by Andrew Bernard
“After our website was updated, portions of our policy platform were not accurately updated and do not reflect Kat’s views or the values of this campaign,” Kat Abughazaleh’s campaign stated.
One of the most prominent anti-Israel candidates seeking a seat in Congress in the 2026 midterms deleted language, which called for Hamas to be removed from power in Gaza, from her website on Monday.
Kat Abughazaleh, a 26-year-old social
media influencer and former producer for the left-wing Media Matters for
America who is running as a Democrat in Illinois’s 9th Congressional
District, maintains a section on her campaign site calling for a “free and sovereign Palestine.”
A
version of that page archived early on Monday morning said that “there
is no acceptable scenario that leaves Hamas in charge of the Gaza
Strip.”
The language calling for the removal of the U.S.-designated terrorist group from power no longer appears and has been replaced with a line saying that “Democratic elections must be held for the people of Palestine to elect their own leaders,” without any mention of Hamas.
Another section on Abughazaleh’s website calling for a “humane foreign policy” noted that previous versions of the campaign materials did not properly reflect Abughazaleh’s views and have now been corrected.
“After our website was updated, portions of our policy platform were not accurately updated and do not reflect Kat’s views or the values of this campaign,” the website states. (JNS sought comment from Abughazaleh’s campaign.)
Polling in the 9th District shows a close race between Abughazaleh and Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, a Jewish progressive who also calls for an independent Palestinian state. Biss’s website says that he supports “a free and democratic Palestinian state, with a government that Hamas has no place in.”
An Evanston RoundTable/PPP poll from early March suggested that Biss leads the race by four percentage points, with the more moderate state senator Laura Fine, who is Jewish, lagging in third.
Abughazaleh, who describes herself as “a proud Palestinian-American,” has previously used the phrase “from the river to the sea,” which many understand as a call for violence against Jews, and describes Israel as waging a “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.
The U.S. Department of Justice indicted her in October for impeding a law enforcement officer at a protest against the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.
The department wrote in the complaint that she had “braced her body and hands” against a police vehicle alongside other protesters. Abughazaleh has called the indictment an infringement of her First Amendment rights.
In a section on combatting antisemitism, her website notes that Illinois’s 9th District is “one of the most Jewish districts in the country,” and the Chicago Tribune wrote in February that the area has been represented by a Jewish member of Congress for eight decades.
Abughazaleh has recently received endorsements from some of the most anti-Israel incumbent members of Congress, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) on Sunday, and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) on Monday.
Illinois holds its congressional primaries on Tuesday.
Andrew Bernard
Source: https://www.jns.org/anti-israel-illinois-congressional-candidate-scrubs-call-to-remove-hamas-from-power-from-campaign-website/
No comments:
Post a Comment