Michelle Goldberg has a column up today that reads more like a news story. The focus of the column is Rep. Jamaal Bowman who has been getting himself in trouble lately with his Jewish constituents because of his left-wing approach to Israel. Jazz wrote about some pronouncements Bowman made earlier this week at a rally demanding a ceasefire.

Democrat Rep. Jamaal Bowman: "By me calling for a ceasefire with my colleagues and centering humanity, I am uplifting deeply what it actually means to be Jewish" pic.twitter.com/nXq16qPX3j

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) November 14, 2023

You can imagine how well that went over with people who are actually Jewish and don’t agree with Bowman.

Plenty of Jews in his district, including some who loathe Israel’s right-wing government, disagree, and have grown alienated from their congressman and the strain of progressive politics he represents. “People like me are not being given much to work with when we go to some of our beleaguered, anxious and frightened Jewish friends, and they are saying that the left is so infested with antisemitism that they can no longer be part of it,” said Lisa Genn, a local progressive activist who is part of a group called Jews for Jamaal.

Realizing he had a problem building, Bowman organized a breakfast designed to let people vent.

“I am deeply concerned that the people that I’ve spent my life marching with are not marching with me,” Bill Giddins, a retiree from Bronxville, said to applause. “I am deeply concerned that when a Black person is damaged in America, I want to protect that person. I don’t feel the same from you and your office.”

But as Goldberg points out, it’s not just Bowman who is getting on the wrong side of a lot of constituents. The entire Squad has been under intense pressure.

He’s one of several Squad members facing potentially formidable primary challenges over their stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Omar is going to have a rematch against a former Minneapolis City Council member, Don Samuels, who lost to her by about two points in the 2022 primary. Cori Bush, a Missouri Democrat who emerged from the Black Lives Matter movement, is facing a primary challenge from a former political ally, the St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell. Summer Lee, a Pittsburgh Democrat whose district includes the Tree of Life synagogue, site of an antisemitic mass murder in 2018, is being challenged by Bhavini Patel.

Bowman doesn’t have a strong opponent yet, but last month 26 rabbis in his district wrote a letter to Westchester’s popular county executive, George Latimer, imploring him to get into the race.

And all of these primary challengers running against members of the Squad, including whoever runs against Bowman, will likely be well funded thanks to millions pouring in from Jewish groups who are concerned about the anti-Israel tone being adopted by many on the left. Simply put, a lot of Jewish Democrats feel abandoned and scorned by their own party and they are going to push back, especially against the most prominent progressive voices, like the members of the squad.

But that’s only going to make the problem worse within the party. The young progressives who already see Israel as the enemy are going to see the pushback in favor of Israel as one more thing they need to drive out of their caucus. What do you call it when leftist cancel culture turns on American Jews? They’ll call it anti-Zionism of course but my guess is it will often be indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. And round and round we go, driving the wedge between the two groups deeper.

A Democratic district leader who held a fundraiser for Bowman last year told Goldberg she couldn’t back Bowman anymore and didn’t see much hope of things improving. “He’s not going to convince us, and we’re not going to convince him,” she said. Now assume that same kind of feeling of irreconcilable differences is setting in within every district where a member of the Squad has been elected. This doesn’t mean they’ll all be tossed out of office next year, that will depend on the electorate in each district, but it’s definitely creating a lot of bad blood within the party at a time when they probably can’t afford it.

Finally, you can see some of the dissent playing out in the comments. The very first comment suggests Jewish Americans shouldn’t expect support from the left.

The idea that Jewish Americans “expect” other communities to come out for them because they came out for those communities is strange. Respect for the suffering of other people who are being abused is not a transactional situation.

And the number two comment blames the left for being hypocrites:

Mr Bowman may be the subject of Ms Goldberg’s opinion on the division of democrats over the Hamas massacre and the Israeli response, but clearly the broader issue is the main topic.

Has it ever occurred to either the squad ideologues or their progressive (who are not liberal) backers to demand that Hamas release their hostages and to surrender their positions in Gaza?

If they are truly interested in ending the violence in Gaza, why not focus the pressure on the people who created the violence with their massacre of Oct 7th?

If they are truly interested in the humanity of Jews as well as Muslims, why do they keep referring to Hamas as “fighters” and the massacre as an “attack?”

And it goes on like this back and forth. Here’s one more comment from someone who describes themselves as a former AOC fan.

I’ve been a progressive since I learned what the label is – for over 50 years.

But I cannot support any progressive candidates and politicians now. For a while I had been hoping AOC would run for senate – or maybe Mayor.

Not any more.

The overt antisemitism of the progressive wing of the Democratic party means I need to look elsewhere for candidates who fight poverty (and not the poor).

There are probably lots of people who feel this way.