Far-left Colorado congressional candidate Melat Kiros backtracked on Sunday from her conciliatory tone in a PBS interview on the need for progressives to formulate a policy on Israel that does not engage in antisemitism.

Appearing on “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover” on Saturday morning, Kiros, who ousted incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO) in a Denver-area district in June, said her “greatest concern right now is that the State of Israel is losing support all across the political spectrum” and that progressives are “leaving a vacuum” for far-right commentators like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens to fill by “pretending to care about Palestinian safety when really it’s just masking their overt hatred for Jewish people.”

“If we are not presenting our vision of what we believe in with our democratic values — that extends not to the Palestinian people but to the Israeli people and the Jewish people — you know, that land has a distinctly Jewish character, a distinctly Christian character, a distinctly Muslim character,” she said. “We, I think, are doing a disservice to the people of that region by not offering our progressive vision in a way that isn’t immediately swatted down as, you know, bigoted or antisemitism.”

Kiros’ comments marked a short-lived departure from her stances on the campaign trail, where she had been vocally critical of Israel and was criticized for refusing to deem the 2025 firebombing attack on a march raising awareness for Israeli hostages in Boulder as antisemitic. Her candidacy came after she was fired from the law firm Sidley Austin in 2023 for writing a public letter denouncing the hundreds of law firms that signed a petition calling on law schools to do a better job addressing antisemitism on their campuses, a letter she said wrongly conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

The 29-year-old doctoral student, who was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America in her campaign, quickly reversed course after the interview aired. Responding on Sunday to criticism on X from Al Jazeera producer Sana Saeed, Kiros said she “fumbled this line, plain and simple.”

“To be clear, my foreign policy priority is ending Israel’s occupation, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine. I also reject the notion that anti-Zionism is antisemitism, and it’s important that we distinguish the two in order to combat actual antisemitism,” she continued.

Kiros said she had been trying to express that as the Democratic Party “refuses to lead morally on this issue, they are letting antisemites on the right co-opt the movement for Palestinian liberation while giving fodder to AIPAC talking points.”

“But Sana is right, a movement for liberation must center the Palestinians being oppressed, occupied, and systematically exterminated — and the islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism used to justify genocide is too often ignored.”