Trump says expanding Abraham Accords will be ‘absolute priority’ if he wins election

Former President Donald Trump said in an interview released on Sunday that expanding the Abraham Accords would be “an absolute priority” if he wins the election.

“Everyone wants to be in it,” he said in an interview with Al Arabiya, the Saudi-owned news channel, claiming he would have added “12 to 15 countries literally within a period of a year” if he had won the 2020 presidential election. “If I win, that will be an absolute priority,” he added. “It’s peace in the Middle East — we need it.”

Trump also reiterated his controversial claim that Iran would have joined the Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab neighbors, during a hypothetical second term.

“I make the statement, and it sounds foolish but it’s not foolish — I think even Iran would have been in, because Iran was desperate to make a deal,” he said. “They had no money.”

He declined to elaborate on how he would address Iran’s efforts to create a nuclear weapon while in office, even as he recently suggested he is open to talks with the Islamic Republic about a renewed nuclear deal that he himself ended while in office.

“They won’t acquire it,” he said. “Now they may get it if they get it very quickly. I’m not president, so I won’t have much to do with that.”

Trump also did not discuss whether he would seek to include Saudi Arabia in the Accords, as the Gulf kingdom has indicated that forging diplomatic ties would be contingent on Israel accepting a Palestinian state. 

In the interview, focused on Middle East policy, Trump described Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman as a “visionary” and a “great guy” who is “respected all over the world.” He vowed to bolster U.S. ties with Saudi Arabia, saying Vice President Kamala Harris would damage the relationship.

Trump argued that U.S. relations with Israel would be strengthened under his leadership, suggesting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is more receptive to hearing from him than President Joe Biden. “He does listen to me,” Trump said of Netanyahu, speaking after the killing last week of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in Gaza.

Trump speculated that many of the hostages still being held by Hamas in Gaza have already been killed. “I’m sure many of them are dead,” he said in the interview. “It’s a very sad thing. What’s going to happen when they find out that there are very few hostages, which is probably what they’re going to find out.”

“Even early on, I think a lot of those hostages were dead,” he added. “It’s not even believable when you think about it, but I think pretty early on, there were a lot that were gone.”

Repeating a claim he has made several times during the campaign, Trump said that Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack would never have occurred if he had been president.

Without elaborating on a plan, he said he would stop the war in Gaza if elected and that he would bring stability to the region. “If I win, we’re going to have peace in the Middle East, and soon,” he said.

How Wesley Bell engineered a come-from-behind victory over Cori Bush

When Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) offered her concession speech on Tuesday night after losing the Democratic primary to St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell, she unleashed a tirade against the powerful pro-Israel lobby, which spent millions to defeat her.

Her loss, the Squad member said, “takes some strings off,” and she vowed, “AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down.”

Yet interviews with a number of St. Louis-area strategists watching the race reveal that one of its central narratives — that heavy spending by national pro-Israel groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel fueled Bush’s loss — is only one part of a complex picture that explains Bush’s political downfall. In fact, local issues, rather than her strident criticisms of Israel, may have played a more important role and gave pro-Israel groups an opening, they say.

Bush ultimately lost her seat because she fell out of step with her district on a range of key issues — including the bipartisan infrastructure bill and support for defunding police, while failing to provide adequate constituent service in her home district, according to strategists.

The AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project spent more than $8.5 million in the race, while Democratic Majority for Israel spent more than $500,000. But those watching the race say those attack ads wouldn’t have been effective without Bush’s myriad political vulnerabilities, most of them unrelated to her views on Israel.

Braxton Payne, a Democratic strategist in St. Louis, who did not work for either side, said anti-Bush messaging in the district focused not on her views on Israel but on vulnerabilities including missing votes, voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and child tax credit and otherwise breaking with the Biden administration. 

Those knocks on Bush all featured prominently in the UDP messaging campaign in the district. Anjan Mukherjee, a spokesperson for Bell, said they were also among the campaign’s key priorities.

“When she ran four years ago, one of the main things that she had talked about was serving St. Louis, and I heard from a lot of voters that there wasn’t great outreach,” Payne added. “A lot of them said that they didn’t see her come back to the district a lot — so that being a narrative especially among older voters, that I heard a lot.”

Payne said Bush had been holding fewer town halls for constituents and failing to show up for ward meetings as she did when she was first running for office.

Some in the district also saw Bush as a “ladder climber” who had failed to keep her focus on the district, focusing instead on creating a national profile, Payne said.

Payne added that the district, especially older Black voters, remains loyal to the Democratic establishment and took umbrage with Bush’s breaks with President Joe Biden. The district includes both the city of St. Louis and the surrounding St. Louis County.

Bush’s votes against the infrastructure bill lost her the support of some of the city’s key unions in the construction trade, which backed Bell. Those endorsements, which Bush’s 2022 challenger didn’t have, gave Bell “more credibility among a lot of traditional Democratic voters,” Payne said, and created a permission structure to break with Bush.

Darius Jones, the founder of the National Black Empowerment Action Fund, which sought to highlight Bush’s record to the Black community, said that polling found that public safety, jobs, the economy and cost of living were key issues that led Black voters to be “disenchanted” with Bush. Jones is also a former AIPAC staffer.

Jones said polling and canvassing showed Bush’s positions in favor of defunding the police and legalizing drugs hurt her support in the district, as did her vote against the infrastructure bill and other Biden-backed legislation and her opposition to government contracts for Boeing, which has a manufacturing facility in the city.

Jones said that Bush’s focus on “doing things to kind of advance [her] own persona” and “divisive” activist posture also hurt her among Black voters, based on polling.

Payne said Bell is well-known, especially in the St. Louis County portion of the district, having won two elections for county prosecutor, representing an early vanguard of the progressive movement.

“He was the original progressive in this area that took on a more traditional Democrat in a time where there wasn’t a Squad … and he won with little to no money,” said Payne, who worked for the campaign of the incumbent prosecutor Bell unseated.

“He became very popular with the progressive groups, so Cori Bush trying to hit him [as] a Republican or wolf in sheep’s clothing … didn’t resonate with a lot of Democratic and progressive voters and older Democrats” who had been familiar with Bell for years, he explained.

Payne said polling showed that Bell’s favorability remained consistent throughout the campaign, indicating that Bush’s hits on Bell — including attacking him for receiving backing from AIPAC — didn’t land. 

Jon Reinish, a Democratic strategist who worked with several groups active in St. Louis, said that polling in the district reflected that Bush’s anti-AIPAC messaging and failure to focus on local issues weren’t effective, particularly among Black voters.

Payne said Bush might have “moved the needle a little bit” if she had deployed earlier an ad showing the father of Michael Brown, who was killed by police in Ferguson, Mo., criticizing Bell. But Payne wasn’t sure it would have been enough to save her.

Payne theorized that Bush’s funding challenges — she was putting hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of campaign funds toward legal bills in an ongoing federal investigation, held her back from a more aggressive advertising effort. But he said that the scandal itself, that Bush paid her now-husband as a security guard using campaign funds, didn’t feature prominently in the race.

Payne said that younger white progressives in St. Louis city are likely to be among Bush’s strongest voting blocs, but turnout in the city was down 10% from 2020, indicating that Bush’s base wasn’t energized to keep her in Congress.

Mukherjee said that Bell had outperformed the campaign’s expectations in the city, adding that the campaign had detected a surge in momentum in his favor in the final weeks of the race.

While ward-level results aren’t public yet, Bell’s success in St. Louis County suggests strength among older Black voters, as well as the Jewish population concentrated in that area of the district, Payne added.

The “constant bombardment” of ads by UDP and other groups in the district undeniably helped Bell, Payne added, pointing to his surge in head-to-head polls from well behind Bush, Payne said.

But Reinish argued that Bush “did this to herself … Cori Bush would not have been vulnerable had she not been so far out of the mainstream, both as a messenger and as a legislator.”

Stacey Newman, a former Democratic state lawmaker who ran Jewish outreach for Bell’s campaign, told JI that she had been a Bush supporter, but that her rhetoric after Oct. 7 was a breaking point. Newman said she was contacted shortly after the Hamas attack by a group of St. Louis politicos — many non-Jewish — about an effort to recruit a challenger to Bush over concerns about her overall record and stances.

She said that the group had discussions with another candidate who had been considering a run, but ultimately declined to do so, and settled on Bell as the strongest challenger. 

They had begun to plan outreach efforts to Bell when Bell preempted them, independently deciding to drop his bid for Missouri’s Senate seat and run for Bush’s House seat instead. She said she’s not aware of any other recruitment efforts that were launched against Bush.

“[Bell] says there are several reasons why he jumped in, but I know in my heart that Oct. 7 was a prime reason for him,” Newman said.

Payne said, to his knowledge, Bell made the jump from Missouri’s Senate race into the House race because he realized he didn’t have a shot at winning the Democratic primary against Lucas Kunce.

“But he also saw a pathway in better representing St. Louis,” Payne said.

Mark Mellman, the chairman of Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm, DMFI PAC, told JI that he recognized the primary would be difficult from the start. The group commissioned polling in January that showed Bell trailing Bush by 16 points, a deficit he recalled as “off-putting to some people we talked to.”

“But we saw the vulnerability there beneath the surface,” he stressed. “There was no question that it was tougher than the Bowman-Latimer race, but it was possible,” he said of the primary in New York’s 16th Congressional District that saw Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeating Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Parallels have been drawn between the two races, including both candidates’ rejections of the infrastructure package and alleged weaknesses in engaging with their districts, in addition to massive pro-Israel spending and strong local Jewish engagement.

In the closing weeks of the race, DMFI PAC released its final poll, with Bell leading Bush by six points — a margin commensurate with the result on Tuesday night.

“What we saw initially was that Bush was actually a pretty popular person personally,” Mellman told JI. But voters, he said, had “serious doubts about her job performance.”

Bell, on the other hand, “was fairly well-known” in the district, Mellman said. But voters weren’t familiar with his policy initiatives as a local elected official, including a program to divert low-level offenders from incarceration that was among the issues DMFI PAC highlighted in positive ads to define the county prosecutor as a “progressive fighter.”

Patrick Dorton, a spokesperson for UDP, attributed the group’s success, in part, to the barrage of ads it ran on what he described as “the issues voters most cared about.” He cited polling that showed economic issues were particularly “important” in the district, noting that Bush’s vote in 2021 against a bipartisan infrastructure bill “was a top issue that helped determine the race.”

“What else became clear was that Bush had lost a lot of local support,” Dorton said, adding that her constituents “cared that she didn’t show up for a ton of votes and had never passed a bill into law.”

Dorton said it was “not true” that UDP had targeted Bush because she called for a cease-fire in Gaza, as some of her allies have suggested. Instead, the group “focused on” Bush because of what he called her “atrocious” record on Israel, pointing to her vote against Iron Dome funding as well as a House resolution condemning Hamas, which she recently declined to call a terrorist group.

Bush, he argued, had “one of the worst anti-Israel records in Congress.”

Bell’s campaign also ran an aggressive outreach campaign to Jewish voters, which was supplemented by nonpartisan voter turnout operations from  local nonpartisan groups, St. Louis Together — which said Jewish turnout hit “historic” levels — and St. Louis Votes, as well as Agudath Israel of America.

Newman said that antisemitic hatred directed at the campaign “ballooned” in recent weeks, including frequent and aggressive protests outside the campaign office and vandalized yard signs. She thinks that that helped motivate Jewish voters to turn out for Bell.

“I think particularly volunteers and people were seeing that … they were feeling it,” Newman said. She also linked concerns back to anti-Israel protests at St. Louis’ Washington University earlier this year, blocks from the campaign office

Newman said that the Bell campaign had also brought the St. Louis Jewish community together, across partisan and denominational lines, in a way she’s never seen before.

Benjamin Singer, CEO of St. Louis Together, said the group and St. Louis Votes harnessed volunteers’ personal social networks, contact lists from synagogues and the Jewish Community Relations Council to help bring Jewish voters to the polls and provide information about early voting.

He said they aimed to “replicate” a nonpartisan Jewish turnout effort in New York’s 16th District that brought Jewish voters to the polls with the message that “antisemitism is on the ballot.”

“I think our community needs to be proud and loud and show up,” Singer said. “Our community, every community, deserves to be heard.”

Bush’s concession speech on Tuesday night, with its threat against AIPAC, will likely only further fuel fears in the Jewish community. As of early Wednesday evening, Bush had yet to call Bell to offer her concession directly, Mukherjee added.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned Bush’s comments.

“It is important that we be very mindful of what we say. This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and divisive and incredibly unhelpful,” she said. “We’re going to continue to condemn any type of political rhetoric in that way, in that vein, and so it is important to be mindful in what we say and how we say it. But we cannot have this type of inflammatory, divisive language in our political discourse. Not now, not ever.”

Bell said in an interview that Bush’s comments are “disappointing … at this point it’s time for us to all work together if the vibrancy and success of this region is the priority.”

Payne said Bush’s comments suggesting that she’d been held back by “strings” before but was now free to unleash her full opinions were “very interesting” because he’s never known her or other committed activists to restrain their full views. “What she said last night was kind of jarring to me. Who’s advising you not to do things and what are you going to do next?”

Newman, Bell’s Jewish outreach director and a former state lawmaker, said she’s been concerned about her safety during the campaign  — something she said she’d never experienced before — and even needed to call police when she was alone at the campaign office on one occasion. Newman said that Bush’s closing speech perpetuated those fears. 

In a video released by AIPAC, Bell thanked the pro-Israel group for its support and vowed that he’d continue to be an ally.

“We’re not getting across the finish line without all of you,” Bell said. “We know how important it is to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters, to stand with Israel, and as the Democratic nominee … I want you to know that you will always have an ally with me.”

Jewish Insider’s features reporter Matthew Kassel contributed reporting.

Wesley Bell defeats Cori Bush in Missouri primary 

Wesley Bell defeated Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) on Tuesday in a closely watched primary, becoming the second Democratic challenger of the cycle to unseat a Squad-aligned incumbent.

Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis County, prevailed over Bush, a two-term congresswoman, in an upset that followed Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s (D-NY) loss to Westchester County Executive George Latimer in June. 

Bell won the race by a comfortable five-point margin over Bush, 51-46%.

“I am deeply honored and humbled by the trust the people of this district have placed in me,” Bell said in a statement. “This victory belongs to every volunteer, every supporter, and every voter who believes in our vision for a better future.”

Pro-Israel groups invested heavily in the race to boost Bell’s campaign against Bush, whose hostile views toward Israel faced backlash in the district. 

The super PAC affiliated with AIPAC, United Democracy Project, was by far the biggest spender, dropping more than $8.5 million into a race that became one of the most expensive elections of the cycle.

“AIPAC congratulates Wesley Bell for his consequential victory over an incumbent anti-Israel detractor,” the group said in a statement. “Once again, a progressive pro-Israel Democrat has prevailed over a candidate who represents the extremist fringe that is hostile to the Jewish state.”

UDP added in a statement that, “Bell’s win tonight, along with George Latimer’s (D) victory over Rep. Jamaal Bowman and John McGuire’s (R) defeat of Rep. Bob Good, is further proof that being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics on both sides of the aisle.”

Mark Mellman, the chairman of Democratic Majority for Israel, which also endorsed Bell, said the results underscored that “being pro-Israel is not just wise policy, but also smart politics.”

“And there’s another valuable lesson in these results — Democrats do not want division or extremism,” Mellman added in a statement.

The local Jewish community was also engaged in the primary, including grassroots efforts to increase voter turnout. Nearly 50% of the district’s Orthodox community, for instance, voted early in the election, according to A.D. Motzen, the national director of government affairs at Agudath Israel of America.

“Just from what I saw during early voting and today, the amount of Jewish voter turnout was incredible,” said Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham of Congregation B’nai Amoona, a Conservative synagogue in the St. Louis area, who supported Bell. “The rallying that took place is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“It feels amazing on many levels,” Abraham added, of Bell’s victory. “Most importantly we now have someone representing us who is willing to sit down and listen to us and have a meaningful dialogue on the issues. We also were able to get a blatant antisemite out of Congress.”

Additional reporting contributed by JI’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod

Vance: Dem antisemitism thwarted Shapiro’s veepstakes prospects

Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), the Republican nominee for vice president, said on Tuesday morning that if Vice President Kamala Harris did not select Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, then the decision would be due to what he identified as antisemitism within the Democratic Party.

“If it’s not Josh Shapiro,” Vance told radio host Hugh Hewitt hours before Harris announced she had chosen Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, “I think they will have not picked Shapiro, frankly, out of antisemitism in their own caucus and in their own party. I think it’s disgraceful the Democrats have gotten to this point where it’s even an open conversation.”

Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat who was among the finalists on the vice presidential short list, had in recent weeks faced growing resistance from an organized campaign led by far-left activists who expressed vehement opposition to his support for Israel and criticism of extreme anti-Israel campus protesters.

The campaign drew charges of antisemitism for singling out Shapiro, the only Jewish contender under serious consideration, whose views on Israel largely aligned with other candidates including Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Walz, the latter of whom emerged as a progressive favorite.

While Shapiro and Harris had for the most part publicly ignored the far-left pressure campaign, Vance suggested that it damaged the Democratic Party’s ability to counter antisemitism from within its own ranks.

Shapiro, he said, “has in some ways had to run away from a lot of his biography over the last few months because the far left doesn’t like the fact that he is a Jewish American.”

“We have to be honest about this fact,” Vance told Hewitt. “We have to call it out.”

Walz began his political career as a moderate, but as governor he’s moved to the left

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former moderate House lawmaker who has governed as a liberal as his state’s chief executive, has emerged as the favored veepstakes candidate among progressives. 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said after meeting with Walz over the weekend that he was “very impressed” by the potential vice-presidential contender. “I think you have an excellent governor who understands the needs of working families,” Sanders told Minnesota Public Radio.

“I hope very much that the vice president elects a running mate who will speak up and take on powerful corporate interests,” Sanders continued. “I think Tim Walz is somebody who could do that.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, has also touted Walz as her top choice, telling reporters late last month that “the things that he’s been able to do” as governor had made him appealing to her members. She pointed to his pro-labor record both in Washington and in St. Paul, his military service, and him being from a “rural town.”

“I do believe that Gov. Tim Walz has all of the qualities that the vice president needs to balance out the ticket. He’s a veteran, a teachers union member and obviously somebody that would be exciting in many ways,” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) told the Star Tribune last week. 

Walz also has the support of the two senators from his home state: Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Tina Smith (D-MN). 

The Minnesota governor has evolved politically since first entering political life. He was elected to the House during the Democratic wave of 2006, scoring an upset in a GOP-leaning rural district that had looked unlikely to flip. Walz held onto the southern Minnesota seat for six terms, assembling a largely moderate voting record in the process that included support for gun rights, Israel and the Keystone XL pipeline. 

That voting record earned him the endorsement of the National Rifle Association, something the advocacy group revoked during Walz’s successful 2018 gubernatorial campaign, when he ran on a platform of tightening gun restrictions. 

Walz also spoke at AIPAC’s 2010 conference, underscoring the importance of the U.S.-Israel alliance to the pro-Israel group. “Israel is our truest and closest ally in the region, with a commitment to values of personal freedoms and liberties, surrounded by a pretty tough neighborhood,” he said in his address that year.

Walz, a former high school geography teacher and football coach, began shifting to the left once he became governor and accelerated a progressive push when his party won full control of the state legislature in 2022 — during his successful bid for a second term in office. 

With a Democratic majority in the state House and Senate, Walz signed legislation ensuring protections for abortion access into law, as well as bills banning conversion therapy and ensuring that controversial gender-affirming care practices that are outlawed in some red states are permitted in Minnesota. 

He has also had to navigate choppy political waters in the Gopher State over the issue of criminal justice reform and anger over Israel’s war in Gaza. 

Walz was in his first term as governor when George Floyd was killed at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, sparking months of racial justice protests nationwide and calls for the U.S. Congress and state legislatures to pursue criminal justice reform efforts. He came out at the time for “substantive police reform,” eventually signing a bipartisan public safety bill into law, but stopped shy of ever formally backing far-left efforts to defund the police.  

Walz received widespread criticism for his handling of the violent riots that enveloped the Twin Cities after Floyd’s death; the governor called in the National Guard for help but rejected offers of federal military assistance. Walz later acknowledged his initial response to the riots had been an “abject failure.”

Minnesota is home to a sizable Muslim population, many of whom are represented by Omar in the Minneapolis area. More than 18% of the state’s Democratic primary voters chose to write in “uncommitted” rather than supporting President Joe Bidenas a means of protesting his support of Israel. Omar, a vocal critic of Israel, said that she did not vote in Minnesota’s presidential primary, though she praised uncommitted voters for using the primary to send a message to Biden. 

Walz said at the time that the party needed to focus on winning back those anti-Israel voters rather than dismissing their criticisms, though he also argued that centrist voters were also in play. 

“These are voters that are deeply concerned, as we all are. The situation in Gaza is intolerable, and I think trying to find a lasting, two state solution, certainly the president’s move towards humanitarian aid and asking us to get to a cease-fire, that’s what they’re asking, to be heard,” Walz told CNN on the evening of Super Tuesday. “That’s what they should be doing. We’ve gone through this before. We know that now, we make sure, we’ve got eight months. We start bringing these folks back in. We listen to what they’re saying. That’s a healthy thing that’s happening here.”

“Take them seriously. Their message is clear that they think this is an intolerable situation and that we can do more, and I think the president is hearing that,” he added.

Walz was vocal in his condemnation of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and Israel’s duty to defend itself, ordering all U.S. and Minnesota flags to be flown at half-staff in honor of the victims. He declined to respond to anti-Israel activists who descended on his home urging him to divest from Israel, even canceling a meeting with the local chapter of American Muslims for Palestine last month because of the group’s insistence on discussing divestment. 

As Jewish students began reporting feeling unsafe on their college campuses amid anti-Israel protests, Walz condemned any hostility and antisemitism while still expressing sympathy with the protesters’ broader message about the suffering in Gaza.

“I think when Jewish students are telling us they feel unsafe in that, we need to believe them, and I do believe them,” Walz told PBS in April. “Creating a space where political dissent or political rallying can happen is one thing. Intimidation is another.”

“All of us agree the situation in Gaza is intolerable. What happened on Oct. 7 was intolerable,” he added.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported Walz received AIPAC’s endorsement in 2010. While Walz spoke at the AIPAC conference that year, the group did not issue endorsements during that time. 

Wesley Bell builds momentum in final days of Missouri primary

A new poll commissioned by Democratic Majority for Israel’s political arm suggests that momentum is building for Wesley Bell as he prepares to take on Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) in a hotly contested primary next week.

The poll shows Bell, the prosecuting attorney for St. Louis, with a six-point lead over Bush, a prominent Squad-affiliated lawmaker who has faced backlash from Jewish voters over her strident criticism of Israel. Among 400 likely Democratic primary voters surveyed between July 21-24, Bell led Bush, 48-42%, according to a polling memo shared on Monday.

His performance was an improvement over a previous poll released by DMFI PAC and conducted in mid-June, which showed Bell — at 43% — with a one-point lead in the race. Both polls were conducted by the Mellman Group. 

Other recent polls have shown Bell strongly positioned to prevail as he seeks to become the second challenger this cycle to unseat a Squad incumbent, replicating Westchester County Executive George Latimer’s victory over Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in New York last month.

In an echo of that race, the St. Louis primary has quietly become one of the most expensive of the congressional cycle — with a diverse coalition of outside groups spending millions to boost Bell’s campaign. The biggest spender has been AIPAC’s super PAC, which has invested more than $7 million on ads and mailers.

For its part, DMFI PAC, which is also backing Bell, has spent nearly $500,000 in the race. “As voters hear from the candidates,” Mark Mellman, DMFI PAC’s chairman, said in a statement, “Democrats in Missouri’s 1st District are increasingly disillusioned with Bush and attracted to Bell.”

Cori Bush becomes the latest Squad member to pick up a pro-Israel challenger

Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) has emerged as one of the most stridently anti-Israel voices in Congress since Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7 — to which Bush responded by calling for the end of U.S. aid to Israel. On Monday, Bush became the latest anti-Israel House member to pick up a primary challenger, who cites Bush’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict as one of the reasons he’s joining the race.

Wesley Bell, the prosecuting attorney of St. Louis County, announced on Monday that he was ending his candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat in Missouri — which he launched in June, hoping to unseat Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) — to instead challenge Bush for her House seat.

“As a country, we have to be reliable partners. We have to stand by our fellow democracies, and we have to stand against terrorism,” Bell told Jewish Insider on Monday afternoon. “Hamas is a terrorist organization and I will not waver in my support for Israel.”

In a press conference announcing his candidacy, Bell said, “We cannot give aid and comfort to terrorist organizations.” Pressed on that comment by JI, Bell noted that Bush had voted against funding for the Iron Dome missile-defense system, and said that the U.S.’s foes, including Hamas, “pay attention” to public divisions in the U.S.  

“They want propaganda to try and create confusion and disinformation,” he said. “I think it matters a lot. And then obviously how one votes. There’s certain things that we cannot politicize and that’s one of them, in my opinion. And as we see — Republicans and Democrats alike, one of the few issues that we all come together on.”

He said that the Israel-Hamas war and Bush’s comments about it had factored into his decision to challenge her for her House seat.

“It contributed to [my decision] for the surface reasons that those comments were offensive on many levels, but also from a national security level as well,” Bell said. “It’s going to take steady and effective leadership to ensure that we’re able to bring about peaceful resolutions and that often means standing with fellow democracies.”

Bell declined to say if he had been in conversation with AIPAC or Democratic Majority for Israel, the pro-Israel PACs working to recruit challengers to Squad members. But he said that he has strong relationships with Jewish leaders in the district, and that recent events have increased the calls from supporters for him to run for the House seat, instead of the Senate.

AIPAC spokesperson Marshall Wittmann told JI, that “there will be a time for political action, but right now our priority is building and sustaining congressional support for Israel’s fight to permanently dismantle Hamas, which perpetrated this barbaric, terrorist attack on the Jewish state.” DMFI did not respond to a request for comment.

More broadly, Bell said constituents and supporters have been encouraging him to run for the House seat for some time, since even before he entered the Senate race.

Bell, who traveled to Israel in 2017 with the American Israel Education Foundation, a nonprofit linked to AIPAC, said he’d seen firsthand the importance of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Bush voted against supplemental Iron Dome funding in 2021, after the last war between Israel and Hamas.

He explained that while visiting a kibbutz, residents informed them that they had just seconds to head to bomb shelters when alarms sounded in the kibbutz. Forty-five minutes after the group left, sirens went off in the kibbutz, although all of the incoming rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome. If not for a scheduling conflict, the group might still have been in the kibbutz when the attack happened, he said.

“It’s one of those things that you have to be there to fully understand what our Jewish brothers and sisters and our Israeli brothers and sisters have to deal with,” he said.

Bell emphasized the need to keep the possibility of a two-state solution alive. But he said he did not know what the path to a peaceful settlement would look like at this stage.

“Israel has to be able to have basic security, it has to be able to defend its borders. Terrorist organizations — we cannot tolerate those, and Israel has a right to defend themselves,” Bell explained. “Sometimes the narrative is as if Israel completely controls whether there’s going to be peace or not. And Israel did not attack Hamas. Hamas attacked Israel and attacked innocent people and kidnapped folks, and reportings of rapes.”

Bell said he supports continued military aid to Israel and opposed conditioning such aid, noting that Israel “cannot just sit back and allow someone to attack it and hope that rockets don’t get through.”

On his trip to Israel, Bell said he was struck by the security situation on the ground, noting that the group’s guides had told them it would be unsafe for them to visit Bethlehem.

“One thing that I know is that if the terrorists, Hamas and these organizations laid down their arms, there will be peace in the region. But as we know, if Israel was to lay down their arms, they would be destroyed,” he said. “And going back to 1947, the United Nations negotiating the [partition plan] — Israel accepted it and the Arab nations did not.”

Bush, for her part, took to X on Sunday to accuse Israel of an “ethnic cleansing campaign” in Gaza, claiming that “millions of people in Gaza with nowhere to go [are] being slaughtered” and again calling for the end of U.S. support to Israel.

Bell called the surge of antisemitism that has occurred in the United States and worldwide since the Hamas conflict “disturbing” and “troubling.”

“I think we’re better than that,” he said. “Obviously we have our challenges as a country, we have our history as a country. But I want to believe that we are trending in the direction of tolerance and recognizing that our superpower has always been our diversity… We have to continue to counteract this disinformation… [and] continue to support folks who are going to make the right decisions and be on the right side of history.”

Looking at the looming threat in the Middle East, Bell said that the U.S. needs to “do everything that we can” to ensure that Iran cannot obtain a nuclear weapon. He said that U.S. lawmakers should present a unified front behind the president’s efforts to “as much as possible handle and manage these situations diplomatically, so that we can avoid larger conflicts.”

“But I think we all know the stakes, I think we all realize the gravity of what’s going on,” he continued.

In areas well beyond the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bell emphasized repeatedly during his press conference and to JI that the district needs “steady and effective leadership” that has not been seen from Bush. 

He criticized her for voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the bill to raise the debt limit — accusing her of joining Republicans in trying to use that issue to “get other things that are on their agendas… that don’t represent the values of a majority of Americans.”

He also lamented her support for defunding the police, a movement he said had given Republicans ammunition against Democrats and contributed to Democrats losing the House in the 2022 midterms. He highlighted his own history of working with local law enforcement as a prosecutor.

Bush faced a primary from state Sen. Steven Roberts in 2022, but Roberts lost by around 40 percentage points. His candidacy was weighed down by multiple accusations of sexual assault, and Roberts’ own record included a series of votes against pro-Israel bills, which he disavowed on the campaign trail.

Missouri State Sen. Brian Williams was floated at Monday’s press conference as another potential primary challenger to Bush. Williams issued a strong statement in support of Israel and condemning Hamas following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

“Hamas terrorists have slaughtered hundreds of innocent women, children and Israeli civilians. This is not about resistance to occupation. This is about fear and hatred being made manifest in violence,” Williams said. “I stand with Israel. Missouri stands with Israel. America stands with Israel. Our nation must do what we can to help the Israeli people defend themselves against terrorism and protect innocent families from violence.”