Soon after the Gaza war began 10 months ago, a prominent newspaper columnist denounced Congresswoman Cori Bush under a headline declaring that “anti-Israel comments make her unfit for reelection.” The piece appeared in the newspaper with the second-largest readership in Missouri, the Kansas City Star. Multimillion-dollar attacks on Bush followed.
Bush’s opponent, county prosecutor Wesley Bell, “is now the number-one recipient of AIPAC cash this election cycle,” according to Justice Democrats. “Almost two-thirds of all his donations came from the anti-Palestinian, far-right megadonor-funded lobby group.” The Intercept reports that “AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, has gone on to spend a total of $7 million so far to oust Bush” in the Aug. 6 Democratic primary in her St. Louis area district.
“The $2.1 million in ads spent for her campaign is up against $12.2 million spent to attack her or support Bell,” The American Prospect points out. AIPAC “is trying to pull voters away from her without ever saying the words ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine.’ Instead, their advertising against Bush centers around her record on infrastructure legislation, in a manner that lacks context.”
It's easy to see why AIPAC and allied forces are so eager to defeat Bush. She courageously introduced a ceasefire resolution in the House nine days after the bloodshed began on Oct. 7, calling for “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.”
The Kansas City Star article, published shortly after Bush introduced the resolution, was written by former New York Times reporter Melinda Henneberger, now a member of the Star’s editorial board. “A military attack in response to the massacre of civilians by a group committed in writing to ‘carnage, displacement and terror’ for Jews is not my idea of ‘ethnic cleansing,’” she wrote in early November. “But it is Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s, which is why she deserves to lose her congressional race next year.”
Bush supposedly became unfit to keep her seat in Congress because, after three weeks of methodical killing in Gaza, she tweeted: “We can’t be silent about Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign. Babies, dead. Pregnant women, dead. Elderly, dead. Generations of families, dead. Millions of people in Gaza with nowhere to go being slaughtered. The U.S. must stop funding these atrocities against Palestinians.”
Henneberger’s response was hit-and-run. She wrote a hit piece. And then she ran.
Ever since late April, I’ve been asking Henneberger just one question, over and over. Every few weeks, I have sent another email directly to her. I also wrote to her care of an editor at the newspaper. And I even mailed a certified letter, which the post office delivered to her office in June.
No reply.
Henneberger’s column had flatly declared that Bush’s tweet was a “projectile spewing of antisemitic comments and disinformation” because it said that Israel was engaged in ethnic cleansing.
So, my question, which Henneberger has been refusing to answer for more than three months, is a logical one: “Do you contend that the Israeli government has not engaged in ethnic cleansing?”
If Henneberger were to answer no, the entire premise of her column smearing Bush would collapse.
If Henneberger were to answer yes, her reply would be untenable.
No wonder she has chosen not to answer at all.
What Israel has been doing in Gaza clearly qualifies as “ethnic cleansing” -- which a UN Commission of Experts defined as “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”
But denial about Israel’s massive and ongoing crimes against Palestinian people is pervasive -- and often used to attack principled progressives in election campaigns. And so, two months ago, in the St. Louis area, 35 rabbis supporting Bell against Bush issued a statement that alleged the congresswoman “continually fanned the flames with the most outrageous smears of Israel, accusing the Jewish state of ‘ethnic cleansing’ and ‘genocide’ as it has fought to defeat the terrorists.”
The electoral forces against human rights for Palestinians have been armed with huge amounts of cash. AIPAC dumped $15 million into successfully defeating progressive New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman early this summer. While the spending amount set a record, the approach was far from unprecedented.
In 2022, AIPAC beat Michigan Congressman Andy Levin, who had expressed support for Palestinian rights. “I’m really Jewish,” Levin said in an interview days before losing the Democratic primary, “but AIPAC can’t stand the idea that I am the clearest, strongest Jewish voice in Congress standing for a simple proposition: that there is no way to have a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people unless we achieve the political and human rights of the Palestinian people.”
AIPAC excels at strategic lobbying on Capitol Hill, relentlessly prodding or threatening lawmakers and their staffs to stay on the right side of a Zionist hardline, always brandishing the proven capacity to launch fierce attacks -- while conflating even understated criticism of Israel with antisemitism. The basic formulas are simple: Israel = Judaism. Opposition to Israel’s lethal violence = antisemitism.
Such formulaic manipulation has long been fundamental to claims that the Israeli government represents “the Jewish people” and criticisms of its actions are “antisemitic.”
That’s what the heroic Congresswoman Cori Bush is up against.
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Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He is the author of many books including War Made Easy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, was published in 2023 by The New Press.