Over the summer, I wrote about Brad Lander’s identification as a liberal Zionist amid a tough Democratic primary race against another liberal Zionist, Dan Goldman. Lander embraced the anti-Zionist left to win that contest. Over the weekend, Lander was heckled at a protest outside of Madison Square Garden for—you guessed it—being a Zionist.
My friend Evan Gottesman and I were discussing this incident. Evan is the managing editor of The Next Move, the Substack of the Renew Democracy Initiative. He and I worked together at Israel Policy Forum for several years, where we hosted the Israel Policy Pod, and we still talk about the ins and outs of Israeli and American Jewish politics all the time. I’m pleased to share his take on the Lander situation with The Middle Ground.
— Eli
“Zionists,” the left-wing podcaster Emma Vigeland posted on X yesterday, “are functionally Klansmen.”
I wonder if Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee for New York’s tenth congressional district and a self-described “liberal Zionist,” knew that Vigeland considered him a “functional Klansman” when he accepted her support in the primary campaign earlier this summer. The two recorded a video, standing side by side, Lander grinning as Vigeland made her case.
It’s an odd arrangement when you think about it—Vigeland eagerly giving her blessing to a candidate whom she apparently considers the equivalent of a right-wing racist terrorist; Lander accepting that blessing from someone who is deeply contemptuous of his views.
Though Vigeland and others like her welcomed Lander in the race to unseat incumbent Dan Goldman, the city comptroller-turned-congressional candidate’s place in the far-left coalition remains exceedingly awkward.
That awkwardness was made painfully clear this weekend, when protesters shouted down Lander at a protest against a Hindu nationalist group outside of Madison Square Garden.
“We don’t want no Zionists here!” one man screamed at the congressional hopeful. I get it—from the perspective of these leftists, who would want Zionists, “functional Klansmen,” in their spaces?
The video of Lander being heckled at MSG brings to mind another recent incident on the other side of the country, when Scott Wiener was harassed walking through San Francisco’s Dolores Park.
Wiener is a California state senator. He is the favorite to inherit Nancy Pelosi’s seat in the US House of Representatives, though the race may be tightening. Wiener is Jewish. Like Lander, he (reluctantly) describes Israel’s actions in the Gaza War as a genocide. Like Lander, he remains, at least on paper, committed to the idea of a two-state solution and therefore a Jewish and democratic Israel.
Both Lander and Wiener remained oddly placid through their respective ordeals. It’s one thing to maintain your composure under pressure, a good trait in an elected official. Still, Lander and Wiener seem to lack any confidence in their beliefs when it comes to the legitimacy of Jewish self determination. There is no instinct to push back.
After the MSG episode, Lander issued a video on social media, delivered in his sermonic, Reverend Lovejoy style. He dismissed the people who attacked him as “a few loud mouths.” Lander made passing mention of his belief in a Jewish and democratic state, but he didn’t explain why he believes in that concept. He didn’t acknowledge that people in his camp—people with whom he campaigned!—say that holding this belief makes him as bad as the white hoods of the Ku Klux Klan.
“We have to face the unfortunate reality that many of those who protest for Palestine and claim to champion Palestinian rights will not accept you if you believe in a two-state solution, a peace process, and human rights for all,” Palestinian human rights advocate Ihab Hassan observed after Lander was attacked. “To be accepted by them, you apparently have to cheer for Hamas.”
If people like Lander and Wiener are going to cling onto the liberal Zionist label, an association that comes with a real political cost these days, they might at least stand up for it and firmly assert why a Jewish state is just as legitimate as a Palestinian one.
Now, some right-wing Jewish pundits reveled in the abuse Lander received. I don’t share their sense of schadenfreude—watching a fellow Jew, even one with whom I disagree, get hounded like that is the last thing that brings me joy.
I do wish this for Lander: that he’d treat those who oppose his vision of a Jewish and democratic Israel from the left with the same clarity he shows when dealing with the annexationists and ethnic cleansers on the Israeli right.
Given the extremism of the Israeli government, the impotence of the American Jewish establishment, and the hostility of the anti-Zionist left, holding that ground might be a lonely course. But things are not going to get better for liberal Zionists until we demand some respect.
Evan Gottesman is the director of communications and special projects at the Renew Democracy Initiative and the managing editor of The Next Move, RDI’s publication on Substack. He was previously associate director of policy and communications at Israel Policy Forum, and has been published in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Haaretz.
To Evan and Eli -wise words, you hit the nail on the head! Eli, I believe you pointed this out in the post you wrote about Mamdani a while back - but I'd like to reiterate it here. My biggest problem with Lander's "positionings" is his alliance with Chevalier - who attended that infamous rally on Oct 8, 2023.
I'd like to urge both of you to write about how often she's mentioned in the media these days - without any reference whatsoever to her presence at that rally. The most recent - and most visible example of this is Lydia Polgreen's long opinion piece in the NYT Sept 1 print edition which focusses on the current role of identity politics in our poliitcal discourse.
I wrote a brief comment under Polgreen's piece which has yet to be posted on the Times's website - but here it is - FYI:
"I find it very hard to understand how such a thoughtful writer as Lydia Polgreen could write such a long and detailed column and refer to Darializa Avila Chevalier in such a positive manner - without even mentioning that Chevalier went to that infamous pro-Hamas rally on Oct. 8, 2023!"
They already surrendered when they accepted the genocide label. As Jonathan Chait recently wrote in The Atlantic, "the tactic of demanding that Democrats label the conflict a genocide, and treating anybody who refuses as complicit in the murder of children, is not aimed at exposing supporters of Israel’s policy. It instead targets liberals who have traditionally viewed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a cycle of violence for which both sides bear responsibility. Describing the conflict as a genocide frames the problem not as a matter of shared guilt and shared responsibility to compromise, but as the straightforward oppression of an innocent people by a guilty one."