NC-01 (Erica Smith against Don Davis) PA-12 (Summer Lee against Steve Irwin)
The primaries for North Carolina’s first congressional district will feature several candidates, as AIPAC is backing Don Davis, a state senator representing the 5th senate district since 2013. J Street last week endorsed Smith, an engineer and politician who represented District 3 in the North Carolina Senate from 2015 to 2021.
“J Street is proud to endorse Erica Smith in the race for #NC01. She’s exactly the kind of principled, passionate leader we need in Congress,” the organization tweeted.
AIPAC sent a barb to J Street when it replied: “a natural J Street endorsement. Erica Smith is so “principled” that she deleted her tweets on the 2021 Gaza war and voted against North
The primaries will take place on May 17 and will feature progressive, J Street backed Lee and moderate, AIPAC-supported Irwin.
Pro-Israel groups sharply criticized Lee for past tweets from May 2021 in which she wrote: “When I hear American pols use the refrain “Israel has the right to defend itself” in response to undeniable atrocities on a marginalized ppl, I can’t help but think of how the west has always justified indiscriminate& disproportionate force &power on weakened & marginalized ppl.”
“The US has never shown leadership in safeguarding human rights of folks it othered But as we fight against injustice here in the mvmnt for Blk lives, we must stand against injustice everywhere. Inhumanities against the Palestinian ppl cannot be tolerated or justified,” she added in the tweet thread.
Last month, she appeared at a town hall meeting sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s Community Relations Council.
“I also understand and truly believe the need that we have for Jewish folks globally to have a safe haven, to have refuge and a place to be safe,” Lee said, according to The Jewish Chronicle. “I think our role has to be in how we are ensuring the safety of all folks over there right now.”
According to the JC, Lee said she didn’t know if Israel was an apartheid state. “I don’t necessarily know the answer to that,” she said. “I don’t know that I am as well-versed in the intricacies of this.”
Steve Irwin told the JC that a strong, democratic, pluralistic state of Israel, where its inhabitants are safe, is good for the world. “We need to continue to support Israel’s right to exist,” he said. “Israel is not perfect, but Israel is a democracy,” he added. “Antisemitism is not acceptable, and threats to Israel’s existence and security and America’s support of Israel is just not acceptable. I will be a staunch supporter of Israel.”
A spokesperson for UDP-AIPAC affiliated Super PAC, added: “Each of these races has a candidate who supports the US Israel relationship and a candidate who would work to undermine these relationships.
“We are trying to build the broadest coalition possible in congress to support the US-Israel relationship and we are involved in these races and still evaluating other races where there is an issue with the support for Israel.”
On the other hand, Laura Birnbaum, J Street’s National Political Director said that AIPAC is “currently fundraising for 109 Republican endorsees who voted to overturn the 2020 election and at the same time they’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking progressives and bolstering their endorsees as the ‘real Democrat’ in primary races.”
“It’s outrageous that an organization that’s going all in on pro-insurrectionist Republicans thinks it has any business telling Democrats who the best candidate in these primaries is,” she said.
“Democratic values are the foundation of the US-Israel relationship and AIPAC is threatening those foundations. That it’s doing so under the banner of a SuperPAC called the ‘United Democracy Project’ is truly absurd.”
She went on to say that “while they’re fundraising for these 109 Republicans and attacking any Democrat who criticizes the settlement movement or voices support for Palestinian
freedoms, we’re backing pro-Israel, pro-peace candidates who know that our shared values of justice, equality and democracy are vital to securing a better future for all Israelis and Palestinians.”