Why is a pro-Israel lobby targeting Cori Bush, a member of the US Congress? | Israel-Palestine conflict news

Washington DC – On Tuesday, a progressive Democrat will fight to save her seat in the United States Congress – against a threat from her own party.

That Democrat, Cori Bush, faces a punishing primary challenge from county prosecutor Wesley Bell as they both compete to represent Missouri in the House of Representatives.

But experts say their battle comes down to one central question: how to approach Israel’s war in Gaza.

Bush, a member of the progressive “squad” in Congress, has been vocal in his opposition to Israel’s military offensive, which has claimed more than 39,600 Palestinian lives.

She says the main challenge she faces is part of a larger effort to silence critics of Israel, a longtime U.S. ally — and sow division among Democrats.

“This is just the beginning,” Bush told the Associated Press in an interview published last week. “Because if they succeed in removing me, they will continue to go after more Democrats.”

Political observers have also noted that Bush’s rival, Bell, has the support of powerful pro-Israel lobbies.

His race is the latest Democratic primary to see a massive infusion of money from the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its affiliated super PAC, the United Democratic Project (UDP). These two organizations invested $8.4 million to support Bell’s run for Congress.

In this explainer, Al Jazeera looks at the issues at stake in the Missouri race – and what the outcome could mean for the future of the Democratic Party.

When and where is the primary?

The Democratic primary will take place on Tuesday, August 6.

It will determine which Democratic candidate goes to the Nov. 5 general election for a chance to represent Missouri’s First Congressional District.

This district includes the city of St Louis, a major metropolitan area on the Mississippi River near the Illinois border. It is considered a solidly Democratic area, although Missouri as a whole leans to the right.

Who is the current Cori Bush?

Bush, a 48-year-old nurse and pastor, rose to fame as an activist following the police killing of Michael Brown, a black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

She credits the horror of Brown’s death — and the protests that erupted afterward — for pushing her to enter politics. She initially made two failed runs for Congress, losing a Senate race in 2016 and a House race in 2018.

But in 2020, his luck changed. She unseated 20-year veteran Lacy Clay in that year’s Democratic primary and ultimately won the race to represent Missouri’s First Congressional District.

His election was part of a wave of progressive victories across the country, including Jamaal Bowman’s upset victory in New York. Other prominent progressives, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, also successfully defended their seats that year.

Bush became the first black woman to represent her district in Congress.

Who is your Democratic rival, Wesley Bell?

Wesley Bell has been the St Louis County prosecutor since 2018. He is the first black man to hold the position.

Like Bush, Bell was also active during the Ferguson protests, working “directly to calm tensions between residents and police,” according to his campaign website.

He served on a board that liaised with the U.S. Department of Justice to create a plan to reform the criminal justice system in Ferguson. But like his predecessor in the district attorney’s office, Bell faced criticism for refusing to bring charges against the officer involved in Brown’s murder.

Like Bush, Bell calls himself a progressive: many of his political positions are broadly aligned. Bell, however, criticized Bush for voting against President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure package in 2021.

What are the candidates’ positions on Israel?

One of the biggest points of divergence between Bush and Bell is their stance on Israel.

Bush was one of the first representatives in Congress to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and has repeatedly supported legislation to increase pressure on Israel to stop the war.

She also compared Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to “ethnic cleansing” and “collective punishment against Palestinians”.

Bell, by contrast, said the U.S. must continue to support its ally Israel as it works toward a “peaceful resolution.”

He recently told the Associated Press that Bush’s criticism of the war was “wrong and offensive.”

“We don’t want any innocent Palestinian, any innocent Israeli to be harmed. We want to keep the door open for a two-state solution,” he said.

Why did Wesley decide to confront Bush?

The war in Gaza has hung over the primary race since it began.

Shortly after the war began on October 7, Bush joined other progressive members of the House in calling for “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine.”

But that stance provoked a backlash against Bush, with some of her fellow Democrats attacking her for not supporting Israel’s right to “self-defense.”

On October 30, Bell announced that he would abandon his Senate campaign to run against Bush in the House.

What has been the role of AIPAC?

Since Bell’s entry into the race, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democratic Project, has spent more than $8.4 million to unseat Bush.

This represents more than half of the money spent outside the campaigns’ own coffers.

The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision allows super PACs to spend unlimited amounts of money on political races as long as the groups do not coordinate directly with candidates.

In the case of the Democratic primary in Missouri’s First Congressional District, the result was a deluge of ads attacking Bush or supporting Bell.

Although many of the ads are funded by pro-Israel super PACs, they often contain little mention of either candidate’s stance on Israel.

Foreign spending also flowed to Bush, including $2.2 million from the Justice Democrats, a national progressive group. Still, overall foreign spending to support Bush represented only about a third of what was spent supporting Bell.

What does all this mean?

Critics have long decried the role of unlimited foreign spending in U.S. politics, saying it allows certain interest groups to exert outsized influence over campaigns.

For example, a recent campaign finance analysis by Politico concluded that while AIPAC receives donations from both Republicans and Democrats, it represents the “largest source of Republican money flowing into competitive Democratic primaries this year.”

Bush supporters fear the spending sends a frightening message: that any criticism of Israel poses a high risk to lawmakers in the United States.

The campaign to unseat Bush comes shortly after the United Democratic Project spent a historic $14.5 million to successfully unseat a fellow “squad” member, Congressman Jamaal Bowman, earlier this year.

Critics also warn that the spending could produce results that are out of step with the Democratic base. Public opinion polls show widespread disapproval in the US of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, as well as strong support for a ceasefire, especially among Democrats.

“This reaches a point where it is very worrying, where external spending can even exceed what candidates spend. And that means the candidates are not in charge of the campaigns,” Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the consumer rights group Public Citizen, told Al Jazeera in June.

“We’ve seen this happen occasionally before, but now we’re seeing it happen more regularly, and that’s problematic.”