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Can an Israeli and a Palestinian restaurant coexist peacefully in the shadow of Columbia University?
In the fall of 2023, in response to protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Columbia University closed its wrought-iron gates. Since then, the Ivy League school in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighborhood has rarely left the news cycle. With the encampments, student occupation of Hamilton Hall, police in riot gear, congressional hearings on campus antisemitism, and ICE arrests of student activists, Columbia has become a flashpoint in debates about free speech, antisemitism and the limits of dissent.
The encampments are gone, as are the hostage posters. There are no more protests and counter-protests outside the campus gates, but soon the remnants of that political fight may play out in the opening of two restaurants, one Palestinian, one Israeli.
Ayat, the fast-growing Palestinian chain owned by Brooklyn-born couple Abdul Elenani and his wife Ayat Masoud — the restaurant’s namesake — is opening on 106th and Amsterdam Avenue. They’ve named it Hinds Hall Ayat, which was what student activists called the occupied Hamilton Hall in 2024. Hind was a five-year-old girl killed during Israel’s assault on Gaza that year.
Seven blocks north, Miznon, the international Israeli pita chain owned by Eyal Shani, the 67-year-old Tel Aviv celebrity chef known as the godfather of Israeli cuisine, is expected to open on 113th and Broadway, though no date has been set.
Miznon pitches itself as a destination for elevated Israeli street food, while Ayat specializes in Palestinian soul food, meaning larger homestyle platters. The concepts might be different as well as the vibe, but both offer superb, freshly baked, pillowy pita stuffed with spiced meats and topped with brightly flavored pickles and tahini.
The two restaurants arrive at different moments in their trajectories. Shani has been an internationally recognized chef for decades, with 60 restaurants from Singapore to Los Angeles and a Michelin star in Manhattan. Ayat opened its first location in a former Bay Ridge tanning salon five years ago. It now has 10 outposts, and Al Badawi, another Palestinian restaurant owned by Elenani and Masoud with two locations, was named one of the city’s 43 best restaurants in 2025 by New York magazine.
Owners of both restaurants say their decisions to open in the neighborhood are coincidental, and motivated by business, not politics. But in a conflict with competing national identities and claims to the land at its core, food has become a powerful proxy. To eat a babka from an Israeli bakery, or kunafa from a Palestinian, has become political. At the same time, restaurants have become targets of activists. Israeli chefs are accused of appropriating traditional Arab foods and bearing responsibility for Israel’s policies, while restaurants with displays of Palestinian nationalism are accused of promoting violence.
A mile north of Columbia, Tsion, an Ethiopian Jewish restaurant in Harlem, closed earlier this year after repeated harassment over its owner’s pro-Israel stance. Both Miznon and Ayat have had locations vandalized and staff threatened simply because they are Jewish and Israeli or Muslim and Palestinian.
All of this is avoidable. Just a couple blocks away from Ayat’s new location, Claire’s Kitchen Cafe on Manhattan Avenue is owned by Israelis and offers an “Israeli Bowl” of marinated chicken on its menu, alongside Greek and Mexican options. Claire’s, like nearby Halal shawarma spots Zaad and Zurna, pitches itself as Mediterranean, a commonly used catchall label that avoids controversy, but renders the experience generic: hummus scooped into a bowl stripped of the culture that produced it. Ayat and Miznon offer something different — the experience of a Palestinian family meal in East Jerusalem or a taste of a hip Tel Aviv food stall — powerful statements in themselves, with meanings shifting over time.
The Ayat story
In 2014, Elenani, then a student at City College, opened a food stall at Gansevoort Market in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. The food was “Palestinian orientated,” but he says he didn’t have “the balls” to say so. Instead, he gave it the more generic name, MTerranean. When the market closed in 2016, so did the restaurant,
Elenani, now 33, grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the son of Egyptian immigrants during a time of increased Islamophobia after 9/11. In a January interview with the British-based online publication Middle East Eye, he recounted how at the age of five, he witnessed his mother, who wore a hijab, called a terrorist.
His parents modeled how to navigate a diverse city, even one that was at times hostile to Muslims. His father owned Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee shops and several Dunkin Donuts, including one with a Kosher certification in Brooklyn. “In the first grade,” he told me in a phone conversation, “my mom used to give me certain Christian gifts or certain Jewish gifts to give to my teachers when it was their holiday.”
After MTerranean closed, he turned his focus to growing his chainlet of Cocoa Grinder cafes and a Bay Ridge bagel shop. When the pandemic wiped them out, he faced a choice about what to do next. “Going through COVID and seeing how fast things can change, and losing everything overnight, it built a thick skin,” he told Middle East Eye.
He rented out a former Bay Ridge tanning salon with his wife, Palestinian-American Ayat Masoud, 31, whose family owns the Halal market Balady nearby. “I remember thinking I’ll just be very bold about Palestine and not care about what will happen after,” he said.
Masoud, a former prosecutor in the Brooklyn DA’s office who has a private practice, developed the menu with her East Jerusalem-born mother. They included not just the mainstream Levantine staples of hummus and shawarma, but harder to find traditional dishes like Mansaf, heaps of lamb cooked in a thick yogurt sauce served with rice, and Palestine’s national dish, Musakhan, a half chicken roasted with sumac and caramelized onions served over freshly fired taboon bread.
Their goal was to transport customers to Palestine. “If I can eat mansaf over here in New York and think, ‘wow, this tastes just like when I was in Jerusalem,’ that connects those two dots,” Elenani told me. This time, Elenani chose the less generic name, Ayat.
At first, he recalled, many customers called it “Pakistinian cuisine,” confusing Palestine with Pakistan. “I think that was the first moment where I thought I’m going to drive myself to the max to make sure I open up as many locations as possible to communicate that culture and tradition,” he told Middle East Eye.
While MTerannean came and went with little notice, Ayat is leaving its mark. There are now seven Ayats in New York City, one in Texas, one in Princeton and locations set to open in DC and Philadelphia. Elenani plans to franchise and expand to 20 locations nationwide within the next year.
Ayat’s biggest growth has been in the two-and-a-half years since the Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Palestinian-American families gather over heaps of rice and meat, keffiyeh-wearing activists show solidarity over mint tea, and then there are many just curious about the cuisine and culture of a people who are almost solely portrayed in the American media in terms of violence, either as victims or perpetrators.
But the representation of Palestine comes with a price. Ayat was bombarded with thousands of fake one-star reviews after Pete Wells gave it a rave write-up in The New York Times in 2020. Since Oct. 7, according to Elenani, locations have been vandalized, and staff members have been called terrorists and threatened.
In the face of hostility, Elenani says, he always responds with kindness in accordance with his faith. In 2016, when a Cocoa Grinder cafe was robbed of thousands, he didn’t call the police. Instead, he posted a letter of forgiveness outside the store. “If the money you stole was to better you and your family’s living, then I forgive you,” it read. And this past Thanksgiving, when an Islamophobic caller threatened him and his staff, he invited him to the restaurant.
“I didn’t respond with hate,” he told me, “He ended up coming in and he apologized. He gave me a hug. I feel like people just need to hear a little bit from other backgrounds, just to understand each other.”
Still, Elenani and Masoud have not softened their political stance. Diners at Ayat’s other locations are greeted by murals of the Al-Aqsa Mosque looming over Palestinian children held at gunpoint by IDF soldiers. The menu calls to “End the Occupation” in Arabic, English and Hebrew. In 2024, the restaurant caused controversy with its seafood section title “From the River to the Sea,” a slogan, Elenani claims, is a call for equality, but which the Anti-Defamation League says is an incitement to genocide. The phrase remains on the menu in the original Brooklyn location, but at other locations, the menu reads “From the Rind to the Seed,” a tongue-in-cheek play on the watermelon as a pro-Palestinian symbol
When I asked Elenani how he weighs the risk of alienating customers against the mission of representing Palestinian culture, he pushed back on the premise. “One thing about Palestinian cuisine — you cannot keep politics out of it,” he said. “But I don’t even call it politics. I call it oppression. I call it genocide. Politics is Democrats and Republicans. We’re talking about who’s living and who’s dying.”
The Miznon story
If Ayat with its jugs of oil as decoration, faux olive trees and large platters made to share family-style represents deep rooted tradition, Miznon is the opposite. At each location, the menus along with wall art of pita sandwiches and poetic quotes about the food in Hebrew and English are drawn in chalk. Miznon means canteen, so there are few seats, and the food is offered in individual-sized portions and designed to be eaten quickly or taken to-go.
“The Israeli lifestyle is to live in the now as if it’s all going to disappear,” Shani told Surface Magazine in 2022 in describing Israeli cuisine. “We’re always looking for the new and mostly prefer to forget the past.”
At Miznon, that means vegetable-forward plates, like its star dish, a roasted baby cauliflower. Some traditional Middle Eastern dishes are prepared with a twist. Instead of shawarma, pitas are filled with “ribeye minute steak” or “a folded cheeseburger.” The vibe is cosmopolitan and modern. While Elenani and Masoud sometimes have oud players at their restaurants, Shani books DJs.
At the age of 30 in 1989, Shani opened the Jerusalem restaurant Oceanus. A former film student who taught himself to cook from a Julia Child cookbook, he had almost no culinary tradition to draw from. What he built became the foundation of modern Israeli fine dining, one rooted in the land with local tomatoes, eggplants, wild herbs and tahini, as well as a melting pot of the country’s multicultural influences.
“I just had a feeling that I have to invent the Israeli cuisine,” Shani said last year on the podcast, Being Jewish with Jonah Platt. He was inspired, he said, by the Palestinian women he watched in the Old City markets, carefully tending to a few tomatoes and cucumbers.
“They were my first vision,” he said. His other inspiration was the land itself — the mountains around Jerusalem where he gathered wild sage, thyme and hyssop. When asked about his relationship with those Palestinian women and what he took from them, he answered simply: “There’s no borders when we are talking about food.”
Shani closed Oceanus in 2000, the same year the Second Intifada began. In 2008, he and his partner Shahar Segal, a filmmaker and advertising executive, opened HaSalon, a high-end Tel Aviv restaurant. Two years later, his fame grew when he served as a judge on the Israeli version of MasterChef, where he became popular for his poet-philosopher approach to food. Others called for his removal after he penalized a contestant for living in a West Bank settlement.
In 2011, he and Segal opened the first Miznon in Tel Aviv, pitching it as a democratization of his fine dining sensibility. “Young people did not come to my other restaurants because they couldn’t afford it,” he told The New York Times. Paris followed in 2013, then Vienna, Singapore, Melbourne and, in 2018, New York. He now operates around 60 restaurants worldwide. In each one, he says, he spends weeks with the head chef, instilling them with his “spirit and beliefs” until, as he put it on the podcast, “I print my mind on his mind.”
While Elenani was afraid to call his restaurant Palestinian, and publishers hesitated to put Palestine on cookbook covers out of fear that it would be seen as a provocation, Shani was part of a global Israeli food wave. Israeli chefs like Yotam Ottolenghi in London and Michael Solomonov in Philadelphia won Michelin stars and James Beard Awards. The Israeli brand Sabra, part-owned by Pepsi, defined hummus for many Americans. Israeli food was having a moment. Palestinian food was shunned.
But things have changed. In July 2025, masked protesters stormed the Melbourne Miznon throwing food and chairs, damaging the restaurant. In a statement, the protesters claimed they targeted Miznon because the co-owner Segal was a spokesperson for the U.S. and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) whose food distribution system was accused of endangering the lives of Gazan civilians.
Two weeks later, amid calls to boycott Miznon, Segal stepped down from his position at GHF, but the controversy didn’t go away. Miznon London is the site of a weekly Friday protest by a Jewish anti-Zionist group against Shani’s initiative to provide meals for Israeli soldiers.
“Israel is seen as violent,” Shani told the Forward last June noting a decrease in non-Jewish customers. “It’s not cool anymore, and we can feel it.”
‘Do what you gotta do’
Miznon’s intention to open near Columbia was first announced in 2023 and generated almost no reaction. Last August, when news broke that Ayat was opening nearby, the response online was immediate and sharp. One article called it the “‘From the River to the Sea’ Eatery.”
Elenani has leaned into the controversy. Since 2014 when he wasn’t bold enough to label his restaurant as “Palestinian,” there has been a shift. “It feels like now those Muslim 9/11 kids are having the moment where we can show that this city is our home,” Amani Al-Khatahtbeh, a Muslim-American author, told The New York Times, after Zohran Mamdani won the New York mayoral election. Elenani marked the occasion by closing every Ayat kitchen and feeding more than 4,000 Mamdani volunteers in Bushwick. Three weeks later, he announced the restaurant would be named “Hinds Hall Ayat”
Many in the community, still raw from two years of protests and divisions, would prefer places that facilitate dialogue, not deepen divisions. “I’d like to try Palestinian food,” Allison Lander, a 46-year-old piano teacher and Morningside Heights resident, told me, but said that she felt torn about going, given Ayat’s choice of name “Hinds Hall” and the political slogans on the menu.
“It’s hard for me to take a strong stance against Palestinians right now who are trying to draw attention to the conflict,” she said, but added that “you have to be more sensitive to Jewish community members.”
Shani, characteristically, has said nothing political at all. When I asked what a Columbia student should take away from eating at Miznon, he responded by email: “I want them to care about the experience inside the pita. The feeling, flavors and texture. I want people to fall in love with the pita.” Still, students who have promoted boycotts of pro-Israel businesses, might have opinions beyond the pita.
On Ayat opening nearby, Shani wrote: “We come from the same region and share many food behaviors, ingredients and ways of cooking, and those naturally inspire one another. Food is about bringing people together by reminding us of what we share.”
Elenani had more to say. “I have no idea if they’re even opening up there, but it’s all good,” he said. Still, he took issue with Shani calling his cuisine Israeli, when he says it is Palestinian. “I just wish they could appreciate the culture and cuisine, but not appropriate it and rebrand it into something that it’s not.” Then he offered them a name: “Do what you got to do,” he said. “Call it modern Mediterranean.”
The post Can an Israeli and a Palestinian restaurant coexist peacefully in the shadow of Columbia University? appeared first on The Forward.
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Discover Your Ultimate Smooth at Sets on Corydon: Nanoplasty vs. Keratin vs. Japanese Straightening
Are you ready to wake up with flawless, effortless hair every single day? While standard straightening methods try to fit everyone into the same box, your hair has its own unique structure, strength, and history.
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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.
