The leading Republican candidates in a New Jersey swing district that President Donald Trump narrowly carried in 2024 hold questionable track records on Israel and antisemitism as the GOP targets the district in the midterms next year. 

Rosemary Pino, the Clifton, N.J., City Council member who recently entered the race against Rep. Nellie Pou (D-NJ), posted a video last month from a Palestinian flag-raising event in Clifton where speakers accused Israel of genocide.

“The Palestine Flag Raising event was more than a gathering. To everyone who showed up, spoke up, and raised their voices alongside the flag thank you. Your presence matters. Your solidarity matters,” Pino wrote in a Facebook post she shared alongside clips from the event.

The event, hosted by the Palestinian American Community Center in Clifton, included denunciations by several speakers of Israel, and featured a condemnation of the Trump administration’s deportation policies that it says are aimed at combating antisemitism.

Speakers accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza and of deliberately manufacturing a famine in the territory, which a speaker described as a “war crime,” and called for “no money for wars.”

Another speaker at the event condemned the Trump administration’s detention of Columbia University anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil, saying, “His story is a reminder that this system seeks to fracture us and oppress and repress our people. It’s part of a broader system designed to criminalize dissent, fracture our communities and punish those who resist it.”

Pino said in a statement to Jewish Insider, “The City of Clifton conducts more than a dozen flag raisings every year. As a Councilwoman, I attend as many of the flag raisings as I can. I attend the flag raisings to show that I care about the various communities in our city, not as a political nor ideological statement.”

“I support the State of Israel, its right to exist, and its right to defend itself,” she added. “I believe that what happened on October 7th was a horrific and evil terrorist act by Hamas. Israel is a strong ally of the United States, and I believe we must maintain that alliance, not cut it.”

Pino continued, “Like President Trump, I support a ceasefire and an end to the hostilities in Gaza. I support a two-state solution where Hamas’s rule of terror ends. I support ensuring humanitarian aid is made available to those who need it. I believe President Trump is working to bring lasting peace to the region, and I support those efforts.”

The PACC organization has a long record of anti-Israel activity. The group sent a bus of community members to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 2024 speech to Congress, which devolved into violence and vandalism of D.C.’s Union Station, and the group’s magazine published a poem in its March 2024 issue advocating for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” — a call for the elimination of Israel.

The flag-raising event Pino attended did not, however, include some of the eliminationist anti-Israel and anti-American rhetoric and slogans that have proliferated at other pro-Palestinian events in the past two years, and speakers also called for peace, justice and security for all, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 2023, Pino, as a member of the city council, also expressed concerns about legislation that would have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism in Clifton, highlighting concerns from the Arab-American community, according to contemporaneous news reports.

The resolution was ultimately tabled and never passed the city council. Pino also argued against assigning the resolution to be discussed by the Civil Rights Committee, which she chaired, saying the committee was too new at the time and not “equipped to handle this,” adding that “it’s only right that we not pawn it off to the committee.”

Pino told JI, “I strongly condemn antisemitism in all shapes and forms.” 

“At the time, there were concerns in the community regarding the [First] Amendment implications of that specific resolution. Although that particular resolution did not pass, the Civil Rights Committee did, in fact, take up the issue,” she continued. “The Committee, and subsequently the City Council, passed a resolution which explicitly condemned antisemitism and called for renewed efforts to combat it in the City of Clifton.”

The 9th Congressional District has significant Jewish and Palestinian populations, making Israel policy and antisemitism potentially critical flashpoints in the upcoming race. It is also an unexpectedly competitive battleground, swinging from backing President Joe Biden by 19 points in the 2020 presidential election to narrowly backing Trump four years later.

Pou is one of only 13 House Democrats representing a district that Trump carried in 2024.

The other Republican candidate in the race, Billy Prempeh, who was the 2024 GOP nominee, was endorsed by the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations last year, supported cutting off U.S. aid to Israel to stop the war in Gaza, opposed Israeli strikes on Gaza and opposed the Antisemitism Awareness Act.

Mayor Andre Sayegh, a potential primary challenger to Pou, also attended the flag-raising event, and delivered a speech.

Pou is a supporter of Israel, though she has a mixed voting record in the House on issues related to Israel and antisemitism.