Stances on Israel lead to divisions
Democrats fret over Gaza deaths
PITTSBURGH — As Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh observed a special evening of prayer Oct. 22 for the Israeli captives in the Gaza Strip, Representative Summer Lee, the progressive Democrat whose district includes the synagogue, paid her respects. She was late to arrive and could not stay long, but the rabbi, Seth Adelson, called her chief of staff the next day to offer his thanks.
Then Wednesday, to the rabbi’s dismay, Lee was one of only 10 members of the House — nine of them Democrats from the party’s left flank — to vote against a bipartisan resolution “standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.”
Two days later, the Jewish community of Pittsburgh solemnly marked the fifth anniversary of the murder of 11 of its members by a white supremacist.
“I am a little disappointed that she has not been more proactive in finding the right language and forum in which to speak to and support her Jewish constituents on Israel,” Adelson said in an interview, speaking slowly to choose his words carefully. His own son has been called to active duty in the Israeli military, and he added that the division in Lee’s district — racial, religious, ethnic — over Israel and the Palestinians “is not helpful.”
Perhaps nowhere in the United States is there a Jewish community more shaken by the wanton slaughter of Israelis by Hamas terrorists Oct. 7 than in Pittsburgh, where the deadliest antisemitic attack in the nation’s history was perpetrated by a shooter who told police, “I just want to kill Jews.”
Those still-raw wounds could reopen as political leaders inside and outside the community exploit divisions over Israeli and Palestinian suffering — and amplify a brewing fight over Lee, Pittsburgh’s freshman representative in Congress.
Lee, 35, won a heated Democratic primary in 2022 against a Jewish lawyer, Steve Irwin, who was backed by much of the Democratic establishment and by pro-Israel groups such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Democratic Majority for Israel. Her victory was hailed as a breakthrough: She was the first Black woman elected to Congress from Pennsylvania.
But the newfound unity for Democrats that came with that triumph has been frayed since Hamas’s attack and with Israel’s punishing response. On Friday, in an interview as she headed to a remembrance of the attack five years before, she railed against Israeli actions that “look increasingly like a genocide of innocent Gazans, half of them children.” And she conceded: “I don’t think there’s a way to make everyone happy in politics. My job is to make everyone safe.
“Israel is one issue; it’s an important issue to a subsection of our community,” she said. “But to pretend it’s the only issue is insulting and damaging.”
Such talk has already drawn Lee a challenger in the April 23 primary: Bhavini Patel, a 29year-old member of the borough council in suburban Edgewood, who suggested as the setting for an interview a cafe in Squirrel Hill, the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Pittsburgh where the Tree of Life shooting took place.
Patel’s could be one of many Democratic primary challenges buoyed by the confrontations between staunch defenders of Israel and lawmakers promoting Palestinian rights.