Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s anti-Israel comments make her unfit for reelection next year | Opinion

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.’

But it is Missouri Rep. Cori Bush’s, which is why she deserves to lose her congressional race next year. And it’s at least in part why, as of this week, she has a Democratic primary challenger in St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell.

“We can’t be silent about Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign,” Bush wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday. “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.”

Horrors like the Tuesday airstrikes that targeted a senior Hamas commander but also killed many civilians in a northern Gaza refugee camp are only happening because Hamas is using Palestinian civilians as human shields instead of taking pity on its own people. And Hamas doesn’t want those with nowhere to go to go anywhere while Israel fights back against terrorists who are holding hostages and remain devoted to ending Israel’s existence.

Not every comment critical of Israel’s corrupt prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is a slur; far from it. But in painting a military campaign widely seen as necessary for survival by the Israeli public as “ethnic cleansing,” Bush seems to be suggesting that the war is based on a policy of ethnic superiority rather than on security concerns after a genocidal attack.

Unfortunately, Bush is no more clear-eyed about this ongoing tragedy than MAGA Speaker Mike Johnson, who in his first act after getting the gavel is trying to predicate emergency aid to Israel on cuts to the IRS.

Johnson and others in the Republican Party see no need to stand up for Ukraine, either, because if Russia’s illegal attacks displace millions, what do we care? Where left goes so far around the corner that it meets the extreme right, that’s where I bow out.

Only hours after Cori Bush’s projectile spewing of antisemitic comments and disinformation, Wesley Bell announced that he would challenge his fellow Democrat. Yes, though her political career, like Bell’s own, grew out of the 2014 protests in Ferguson.

Bush’s campaign manager called it “disheartening” that instead of continuing his campaign to defeat Republican incumbent Josh Hawley and become Missouri’s first Black U.S. senator, Bell has “decided to target Missouri’s first Black congresswoman.”

Bell is an impressive guy, but he was not going to become Missouri’s first Black senator. He does have a chance in this race, though, in a heavily Democratic district that’s about 50% Black and also home to the largest Jewish community in the state.

That political violence and attacks on both Jews and Muslims are already so common made what Bush said about “ethnic cleansing” especially reckless. FBI director Christopher Wray testified on Tuesday that antisemitic threats are reaching “historic levels” across the country.

My friend Stacey Newman, the only Jewish member of the Missouri House when she left office five years ago, told me that even among her fellow progressives, it has since Oct. 7 become “really kind of scary” for Jews in the St. Louis area Bush represents.

With “hatred here” on unembarrassed display, many she’d thought of as allies are suddenly showing her otherwise. “It caught me off guard. People with kids graduating from high school don’t even know where to send them where they’d be safe.” And Newman said her community has for some time been encouraging their prosecuting attorney to challenge the incumbent in Missouri’s 1st Congressional District: “He’s loved.”

In a Tuesday phone interview, Bell said Bush “is not working with others and not working to bring people together. When you look at the crisis we’re in on the world stage and at home, with gun violence, we need steady and effective leadership” that we’re “not getting.” In his campaign announcement, he said, “We can’t give aid and comfort to terrorists, and Hamas is a terrorist organization.”

He also told me that his differences with Bush go well beyond the war that Israel didn’t start but has to finish: She voted against the infrastructure bill that “helped people in my district,” and joined MAGA Republicans in voting against raising the debt ceiling.

Like the overwhelming majority of Democrats, Bell sees her “defund the police” rhetoric as “misguided” and self-defeating.

When I asked whether the timing of his Monday announcement should be read to mean that Bush’s Sunday statement on “ethnic cleansing” had helped him make up his mind, his campaign press aide cut in to say oops, gotta go, time is up.

But he did go ahead and answer: “By Sunday, the decision was made. That wouldn’t have impacted it, though her comments were a disappointment.

Because 1) I have a German name and 2) bigots aren’t known for their acuity, even I’ve gotten a fair amount of antisemitic mail over the years, and have learned a lot from these messages about those who send them.

My fellow Catholic J.R.R. Tolkien wrote this response, in 1938, to the Nazis who wanted assurances of his “Aryan” heritage before translating ‘The Hobbit’ into German: “I am not of Aryan extraction: that is Indo-Iranian; as far as I am aware none of my ancestors spoke Hindustani, Persian, Gypsy, or any related dialects. But if I am to understand that you are enquiring whether I am of Jewish origin, I can only reply that I regret that I appear to have no ancestors of that gifted people. … If impertinent and irrelevant inquiries of this sort are to become the rule in matters of literature, then the time is not far distant when a German name will no longer be a source of pride.”

I agree with Cori Bush on many things. But because I do not see her view of “ethnic cleansing” as a source of pride for Missourians, I hope it’s Wesley Bell who wins next year.