Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-MO) introduced her ceasefire legislation nine days after the war started in Gaza. AIPAC has made her the number two target for defeat in Congress (after Jamaal Bowman in New York). AIPAC is using money from mostly right-wing Republican mega-donors to control the Democratic nominee in her poor, predominantly African-American district in St Louis. The primary election is on August 6 and AIPAC hand-picked an opponent, Wesley Bell, and has been flooding the airwaves and mailboxes with cynical attacks against Rep. Bush. The corrupt local newspaper, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, gave such an outrageous endorsement of the AIPAC candidate that there is a backlash against the paper’s editorial board and there has been a non-stop flood of letters to the editor defending Rep. Bush and attacking their editorial corruption.
One such letter to the editor, which appeared on August 4, opens:
“The St. Louis Post Dispatch Editorial Board may downplay it, but whoever signs your paycheck is your boss—and in Wesley Bell’s case, that’s a foreign-influenced lobbying group. ('Editorial: Bell Has Our Enthusiastic Endorsement for Missouri’s 1st Congressional District,’ July 25.)
“The unprecedented money dump by AIPAC (American Israel Political Action Committee) of more than $8.4 million into St. Louis politics shows what this race is really about: the ability of a foreign country, working through an American superPAC—which is itself funded in part by right-wing anti-Semitic white nationalists—to buy out Congress and spend billions in tax dollars on bombs and endless war.”
The scathing letter continues:
“As Jews of conscience, we must point out that the Editorial Board’s comment that ‘Israel’s conduct of the war has been far from perfect’ is depraved. The International Criminal Court is now seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, not because they were ‘far from perfect,’ but because of overwhelming evidence of their criminality. An editorial board that would describe the slaughter of tens of thousands, including children, as ‘far from perfect’ must reassess more than just their nominee endorsement.
“As for Bell, the very community that elected him has recently called him out for broken promises: first through a scathing Prosecutor Watch report issued by a coalition of six racial justice groups; and via Mike Brown Sr.’s shaming video about Bell’s failure to bring Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson to justice for the murder of his son.
“As progressive Jewish people who marched at the time for racial justice, we could never fathom voting for Bell, let alone in the same week as the 10-year commemoration of Mike Brown Jr.’s murder. Can Bell even honorably show his face there?”
