Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a member of the progressive “Squad” with a long anti-Israel voting history, wrote on Tuesday that Claudine Gay’s resignation as Harvard University president had nothing to do with extensive accusations that she was too soft on Jew-hatred and that she stole the ideas of other scholars.
“This isn’t about plagiarism or antisemitism. This is about racism and intimidation. This makes no one safer,” Bowman wrote on X. “The only winners are fascists who bullied a brilliant and historic black woman into resignation. 2024 will be a battle for truth, democracy and our shared humanity.”
Bowman has a long history of voting against Israel and criticizing the Jewish state.
When the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Nov. 7 to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for “calling for the destruction of the State of Israel” after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, Bowman said that Republicans lack the requisite diversity to understand the viewpoint of the only Palestinian-American in Congress.
On Oct. 25, he was one of 10 House members to vote against a resolution “standing with Israel as it defends itself against the barbaric war launched by Hamas and other terrorists.”
Bowman also co-signed a resolution in October calling for “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.”
He was one of nine House members to vote against a resolution affirming that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state” on July 18—the day before he and six other House Democrats boycotted Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress.
Bowman has also accused Israel of genocide, issued guidelines—from which he later distanced himself—calling Republicans Nazis, called for U.S. recognition of the Palestinian nakba and sought to restrict U.S. aid to Israel.
