The Trip That Made Jamaal Bowman

In late 2021, Jamaal Bowman stepped out of a tour bus into the heat in Hebron. The then-rookie New York congressman was visiting the H2 area of the ancient city in the West Bank, which remains under Israeli military occupation with barbed wire-covered checkpoints every few blocks.

Bowman had been in the Middle East for just three days, but he was already seeing sights that were changing the way he understood the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That day, along with a handful of his congressional colleagues on a trip sponsored by the liberal Zionist organization J Street, he toured a boys’ school administered by the United Nations. The young students there regularly heard live ammunition and smelled tear gas seeping through the school’s walls.

Bowman left profoundly demoralized. “There are streets they cannot walk and places they cannot go, simply because they are Palestinian,” he wrote, sharing a picture of himself posing with the students. “When I asked about their dreams, their answer was simple: freedom. The occupation must end.”

Reflecting back on the experience three years later, Bowman says, “You can almost breathe it in the air how suffocating the West Bank felt with the settlement expansions.”

The trip was a “transformational moment” for him, he tells me, one that left him doubtful about the prospects of a two-state solution — the default stated policy of most Democrats in America and liberal Zionists the world over. “[The two-state solution] was the thing that you say so that everyone leaves you alone … so that at the very least you could satisfy both sides, Palestinian freedom and the Jewish state,” he says. But what he took from five days of meetings and interviews, over boxed lunches and fancy dinners, was that there was no political will at the top of the Israeli government to pursue a two-state solution or engage in any sort of sustainable peace process — and that America’s willingness to send significant aid to Israel without any conditions attached was therefore unwise.

This transformational moment could also cost Bowman his seat in Congress.

After the trip, Bowman changed from a relatively mainstream Democrat on Israel into one of the country’s chief antagonists in Congress. He moved from voting for aid to Israel and supporting the country’s normalization agreements to eventually signaling his support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement — a Palestinian-led attempt to pressure Israel to withdraw from occupied territories and allow for Palestinian right of return.

His constituents have noticed. For his suburban New York district that is home to one of the largest concentrations of Jews in America, Bowman’s shifting views became increasingly untenable after Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7. He’s now facing a primary challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who has made his unquestioning support for Israel a key distinction between him and Bowman. Ahead of the election next week that strategy appears to be working. One districtwide poll from PIX-11 in early June put Latimer’s campaign ahead by 17 points — a stunning lead for a challenger.

And as coverage of the race focuses on Bowman v. Latimer as a proxy war between the left and the center, between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel power centers in the Democratic Party, between AOC and AIPAC, it’s left out how Bowman’s evolution as a political figure brought us here. His 2021 trip to Israel now serves as a defining moment in his continued evolution — and one that could torpedo his career.

A former middle school principal, Bowman was introduced to the radioactive politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict almost immediately upon entering politics.

In 2020, riding a wave of progressive momentum throughout New York, he took on longtime Democratic Rep. Eliot Engel, a favorite of AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel political action committee. Pro-Israel groups spent around $2 million on the campaign, but Bowman had support from the left-wing organization Justice Democrats and was propelled by a hot mic moment in the middle of Black Lives Matter protests — Engel told an ally that “if I didn’t have a primary I wouldn’t care” about attending a news conference about police brutality.

At the time, Bowman sought to downplay the importance of Israel in the campaign, noting he supported a two-state solution and expressed disapproval of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement favored by many of his left-wing backers. There was enough gray area in his views that when Bowman defeated Engel, The Intercept concluded, “what is a clear loss for the Israel lobby isn’t an outright win for the Palestinian rights movement.”

When he first got to Congress, that assessment largely appeared correct — in his first 10 months, Bowman voted for a $3.3 billion tranche of aid to Israel and for funding the Iron Dome, Israel’s primary air defense system. He was a co-sponsor of a bill to strengthen the Abraham Accords, a deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. While he was a proud member of “The Squad” — an informal but high-profile group of left-wing Democrats — he mostly broke with them on Israel, choosing instead to endorse the mainstream Democratic position on aid (though he did co-sponsor a bill that would have limited how Israel used said aid).

His record frustrated many of his left-wing supporters. When he went to Israel in November 2021, some segments of the Democratic Socialists of America saw the trip as tacit approval of the Israeli government. They demanded he be “held accountable” for posing for a photo with then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.

But the experience of visiting the country ended up leaving him much more closely aligned with the left.

The J Street trip that Bowman attended included a roster of other progressive members of Congress, but no other card-carrying members of The Squad. Though it wasn’t directly billed as such, J Street’s trips to Israel often serve as an alternative for progressives to AIPAC-sponsored trips that many other members attend. Throughout AIPAC tours, members hear directly about threats to Israel from Gaza and the West Bank via concerns about Hezbollah and Hamas.

J Street trips take a different approach. Bowman’s five days in the region were sprinkled with seminars and meetings that included a session on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, dinner with Israeli and Palestinian peace and human rights leaders, discussions with Palestinian leaders in civil society and politics and a meeting with Dr. Mohammad Shtayyeh, then-prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority.

Bowman visited Jerusalem, saw the Iron Dome and toured Yad Vashem, Israel’s largest Holocaust memorial, and parts of the West Bank; he says he went to the Gaza border and attempted to cross but was denied by the U.S. government due to a potential security risk. According to Bowman, Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of J Street, called the trip a “graduate level course in one week”; Bowman concurred.

Within the discussions with political leaders on both sides of the conflict, there was little hope, according to Bowman. The problems were both practical — “how do you say now that over 700,000 [Israelis living in settlements] have to go back to Israel proper without a lot of pushback?” he said — and more philosophical. “There was no acknowledgment that [a two-state solution] was a real possibility,” he recalled.

As Bowman recounts it, the most powerful moment of his trip was his visit to Yad Veshem. It happened on his last full day there, right after he had spent the day prior listening to Palestinian children tell him about their hope for freedom. On an almost cloudless morning, with temperatures in the mid-70s, Bowman visited the museum and participated in laying a wreath for the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust.

“And what stuck out then, but sticks out even more now,” he says, “is seeing pictures of kids starving to death in Gaza, and then pictures of Jews in the Holocaust who starved to death.”

Upon Bowman’s return to the United States, as blowback from the left began to crescendo, he began speaking more stridently about Israel-U.S. relations. In February 2022, roughly three months after the trip, he withdrew his sponsorship of the bill strengthening the Abraham Accords. Later that year, he co-sponsored a bill that would have had the U.S. formally recognize the Palestinian “Nakba” or “catastrophe” that occurred when Israel was formally founded in 1948 and Palestinians were expelled from their homes. After he survived a primary challenge from multiple avowedly pro-Israel candidates in 2022, he voted against a House resolution affirming Israel isn’t a “racist state” and condemning antisemitism. He also boycotted Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to Congress — though he had met with him in Israel.

(While Bowman has pointed to the 2021 trip as the origin story for his change of heart, the group behind it doesn’t buy that explanation. “Congressman Bowman remains an advocate for two states,” Ben-Ami said in a statement. “The framing and rhetoric he has chosen in recent months on these issues has nothing to do with J Street or the trip.”)

By early 2023, frustration was mounting among local rabbis, who penned an open letter with the headline, “13 NY rabbis to Jamaal Bowman: Quit your anti-Israel charades.” Those rabbis and many others signed another letter after Oct. 7, pleading with Latimer — a veteran local politician with decades of experience in elected office — to challenge Bowman in a primary. When Latimer did enter the race, some of those same Jewish leaders helped to organize a voting drive that recruited independents and Republicans to re-register as Democrats in order to vote against Bowman.

While Bowman had immediately condemned Hamas’ attack, he was also one of the first members of Congress to push for a ceasefire and has consistently opposed further unconditional military aid to Israel. In January, after months of sticking by him, J Street pulled their endorsement of Bowman, citing “significant differences between us in framing and approach.”

During an unseasonably chilly morning in April, Bowman drove to Hastings-on-Hudson, a progressive hamlet less than an hour north of Manhattan. There, he met Alex Rabb, a younger Jewish resident in his district. “I just want to let you know that I’m so grateful for what you’re doing on the ceasefire in Israel. I call your staff and then I get choked up and I can’t finish,” Rabb told him. “I wish that my whole community lived my Jewish values like you do.”

“Well, let’s keep it that way,” Bowman replied.

This is Bowman’s theory of the case — that the Jewish community in his district is not a monolith and that he can carve out enough progressive Jewish support to hold onto his seat. But he also says that the dynamics of the suburban-oriented district — especially compared to where he grew up in New York City — create pockets that make it hard for him to reach.

“In New York City we all live together,” Bowman said. “[But] Westchester is segregated. There’s certain places where the Jews live and concentrate. Scarsdale, parts of White Plains, parts of New Rochelle, Riverdale. I’m sure they made a decision to do that for their own reasons … but this is why, in terms of fighting antisemitism, I always push — we’ve been separated and segregated and miseducated for so long. We need to live together, play together, go to school together, learn together, work together.”

Latimer insists that Bowman doesn’t do a good job of representing any part of the district. “I think he sees himself … as a spokesperson for a demographic and a cause. I think he sees the seat as a soapbox,” he says. “He talks a lot about certain topics that are far from what I consider to be the immediate local needs of the area.”

The race is getting increasingly nasty — Bowman has received multiple death threats and racist attacks during his time in office, which have increased in cadence since Oct. 7.

Latimer reportedly accused Bowman of “taking money from Hamas,” for which Bowman threatened a defamation suit. And after Latimer accused Bowman in a debate of “preach[ing] and scream[ing] at [Republicans] on the steps of the Capitol,” Bowman fired back, “The angry Black man, the angry Black man … it’s the Southern strategy in the north.” In a recent interview with POLITICO, Bowman was even more explicit, saying of Latimer, “he also is not just anti-Black racist, he’s anti-Muslim racist.”

Latimer has described these charges as desperate and said in a recent debate, “You don’t mention people who are not Black or brown. There’s a whole district, Jamaal, that you’ve ignored, and the district knows you’ve ignored it.”

Millions of dollars in AIPAC and AIPAC-affiliated cash have poured into the race in support of Latimer, far outpacing Bowman’s own robust fundraising; the race is now the most expensive House primary ever. In a recent advertisement attacking Bowman, Elisha Wiesel, the son of the famed writer and Holocaust survivor Elie, all but calls him an antisemite.

“AIPAC is funded by MAGA, racist, right-wing Republicans, the same Republicans who tried to overturn the 2020 election … my so-called lifelong Democrat opponent is partnering with these people to take me out,” Bowman said during a recent organizing call. “AIPAC before me had Eliot Engel … so they had full control of this district. Just like they now have full control of Congress.”

But as his campaign has continued, Bowman has felt an increasing chasm of space between his own political beliefs and many of his constituents’. AIPAC was never on his side, but he’s noticed a shift even from former allies. “Since Oct. 7, even some of the quote-unquote progressives have moved to the right, for lack of a better term,” Bowman says.

He’s responded in large part by leaning into his progressive bona fides, securing the DSA endorsement after his fracas with the group in 2021 and rallying with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). While angling for DSA’s endorsement, he directly reversed some of his earlier stated positions on Israel, saying in a private video meeting that the BDS movement, which he once opposed, is “a nonviolent protest opportunity to hold Israel accountable … and so I’m ready, willing and able to collaborate with you all to figure out what’s the best way to do that.”

If his 2021 trip to Israel sparked change, the increasingly nasty campaign with Latimer — and the intra-Democratic Party anger over Israel writ large post-Oct. 7 — has turned into a full-blown flame that’s defined and engulfed the race. And the two candidates’ understanding of how the issue of Israel is refracted within their district may well determine who the next congressperson from NY-16 will be.

“There are a large number of people in this district who are Jewish, and I think they felt disregarded and disrespected [by Bowman],” Latimer told me. Bowman has a different take. That Israel’s actions in Gaza might be making Jews in his district less safe.

“I don’t know, man,” Bowman said. “When you [as Israel] say you represent all Jews, and then you behave badly, it opens the doors for people to make the connection between what Israel is doing and Jewish people, which I think is freaking dangerous as hell.”