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His family was forced to sell their precious Pissarro painting before fleeing Nazi Germany; will he finally see justice?
It has been more than four years since I first reported on the looted art case regarding the Camille Pissarro painting, “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,” in The Forward. The painting is part of a series the Jewish artist painted from the safety of his hotel room in Paris at the height of the Dreyfus Affair in France.
The scandal, sparked by the false conviction of a Jewish army office tore French society apart and brought to light the country’s deep antisemitism. “Rue Saint-Honoré” is both an important work of Impressionism and a testament to historical events. If recovered, it may even break records at auction, how rare a Pissarro cityscape comes on the market, and how robust the fine art auction industry is at present. “The painting could “easily break the hundred-million-dollar mark at auction, following its recovery,” says historian and looted art expert, Jonathan Petropoulos.
The case of this rediscovered Pissarro painting captured my imagination from an aesthetic, legal, and storytelling perspective. It is a saga that has it all — art, war, robber barons, and more — and forces everyone who encounters it to reckon with fundamental questions on morality and humanity — from both a personal and historical perspective.
The case has been in the public consciousness for far longer than my own connection to it, however. In 1939, just prior to the onset of World War II, Lilly Cassirer — who inherited Rue St. Honoré through her husband, a member of a renowned family of cultural patrons in Germany — was forced to sell the painting under duress in order to flee Nazi Germany.
Sixty years later, in December of 1999, Lilly’s heirs discovered that the Pissarro had not been lost or destroyed in the war. In fact, it had resurfaced at the new Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid, a collection belonging to the Kingdom of Spain acquired directly from the Thyssen Steel family, which had financed Hitler’s early rise to power.
The rediscovery kicked off an Odyssean legal journey up and down the federal courts in California, all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington twice, and back. Now, another ruling is expected from the Federal District Court in Los Angeles this spring, on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has asked the district court to issue a new ruling in light of a new California law regarding stolen and Holocaust-looted art. For its part, the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum maintains that it is the legitimate owner of the painting and that “there were no indications of bad faith in the acquisition of the painting.”
A separate, concurrent effort is underway in Congress to update the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act of 2016 (HEAR Act), a Federal law that enabled Nazi-looted art claims to be submitted within six years of discovery of a work of art, thereby supplanting any state statute of limitations. The law was intended to expire after ten years, but given the enormous amount of looted art still to be found, the proposed update would remove the sunset clause, as well as dismiss defenses not directly related to the merits of the cases. The new act specifically cites this Pissarro painting and the legal case to recover it, seeking to prevent other looted art claims from facing a similar, protracted legal battle. The bill already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee in a unanimous vote and is on the docket for a vote in the House of Representatives.
On the eve of two significant moments in the adjudication of Nazi-looted art, I sat down with David Cassirer, Lilly’s last living heir, and Sam Dubbin, one of his lawyers working on the case.
David, not long from now, there will be a new court decision on the long running case to restitute your family’s Pissarro painting “Rue Saint-Honoré, Apres Midi, Effet de Pluie,” which was a prized possession of your great-grandmother Lilly. What are you feeling at the moment?
David Cassirer: I’m pretty excited. It’s been such a long time since we started. This case gets exciting, and then it slows down. This is one of those exciting moments. There’s a lot going on, and we’re feeling pretty confident that we’re close to a recovery, after finding the painting more than twenty-six years ago
And what about you, Sam, how are you feeling?
Sam Dubbin: That’s a great question, because in my profession, you get optimistic, and then you get deflated, and sometimes the deflation takes a long time to get over. But deep down, I’m feeling optimistic, like this could really happen. And the moments when I feel lucky that it’s happening, I say to myself, “That’s ridiculous. It’s so long overdue.” What should have been done, should have been done so long ago. If the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum had given it back when Claude asked for it in 2000, he would have had ten years to enjoy it, to show it to people, to donate it. And it would have been a magnificent event.
This painting is important within the oeuvre of Pissarro’s work, but also historically in connection with the Dreyfus affair. Can you elaborate on its cultural and historical importance?
Dubbin: Pissarro painted this painting from the second floor of the Grand Hôtel du Louvre during the height of the Dreyfus Affair, when he literally feared for his life. He could not be seen on the streets of Paris because the antisemitism was so intense, and it’s considered one of the great works of the Impressionist movement. And so when you think about its origin during the Dreyfus Affair, then being looted by the Nazis during the preeminent human rights war crime in history, and now not being returned by the Kingdom of Spain, it’s just such an egregious, arrogant violation of decency and humanity.
And for you David, from a personal standpoint, what does the painting mean to you?
Cassirer: One of the things I like about the case is that there has been so much extraordinary publicity and interest by the public and by the press that it kind of reconnected the dots between the Impressionists and my family. My father would be very proud to read about the fact that his cousins Paul and Bruno, had championed the Impressionists and responsible for some of their success. There’s a new exhibition that’s starting soon in Berlin all about Paul Cassirer. It’s exciting to see this. It’s exciting in light of all the antisemitism that we’ve seen and the resurgence of it lately, to have some good news about Jewish contributions to culture, not to mention that Pissarro himself was Jewish. I’m delighted when I read stuff that starts to put in perspective this whole concept of our role in culture. It’s not the only thing Jewish people do, but it’s a big part of our culture.
I’d be very happy on behalf of the family and our friends to win the case, but it’s equally important that the case stands for something. And my father would feel that in his bones, especially since he really was there in the Holocaust and watched his family wiped out, watched their fortunes wiped out, watched most of his relatives sent off to the camps and so on. So, he felt it on a level I can only empathize with. It’s different if you’re there at a detention camp in the desert outside of Casablanca, and you’re dying of typhoid fever because there’s no running water and there’s no toilets. So luckily, he was young and strong and came back and survived and got here during the war. And of course, he went in to try to enlist. [The Americans] threw him out. “We’re not taking any Germans. Are you crazy?” He was very disappointed that he couldn’t join up and fight the Nazis.
The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2022 that California law should apply in this case, which was a big victory. But then the appellate court ruled against you, once again. What’s at stake with the next court decision?
Cassirer: I badly need this case to come out right, not just for the family. It’s a very important precedent. My father would have wanted people to be able to cite, to point to Cassirer v. Spain, Cassirer v. Thyssen-Bornemisza. That’s a big deal. We want people to be able to rely on that precedent all over the country and maybe in other countries as well, so I’m watching for that. It isn’t just California law versus Spain, it’s American law versus Spain. Generally speaking, throughout the country, the rule would be that you never acquire good title to stolen stuff. That’s the bigger picture here. The Supreme Court ruling meant that we are going to use good old American law to decide this thing ultimately.
Dubbin: By the way, Spanish law is an outlier. Even in other European countries, you cannot acquire good title even after the passage of time, if you take it in bad faith. Even countries like Germany, France, Netherlands, and Switzerland. Only Spain allows you to get good title after six years of adverse possession if you acquired something in bad faith.
It feels like a case in which, hopefully, common sense and morality can align. I think oftentimes, when the public thinks about the law, there’s sometimes a frustration that can arise, because cases are not always litigated based on what the public thinks is the logical, morally correct outcome. But hopefully, from what you’re saying, this could be one of those cases. David, what have been some of the positive things that have come out of this battle?
Cassirer: Lots of great stuff although it’s been difficult to wait so long and to watch my immediate family pass away in the interim. And as you can see, I’m not getting any younger here. (David is 71). It’s been a long, hard slog. The support from non-Jews has been extraordinary. We would expect, and we did receive, endless support from Jewish organizations and Jewish individuals. It’s been amazing, however, how much support we’ve had from day one in the press and in the public and in government, et cetera. I’ve been very heartened by the fact that we’ve had so much support from people “without a dog in the race,” so to speak, beyond the Jewish community.
I’ve also been very heartened in recent years with Sam’s extraordinary success working with legislatures, both in California and in Washington, and that the support isn’t just from one side or the other. It’s amazingly bipartisan. People who don’t even talk to each other gladly work together on these bills, sponsor these bills, and fend off anyone trying to undo it. Even though we haven’t won yet, we have won many battles along the way.
David, what advice would you give to other families who may be pursuing cases? What do you hope people take away from your experience?
Cassirer: That’s a good question. Assuming that we’re ultimately successful, which I’m still pretty confident with Sam’s help and this extraordinary team that we’ve managed to assemble, that we are going to win this thing. People should be encouraged, in a meta sense, that it’s worth fighting for stuff that’s important, even if the odds are long, even if other people might not be successful at it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and you shouldn’t stick with it. I’ve been in the case twenty-six years and counting. If you’re tough enough and dedicated enough and you figure out a way to surround yourself with talented, committed people, there’s very little that can’t be accomplished in this country and in other countries as well. I think for me, that’s a pretty big takeaway.
You’ve just struck me that you’re talking about the American dream.
Cassirer: Yes! My father told me that the greatest day he ever had was becoming an American citizen. After what he had been through and being stateless, having had his government turn against him, it’s interesting that, given his extraordinary life, the greatest day of his life to him was when he became a naturalized citizen; because, to him, that was the American dream.
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Israel is dominating Democratic politics. How did we get here?
For decades, American politicians considering a presidential run have traveled to Iowa cornfields and New Hampshire town halls to introduce themselves to voters before launching their campaigns.
Last week, two potential 2028 presidential contenders chose a different route.
Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and Barack Obama’s White House chief of staff, traveled to Tel Aviv, where he delivered a speech defending the U.S.-Israel relationship but also cautioning about the growing erosion of Democratic support for the Jewish state in the wake of the Gaza war and amid settler violence.
A tiny fraction of the target audience was in the room. The majority was back home in the U.S., considering who in their party could possibly win as their party’s White House nominee — and more immediately how to use their votes this year to regain power.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading progressive Democrat from California, took a high-profile trip to the occupied West Bank, where he was caught in an altercation with armed Israeli settlers who blocked his route to an elementary school that extremist settlers had destroyed. Khanna said he plans to share what he witnessed firsthand about the Palestinians’ “injustice” on the campaign trail if he runs.
The contrasting trips reflected a trend already reshaping Democratic politics. Graham Platner, the Maine Senate nominee who was forced to withdraw from the race following allegations of sexual assault, made opposition to Israel and AIPAC one of the defining themes of his campaign. His defiant parting message — in which he denied the allegations — included a vow to keep working to “end the genocide.”
On Tuesday, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, hoping to become speaker after the midterm elections, added his voice to the mix. In guidance issued to his members ahead of a vote to cut off aid to Israel — introduced by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie from Kentucky and co-sponsored by Khanna — Jeffries said that while he’ll oppose the measure, “given the strongly held views throughout the Caucus in this important area of foreign policy, we are not whipping this vote” against it. He added that going forward, “a meaningful change in direction is needed.”
The episodes in the past week highlight how quickly and powerfully the U.S. relationship to Israel — which has been receiving $3.8 billion annually under a 10-year memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel, which runs through 2028, plus additional billions in arms sales — has come to dominate Democratic Party politics.
A stew of different factors are in the mix — ranging from President Donald Trump’s fateful decision to wage war on Iran alongside Israel, the success of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America in showing how to mobilize voters on the issue, and voter backlash against massive spending on elections by U.S. supporters of military aid to Israel, all against the backdrop of the Gaza war and Israel’s continued military action in the region.
Sudden shifts
Israel’s role in Democratic politics this year signals a major shift — especially after a wave of insurgents who made condemning Israel central to their campaigns beat mainstream Democrats in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Colorado primaries.
The Democratic revolt is not entirely new. In the 2024 presidential race, the conflict in Gaza spurred some voters to stay home rather than cast ballots after the “uncommitted” movement blamed President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for civilian deaths — missing voters who may have swayed the results in Michigan, a swing state with a large Arab-American population. Activists said Democratic National Committee officials acknowledged that the Biden administration’s support for Israel contributed to Harris’ loss to Donald Trump.
But the protest movement has since swelled to include a bigger constituency — one not content to sit out elections or confined to moments of war. For many progressive candidates, challenging the U.S.-Israel alliance and advocating for Palestinian rights have become a marker of ideological identity and the party’s future.
Bill de Blasio, who himself evolved from a staunch supporter of Israel and an ally of AIPAC after he left office as New York City mayor and mounted an unsuccessful campaign for Congress, said in an interview that the shift reflects a deeper emotional connection to the conflict that is driving the engagement and organizing. Disaffected voters feel personally implicated by U.S. support for Israel, de Blasio said: “It’s a sense that this was done with our weapons and our money.”
In some districts with entrenched incumbents, such lines of attack by challengers went nowhere in Democratic primaries. But in some districts where the grassroots Democratic Socialists of America endorsed candidates and mobilized voters, they have scored significant upsets.
The result is a growing wave of democratic socialists and progressives winning Democratic primaries, portraying support for Israel as incompatible with progressive values.
Matt Duss, a former senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said Gaza became a breaking point for many Democratic voters because of its human toll, but added that the political shift runs deeper. “It has come to stand for an issue of the establishment versus the insurgent populist left,” Duss said. Gaza, he added, “created this breaking point” where the “floodgates opened” to challenging the pro-Israel consensus that has dominated American politics for so long.
The Mamdani model
Zohran Mamdani’s left-field victory last year as New York City mayor showed candidates nationally that running against Israel could energize voters even in a local election. Mamdani, a young democratic socialist, rose to power by embracing pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activism in a mayoral campaign otherwise focused on economic justice and progressive reform. Mamdani defeated establishment candidates despite refusing to scale back on his support for boycotts and declining to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” even as many Jewish voters heard it as a call to violence. Public opinion polls showed that Mamdani’s unapologetic criticism of Israel resonated with a majority of New York City voters.
The wins of three candidates endorsed by Mamdani in congressional primaries last month reinforced running against Israel as a winning strategy in progressive-leaning districts. Brad Lander, the former city comptroller allied with Mamdani, defeated two-term incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman by labeling Goldman as insufficiently activist on Israel, even as both — identifying themselves as liberal Zionists — touted similar views on addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Lander was the first Jewish candidate to call for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.
In Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, lost to Darializa Avila Chevalier, a former organizer of the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia. Avila Chevalier drew backlash for inflammatory comments about Israel and for attending a Times Square rally on Oct. 8, 2023, widely condemned for celebrating Hamas — but won anyway.
And in Brooklyn, Assemblymember Claire Valdez beat the establishment favorite for an open House seat. Her supporters condemned her opponent, Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso, for refusing during much of the campaign to call the Gaza war a genocide and for taking a 2015 trip to Israel.
The AIPAC factor
The trend is not limited to New York. Across the country, Israel has become a defining issue, even in races with relatively small Jewish electorates or where foreign policy would once have played little role. In Colorado, Melat Kiros, a democratic socialist, unseated a 15-term incumbent using Israel as a wedge throughout the campaign.
In California, State Sen. Scott Wiener, a candidate for Congress who is one of the leading Jewish Democrats statewide, has found himself navigating intense pressure and confrontations from progressive activists even after he capitulated to demands that he characterize Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as a genocide.
According to data compiled by Milan Singh, a fellow at The Argument, a liberal opinion-focused media publication, insurgent progressive candidates for Congress mentioned Israel in 48% of their fundraising emails.
Opposition to AIPAC and criticism of the Israeli government have increasingly become shorthand for challenging “entrenched power, big money politics and the party establishment,” said Democratic strategist Lis Smith.
Nowhere is the changed climate being tested more vigorously than in Michigan’s open Senate race. The Aug. 4 primary between Rep. Haley Stevens and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed has become one of the most expensive races in the country this year.
Like other candidates who have run campaigns with Israel front and center, El-Sayed has focused heavily on condemning AIPAC, the campaign group backing congressional candidates who support U.S. military aid to Israel.
AIPAC has returned the favor with massive spending to attempt to defeat El-Sayed. Its super PAC, the United Democracy Project, has already spent $14.9 million backing Stevens. AIPAC also raised several million dollars for Stevens by directing its donors to online portals that funnel money directly to the candidate’s campaign.
Until this year, AIPAC was obscure to most voters. But its massive spending to support favored House and Senate candidates has been matched by progressive opponents using it to rally voters to shun those candidates.
In primaries this year, AIPAC and -aligned groups are pushing back against candidates who made Palestinian rights and support for restricting offensive arms sales to Israel a theme of their campaigns. AIPAC is also spending heavily to defend a seat in St. Louis, Missouri, that it helped win in 2024.
Duss said the politics surrounding Israel increasingly functions as a broader test of credibility for candidates seeking to dislodge Democratic Party leaders seen as holding back progress — not just on Israel, but also on such goals as Medicare for All. “It’s become an issue that you could speak out on if you want to demonstrate your anti-establishment bona fides,” he said.
In Michigan, voter scrutiny has broadened beyond just Israel to the question of why powerful interests are aligned with Stevens.
The changing politics is beginning to impact how incumbents are voting in Washington. In April, 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers — used by the Israeli military to demolish homes in the West Bank and Gaza — and 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. Those counts shattered a previous high of 27 Democrats who backed a similar pair of resolutions last year.
The governing challenge
The electoral victories may only be the beginning. The real test will come should the Democrats regain control of the House in November.
Matt Bennett, executive vice president at the centrist Democratic group Third Way, said that Israel “has exploded as a divisive issue in democratic politics” at a moment when Democrats have no power, as the minority in both the House and Senate, to shape the foreign policy of the United States. “It’s remarkable how anger is being directed at people who have no agency over these questions.”
If they win back the House, he said, those divisions will become much harder to avoid.
Whether driven by outrage over Gaza, frustration with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or broader resentment of political institutions, Israel has become a defining issue — something few Democratic strategists expected even a few years ago.
Smith, who advises political organizations Majority Democrats and the Bench, called the events of the 2026 primary seasoin a “turning point” in the Democratic Party’s stance toward Israel. “I think that relationship is going to be strained for the foreseeable future,” she said.
The combination of Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank, and Trump’s actions in the war on Iran, are going to have a “lasting impact on our politics,” said de Blasio. “I don’t think that it can be put back in the bottle.”
Israel’s election crossroads
Throughout the debate over Israel, mainstream Democrats have tried to direct their criticism at Netanyahu and his far-right partners. Even Bernie Sanders, the elder in the progressive caucus, framed the charge for ending U.S. military aid as opposition to the “extremist Netanyahu government.”
Israelis will get a chance to change leadership in the upcoming Oct. 27 Knesset election. Recent polls show that Netanyahu, seeking a seventh term in office, is trailing an opposition bloc led by two contenders for premier — former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and former IDF chief Gadi Eisenkot.
If Netanyahu loses, some centrist Democrats believe a different Israeli government will help ease tensions.
“The intense emotion surrounding the issue could lessen somewhat,” said Matt Bennett of Third Way. Though the next Israeli leader will not dramatically break with Netanyahu’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or Gaza, “not having Netanyahu there would matter a lot because he has become he has inserted himself into partisan politics in the United States to such a degree that he has become the face of these campaigns,” he added.
Progressives are less convinced. They see the shift and generational reassessment of the U.S.-Israel relationship as a larger challenge. “If you had a different figure, one who is not so odious, that would give an opportunity to change the relationship,” Duss said. “But I don’t think it’s going back because the differences here are not just about one person; they are systemic.”
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UK lawmakers press government on why West Bank imports haven’t yet been banned
(JTA) — British lawmakers from across the political spectrum are pressing the government to ban imports from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying that explanations for why such a ban has not yet been imposed were inadequate.
During a three-hour House of Commons debate on Thursday, lawmakers argued that Britain’s long-standing position that the settlements are illegal under international law means it should fall in line behind other countries advancing bans, particularly at a time of rising settler violence and efforts to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
The debate — the latest in a number of formal discussions about a potential ban in Parliament — was led by Abtisam Mohamed, a politician from the governing Labour Party who is the first Arab woman and first Yemeni member of Parliament. She was denied entry into Israel in 2025, a year after being elected.
“I want to pose a simple question to the government today, a question that sits at the heart of this debate,” Mohamed said in opening the session. “If settlements are illegal, why have we not made an outright ban on trade? What exactly is it that we’re waiting for?”
Lawmakers from other parties piled on.
“There is no excuse that we have to wait for other countries to move because they’ve moved ahead of us,” said Ellie Chowns from the left-wing Green Party, which has made opposition to Israel part of its platform. “There is no excuse that this is too technically difficult because the legal framework already exists.”
And a member of the Conservative party, which has traditionally favored strong ties with Israel, said he was unconvinced by the argument, made recently by a government official, that other measures that are potentially less complicated to administer could achieve the same pressure on Israel.
“We’ve done everything except the obvious, which is just the ban,” said the lawmaker, Kit Malthouse. “The question I’m left asking is, why? Why the reluctance? Why the hesitation? Nobody’s buying the complexity argument.”
On Monday, EU foreign ministers met to discuss a ban on products from Israeli settlements in the West Bank, in order to gauge if there is enough support for the move. The EU’s foreign minister said a ban on imports was the most popular option under discussion and said she expected that the conversation would soon advance.
The discussion in the House of Commons comes as the British Labour government is in flux, with a new prime minister set to take over from Keir Starmer next week. It also comes as the government is taking steps to reassure a Jewish community that has been rattled by a number of violent incidents. This week, the government both allocated more than $300 million in security funding for Jewish institutions while also formally declaring Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, seen as tied to many of the attacks, to be a terrorist group, in a move that enables more intense prosecution.
In an appearance before the Foreign Affairs Committee earlier in July, the government’s top Middle East minister fended off allegations that the Labour government was slow-walking pressure on Israel. Hamish Falconer also noted that British Jewish leaders are urging against an import ban.
“There are legitimate and reasonable concerns from the British Jewish community that if we were to take steps which were crude, which were untargeted, could have unintended consequences on the lives of the community who are already under considerable pressure,” he said. “I do take that seriously for obvious reasons.”
The Board of Jewish Deputies, an umbrella organization for almost 200 Jewish groups in Britain, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that it was reluctant to comment on a potential ban on West Bank imports before a new prime minister is installed. But the group has previously weighed in strongly against efforts to boycott Israel, arguing in a 2017 report that “to hasten a solution to the settlements would be to assist the chances of negotiations through promoting peace, rather than the problematic boycott campaign.”
Falconer also signaled that all bets could be off if the Israeli government moves forward with a settlement project known as E1, telling the Foreign Affairs Committee, “I have said repeatedly that no one should benefit from a profit made on land that has been unlawfully procured.”
The E1 initiative would expand Jewish settlements on a stretch of land east of Jerusalem, bisecting the West Bank, and is seen by both its proponents and critics as a bid to undercut a potential future Palestinian state. The current right-wing Israeli government has moved the E1 project significantly toward actualization, approving it formally.
If the project proceeds further, Falconer told lawmakers, “then we and our friends and allies would take tangible action in response.”
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Cori Bush to fellow progressives: My reelection would be ‘the knockout’ punch to AIPAC
(JTA) — Cori Bush told fellow progressives during a virtual rally on Monday night that she intends to deliver a “knockout” punch to AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, by winning her congressional primary next month.
When Bush, the two-term progressive Democratic congresswoman, was defeated in a bruising primary two years ago, both she and her adversaries attributed the loss in part to AIPAC.
The group’s PAC spent more than $4 million to defeat Bush, who was one of two members of Congress to vote against a measure to deny entry to the United States to Hamas terrorists who perpetrated Oct. 7, and declined to call Hamas a terror group on the campaign trail.
Now, as AIPAC has rapidly transformed into a radioactive bogeyman among Democrats and Bush’s fellow progressives have mounted an ascent across the party, Bush is out for revenge.
“Jamaal Bowman says it best: He said that Chris Rabb gave a jab to AIPAC. He says that Darializa and Claire … they gave uppercuts to AIPAC,” Bush said. “But then when I win, that will be the knockout.”
Bush is currently running against Missouri incumbent Rep. Wesley Bell in a field with three other candidates. In 2024, Bell defeated Bush 51.1% to 45.6% in a field of four candidates. A February poll sponsored by Bush’s campaign had Bell and Bush tied, with Bush receiving 44% of the votes, while Bell had 40%. (The survey had a margin of error of 5.4%.)
Bush was referring to a list of prominent progressives, including one, Bowman, who like her was primaried out of Congress in 2024, and three who won primaries decisively in Pennsylvania and New York this year. She was speaking at an online rally organized by Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement.
The rally came as the movement tries to move past a setback in Maine, where Graham Platner, a progressive and staunch critic of Israel, withdrew after winning the Democratic Senate primary amid allegations of sexual assault. One of the candidates vying to replace Platner on the ticket, Troy Jackson, joined other leading progressives including Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and California congressman Ro Khanna in taking the virtual stage.
Jackson did not mention Israel or AIPAC in his comments, even after announcing in recent days that he believes Israel committed genocide in Gaza. Instead, he listed an array of other issues animating left-wing voters.
“I know that there’s real pain, anger, and disappointment, and I’m not going to try and minimize that. But look, this movement has always been bigger than one person,” he said, alluding to Platner’s exit. “It’s about taking on a system rigged against working people, fighting for Medicare for all, strong unions, higher wages, reproductive freedom, and an economy where billionaires and corporations finally pay their fair share.”
Other candidates took aim more squarely at Israel and its supporters. El-Sayed, who in recent days has taken to calling Israel a “rogue state,” noted that AIPAC and its allies have spent more than $40 million to defeat him. (AIPAC has spent nearly $15 million on the race to date.)
“Donald Trump is not himself the disease in our politics; he’s the worst symptom of the disease of our politics,” El-Sayed said. “The disease is the system that allows big corporations, billionaires, special interest groups like AIPAC, to buy and sell politicians in ways that leave them rigging the system against us.”
El-Sayed also took aim at foreign military aid in his remarks, telling those gathered, “It shouldn’t be this hard to pay your taxes and know that that money is going to be spent on you and your kids rather than to annihilate somebody else and their kids.”
Minnesota congressional candidate Kaela Berg similarly cast her refusal to accept AIPAC money as part of a broader rejection of corporate influence in politics.
“We are the revolution, we are bringing that working class voice, that lived experience, two and a half decades of fighting the bosses, being people in Congress who cannot be bought, being the antidote to corporate Democrats and to Republicans,” Berg said. “I do not take AIPAC money. I do not take corporate money.”
Khanna, fresh off a trip to the Middle East during which he claimed that Israeli soldiers took the side of armed settlers who detained him in the West Bank, used his remarks during the town hall to shift attention from his detention to the treatment of Palestinians.
“Yes, people know I was detained, but if there’s one obligation, I feel I want to tell in every part of this country the story of apartheid in the West Bank,” Khanna said. “The story of these Palestinians who are being treated in an inhumane, undignified way, and if we can tell that story, I believe we will finally get change.”
Khanna, who has emerged as one of Israel’s fiercest critics in Congress since Oct. 7, also told attendees that the progressive wins across the country reflected growing support for the movement’s policy positions, including its opposition to Israel.
“We are winning, and we’re winning not because of candidates,” Khanna said. “We’re winning because we stand for Medicare for all. We stand against the genocide. We stand against foreign wars.”
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