Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.) have officially joined the group of progressive lawmakers.
By Josh Plank, World Israel News
Reports of the Squad’s demise may have been greatly exaggerated as the group of progressive U.S. lawmakers grew substantially larger on Sunday with the addition of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) and Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), who were officially sworn in as members of the 117th Congress.
“Squad up,” tweeted Bush alongside a photo of herself and Bowman standing with the original Squad members Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).
Tlaib tweeted the same photo, saying, “Let’s do this.”
Omar retweeted Bush’s photo along with a raised fist emoji and the message, “Unbought and unbossed.”
“Our squad is big!” said Bowman along with his retweet of the photo.
Pressley made a similar observation, saying, “The squad is big, family.”
“Let’s go!” ordered Ocasio-Cortez with a retweet including three flexed bicep emojis.
The rising progressive wing of the Democratic party has been a cause for concern among pro-Israel lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle.
Bush was criticized during the Missouri Democratic primary by Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) for her support of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS).
In response to a mailer by Clay’s campaign which featured a photo of Bush with anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour, Bush doubled-down on her support for BDS.
“Cori Bush has always been sympathetic to the BDS movement, and she stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people, just as they have stood in solidarity with Black Americans fighting for their own lives,” said a Bush campaign statement on August 1.
In a now deleted foreign-policy section of her campaign website, Bush’s stance on Israel read, “In our current geopolitical economy, money talks far louder than speech alone. This is why nonviolent actions like the BDS movement are so important—and why the effort to mischaracterize and demonize the BDS movement by its opponents is so urgent.”
Bowman, who beat relatively pro-Israel Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) in the primary, shared his views on Israel with City & State New York on August 5.
Bowman said that “as a humanitarian leader” the U.S. needs to be more involved with “what’s happening in Palestine with the Palestinians.”
“One stark contrast between myself and Congressman Engel is I’ve been critical of occupation, annexation and detaining Palestinian children – where Congressman Engel has not,” Bowman said.