also backs ending military aid and replacing it by strengthening U.S.-Israel military cooperation.
But when asked about recent demands from Sen. Chris Van Hollen to remove provisions on defense collaborations with Israel from the National Defense Authorization Act – the model of what Netanyahu hopes to sustain – Jeffries responded that he hadn’t spoken with the senator. Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, plans to challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer leadership of the Senate Democratic caucus when Democrats take over the chamber in January.
Instead, Jeffries said that “things have to dramatically change over in the Middle East,” without elaborating on the details of such changes. He stressed the importance of ensuring “a safe and secure Israel living side by side as a Jewish and democratic state with an independent Palestinian state that provides dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people.” Netanyahu and much of the Israeli public oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.
While Jeffries noted that he wasn’t saying anything he hasn’t “previously said publicly,” his decision to reiterate this need for change following the election as Democrats are set to seize control of Congress demonstrates how the party is adopting a more critical posture on Israel.
This past summer, Jeffries wrote to colleagues urging them to reject an amendment proposed by Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, that would have cut military aid to Israel. While a slight majority of Democrats voted in favor of the measure, it was defeated after getting no Republican support aside from its sponsor.
Jeffries had argued at the time that “there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government,” warning that Massie’s amendment would have restricted Israel’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups.
Nonetheless, Jeffries also noted in the letter that the Obama-era memorandum of understanding “expires imminently,” and that “a meaningful change in direction is needed.” Writing that Israel has a robust economy and is capable of paying for its own weapons, he said that future security arrangements “should be structured consistently with defense agreements that exist with our other Western allies.”
Since writing that letter in July in the lead-up to the midterm elections, Jeffries focused primarily on domestic issues and didn’t often address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Thursday, however, the topic was back on the table.
“We’ll work as a caucus to make sure that we can bring about the just and lasting peace that Israelis and Palestinians deserve,” Jeffries said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries calls for ‘dramatic change’ in Israel policy appeared first on The Forward.
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Ahmed Moor, John Fetterman’s first challenger, envisions ‘Palestine-Israel, from the river to the sea’
(JTA) — When Ahmed Moor started his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, he remembers navigating an atmosphere of Islamophobia around the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11.
He recounted how as he was exiting a derelict math building known for what Moor described as its “dungeon-like” interior, he overheard a kippa-clad student commenting on the grossness of the neighborhood, noting that “it’s not like Ramallah or anything.”
“It was a tough environment,” Moor said, recalling that during a campus protest in 2003 against the Iraq war, he was met with “Go home, terrorist” and other such slogans. “You kind of build a muscle around that early on.”
More than two decades later, the 42-year-old Palestinian American writer is now Pennsylvania’s first candidate to announce a 2028 bid for Democrat John Fetterman’s U.S. Senate seat – running on a platform of dignity, equal rights and affordability.
Though still two years away, this high-stakes race could change how much support Israel gets from the Democratic Party. Fetterman, who hasn’t declared if he will run again, has irked many fellow Democrats by joining Republicans on certain issues, particularly in defending Israel, but has also maintained a powerful voice in a caucus that has held just 47 seats for the past two years. But that influence may soon dissipate, with the Democratic caucus poised to have at least 55 out of 100 seats when Congress convenes in January.
Regardless of whether Fetterman chooses to run, for Moor – a Democratic Socialists of America member from Philadelphia – to secure the seat would require a dramatic shift in voter trends across purplish Pennsylvania.
Moor enters the playing field with radically different stances on Israel and foreign policy from those that Fetterman has espoused. Moor’s priorities include stopping the funding of wars and trimming the military’s budget in general, as well as many domestic issues that Fetterman has historically supported, such as universal healthcare and childcare and affordable housing.
“The DSA presents a really good opportunity for the Democratic Party to re-energize, reinvent itself,” Moor said, describing the DSA as “a blood transfusion.”
An avowed anti-Zionist, Moor wants economic sanctions against Israel and to hold the country’s leaders accountable for what he alleges are war crimes. Ultimately, he said he hopes to see the development of one “Palestine-Israel” state that has equal rights for all — a dream that he said is rooted in American principles of emancipation.
Born in Gaza, Moor moved to Philadelphia as a child and went on to earn degrees from both Penn and Harvard, and started a career in finance. He then switched to journalism, reporting in Beirut and Egypt for The Guardian and other outlets, and co-editing the book “After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine.” He also spent many years in Jordan, where he launched a peer-to-peer lending organization, before returning to Philadelphia in 2021.
Looking back at his years as a college student, Moor recalled experiencing some “ambivalence about being an American, the promise of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, the equality before the law,” particularly while he felt like people viewed him as an outsider.
But he said that things began to look up when he joined the Free Palestine Action Network, a fledgling campus group that existed before Students for Justice in Palestine.
Turning to the situation in the Middle East today, Moor said he still has family members in Gaza, as well as some in the West Bank. Many of his relatives in Gaza, he added, were killed during the war.
He noted that his aunt “was diagnosed with cancer and died a very painful death shortly after that because the hospital itself was destroyed.”
In the future, Moor said he would envision “all of Palestine-Israel, from the river to the sea” as one state with equal rights for “Jews, Palestinians, Druze” and everyone else, including “all of the East Asians who work there, who built lives there.” Lebanese areas currently under Israeli military occupation would go back to Lebanon, while the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, would go back to Syria, he added.
The leaders of this hypothetical state, according to Moor, would need “to represent everyone who lives under its authority,” with the Knesset legislating laws, the military serving all the people and Palestinians earning a right of return.
Moor compared the current phase of this conflict to mile 15 of a marathon: “Every footfall from here to the finish, 11 more miles, is painful.” Crossing the finish line, he argued, will require “the emancipation of the Palestinians, the right-sizing of our understanding of equal rights, where Jews don’t have superior rights in that country.”
Whether Moor’s Middle East positions will resonate with Pennsylvania voters when they choose their next senator in 2028 remains uncertain.
“If we look at the surveys leading up to the election, that issue didn’t come up a great deal,” Berwood Yost, a public policy expert at Franklin & Marshall College, told JTA. “It was the concerns about personal finances and economics and affordability that were largely driving voters.”
Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told JTA that although the conflict is “highly evocative and emotive,” his polls have shown that “relatively few voters rank it as an important issue,” except in deep blue Philadelphia.
Yet even if the conflict doesn’t have a direct influence on most voters, Hopkins said that its divisiveness helps candidates distinguish themselves from rivals. For example, he continued, a stance on this subject can often serve as a shortcut to other views.
“The issue partly functions as a within-party issue that helps certain Democrats differentiate themselves from other Democrats,” he added.
For Moor, the idea of maintaining the status quo, which he described as preserving alliances just “to shore Israeli apartheid” would be inconsistent with American ideals.
He rejected the notion of a possible path forward with Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of Israel’s opposition bloc, who recently received a mandate to form a government to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“Jewish Israelis are confronted with a difficult frame now,” Moor said. “They don’t have any credible leaders who aren’t also implicated in genocide or massive war crimes.”
Asked if he considered Hamas militants to be war criminals, he responded that “everybody who’s committed a war crime is a war criminal.” But he argued that naming Hamas as such would be irrelevant, as the Israeli military had already killed most Hamas combatants, including former leader Yahya Sinwar.
Fetterman was still posting on X this week about “disarming Hamas,” noting that “this vote and voice will always follow our special ally.” Fetterman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Moor characterized the senator as “in the rearview mirror for Democrats,” adding that “Fetterman’s story is finished.”
Hopkins, from Penn, disagreed with that conclusion, pointing out that “no one knows whether Fetterman will seek reelection,” and that if he does so, it’s also unclear “whether he will do that as a Democrat.” Hopkins acknowledged, however, that the senator’s vote would be less powerful when it comes to legislating because of the decisive Democratic majority.
As for other possible candidates, Hopkins is looking at potential contenders such as U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, who represents southwestern Pennsylvania residents in Beaver and Allegheny counties, including some Pittsburgh suburbs. He also named Conor Lamb, an attorney who served in Congress from 2018 to 2023.
Yost, from Franklin & Marshall, cited these names as well, while noting that “Fetterman has alienated a number of people in his party.”
“There’s been increasing dissatisfaction among his base, including people who voted for him,” added Yost, who directs the college’s Center for Opinion Research and its Floyd Institute for Public Policy.
But Yost also stressed that “running in a state like Pennsylvania for an office like the U.S. Senate is a significant undertaking” that requires large amounts of travel, networking and fundraising.
“Starting now is not a bad idea,” he said. “Two years will be here before you know it.”
Although voters might not be “dialed in” to the 2028 elections for a while, Penn’s Hopkins added that “now is the period of time when candidates are beginning to jockey.”
“One strategy by declaring early might be to try to tell other contenders who would be in your lane, ‘Hey, I’m in this lane,’” Hopkins said.
As for the chances of a Democratic socialist in a swing state like Pennsylvania, Hopkins didn’t rule Moor out but said that “any such individual would have an uphill climb.”
Another Democratic socialist who Moor said he finds inspiring, Chris Rabb, recently won a U.S. House seat in Pennsylvania, but he did so in a heavily Democratic district of Philadelphia, Hopkins noted.
“Pennsylvania has not often nominated candidates who are on the extremes of their party,” he said.
But Yost also acknowledged that “these days, people want to see non-politicians running,” so Moor’s novice status would not necessarily create a barrier to his success.
Despite his relative inexperience, Moor said he is reaching for the Senate seat due to his passion for foreign policy. He said he has concrete ideas for optimizing the military, by deflating a “bloated weapons program,” focusing more on drones and then reinvesting in both jobs programs and climate resilience initiatives.
Recognizing the mammoth expense that running in a state like Pennsylvania involves, Moor said that his fundraising efforts have started out strong, with a lot of “small-dollar” contributions, including from many Jewish donors.
Asked if he had a message for Jewish voters, Moor said that he would convey that “we’re Americans first” and that he believes “in the dignity agenda for all Americans.”
“Poverty is indifferent about whether you’re Jewish or Palestinian, Black, white, whatever,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ahmed Moor, John Fetterman’s first challenger, envisions ‘Palestine-Israel, from the river to the sea’ appeared first on The Forward.
