BURNING BUSH
Incendiary Squad member Cori Bush vows revenge in fiery speech after her career of hate ends in ashes.
Cori Bush made quite a splash when she arrived on the US political scene in 2020, being elected to the US Congress from a St. Louis congressional district. She made a few splashes while serving two terms. And she splashed a lot of mud in her campaign for the Democratic primary for her renomination, which blessedly ended Tuesday in her ignominious defeat.
A member of “The Squad,” the group of far-left legislators with a long history of hating Israel and employing blatant antisemitic tropes, Bush joins in defeat her colleague Jamaal Bowman, who was likewise turfed by his own party’s voters a few weeks back.
Also like the other members of the Squad, she has a bit of an obsession with Israel and Palestine — and a tactic of coopting every issue by tying it to that far-away conflict.
In September 2021, Bush was one of eight Democrats to vote against the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system. She would like to see Israel’s hands tied behind its back when its citizens are under attack.
She blamed US funding to Israel for homelessness and crime in St. Louis, which has parallels with traditional antisemitic scapegoating but perhaps more importantly reflects a perverted deflection The Squad uses, in which everything comes back to Palestine! Palestine! Palestine!
One would think that police violence, the failure to ensure Native Americans have clean drinking water, and the atrocious treatment of refugees at the US-Mexico border would be enough for self-declared “progressive” elected officials to sink their teeth into.
But, no.
There is a bizarre, apparently knee-jerk reaction among people like members of The Squad to deflect attention from the issue at hand — these literally life-and-death matters facing Americans and those desperate refugees who want to become Americans — and refocus it on Palestine. Yeah, yeah. Until all of us are free, none of us are free and blah blah blah. But seriously? Everything comes back to the Jews. Errrm, I mean Israelis.
Forget about centering the voices of Black people, Native Americans, Latin Americans fleeing drug wars and poverty. The Squad will almost invariably swoop in to steal the momentum, divert the narrative and shriek about Palestine.
Above all this, Bush was one of two Congress members who voted against denying entry to the US to the Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the October 7 attacks. No surprise, since she has also refused to acknowledge Hamas as a terrorist organization. So we can say this about Cori Bush: We know where she stands.
But I will also give credit where due. Bush criticized the Palestinian Authority, something almost unheard of among so-called “pro-Palestinians,” over the death in PA custody of Palestinian dissident Nizar Banat. Of course, she couldn’t do it without taking a smarmy smack at Israel, adding: “Suppressing dissent and criminalizing protest only deepens the violence of Israel’s apartheid system.”
Meanwhile, AIPAC apparently spent somewhere near $9 million supporting Bush’s opponent in Tuesday’s primary, a fact that really set Bush off.
“All they did was radicalize me,” she said in her speech after her drubbing. “Now they should be afraid.” (In case you wondered who had radicalized Cori Bush: It was AIPAC. Bahahaha.)
Bush then warned: “AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down. … They’re about to see this other Cori, this other side.” (Oh. That was the nice Cori who was voting with Hamas all this time?)
For someone who basically accused her (Democratic) predecessor’s mild condemnation of Bush’s anti-Israel hate of inciting violence against Muslims, Bush suddenly doesn’t seem concerned about the potential of incendiary language to provoke unhinged bigots.
Consider: When Bush was running successfully in the Democratic primary for U.S. Congress in St. Louis in 2020, her opponent, the incumbent William Lacy Clay, rightly (and fairly innocently) pointed out Bush’s support for BDS and the anti-Israel agenda. Bush went straight to Islamophobia.
Her campaign accused the opponent of trying to “stoke fears of antisemitism and promote Islamophobia, both of which are unacceptable …”
Wait, what?!
Pointing out a candidate’s anti-Israel position is “stoking Islamophobia,” apparently, and merely alluding to anti-Zionist policies is to wrongly “stoke fears of antisemitism.”
But the Bush campaign ratcheted up the outrage to effectively accuse the incumbent of inciting the murder of Muslim people.
“Our Muslim community in St. Louis is at risk,” Bush tweeted. “Your mailer isn’t a political smear campaign. It puts Muslim lives in danger.”
The mailer had included a photo of Bush with Linda Sarsour, the co-founder of the Women’s March who seems to hate Israel far more than she hates misogyny. To put the cherry of hypocrisy on top of the sundae of manufactured indignation, up popped Sarsour to broaden the hysteria over Islamophobia to include anti-Black racism.
Of Lacy Clay, a longtime African-American congressman, Sarsour said: “He fails to mention that he’s using a Palestinian-American supporter of BDS who raised funds to restore a Jewish cemetery that was vandalized in St. Louis to smear a brilliant Black woman.” (One wonders how Sarsour thought Lacy Clay would have worked that detail into his flyer.)
Anyone who was accused of being cynical for thinking Sarsour was scheming when she stepped up to help after a Jewish cemetery was desecrated can be assured we were right on point. She kept that in her back pocket just for moments like this. (Some have suggested Sarsour’s admiration for dead Jews does not extend to those still alive or fighting to survive against incessant terror attacks — but that seems uncharitable to me.)
But back to the point at hand. Far too many “progressives” (among others) dismiss legitimate concerns about antisemitism as fabrications. Yet, when criticized (in the case of Bush’s support for BDS, it wasn’t even criticism — just a fact) they screech “Islamophobia.”
The mere act of letting voters know where Bush stood on Israel and Palestine risks Muslim blood flowing in the street of St. Louis, according to the Bush campaign’s not-at-all-over-the-top rejoinder.
Pointing out where a candidate stands on an issue of foreign policy is also, apparently, evidence that the Black incumbent had issues with “brilliant Black women” and doesn’t like people who help restore Jewish cemeteries. Not an overreaction at all, especially coming from people who accuse Zionists of crying antisemitism to “stifle” criticism of Israel.
As sometimes happens, what goes around comes around. Bush has put a lot of hatred and negativity out into the world.
There is plenty to be said about the power of money in American politics (I’m a Canadian, so I don’t have a lot of sway in that). But as long as there is money in politics, I’m glad to see it going to defeat haters like Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.
I got an incredibly simple, excellent lesson some time ago from a friend. I said that, when nasties like these are defeated thanks to the intervention and funding of pro-Israel organizations and Jewish individuals, it reinforces some traditional motifs of Jewish power, money and influence.
His response was exactly what it should be …
“So?”
People who adhere to antisemitic stereotypes are going to see antisemitic conspiracies. Let them live in their chauvinistic poisoned world.
Meanwhile, there is one less antisemitic, bigoted terror supporter in power.
They hate us Jews and Zionists. So we might as well get them to fear us. FAFO!
A piece in the WSJ about Cori Bush had a quote from Jamaal Bowman at a rally for his primary election “We are going to show f. Aipac the power of the m. f. South Bronx.” But Bowman didn’t represent the South Bronx, he represented Westchester and some of the North Bronx. Richie Torres, staunchly pro-Israel, represents the South Bronx.