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Brad Lander, an ally of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, won the Democratic primary in a progressive New York House district on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, in a race that hinged largely on the candidates’ different stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

With 53 percent of the vote counted, Mr. Lander, a former city comptroller and mayoral candidate who has criticized Israel’s war in Gaza, was almost 30 points ahead of the incumbent, Representative Dan Goldman, a pro-Israel former federal prosecutor who helped lead the first impeachment inquiry into President Trump.

Mr. Lander benefited from his deep roots in the 10th District, which covers Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. His victory makes him the likely winner of the general election in November.

Mr. Lander, 56, was one of three progressive primary candidates endorsed by Mr. Mamdani, with whom he has had a political alliance since last year’s Democratic mayoral primary.

The two men began as rivals, but cross-endorsed each other as the primary date closed in, saying they wanted to work together to keep former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo from winning the nomination. Their alliance has elevated them both — Mr. Mamdani to City Hall, and Mr. Lander to the cusp of a congressional victory.

Mr. Lander reflected on the decision to team up with Mr. Mamdani during a televised debate last week, saying it had modeled a new kind of politics for New York.

“It unleashed a nice sense of solidarity,” he said on the debate stage. “People said to me, ‘Wait, you mean politics doesn’t have to be a sour, selfish ego trip — it can be a team sport for the values you share?’”

Among several closely watched primaries across the city and state, the contest in the 10th District was notable for the degree to which it was dominated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both Mr. Lander and Mr. Goldman are Jewish and describe themselves as liberal Zionists, but they approach the issue in very different ways.

Mr. Lander has spent decades in the world of progressive Jewish activism, working with organizations like Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and cofounding the New York Jewish Agenda, a left-leaning group.

He has also been a longtime player in Democratic politics in New York City, and entered the primary with a committed base and a groundswell of good will in the district.

He spent many years running a community development organization in Park Slope, then served on the City Council for more than a decade representing several of the congressional district’s neighborhoods. After he left the Council, he served as city comptroller, during which time he chose not to repurchase State of Israel bonds that had matured.

Mr. Lander has been an outspoken critic of Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, which began after the Hamas-led terror attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

Mr. Lander has backed claims by human rights groups and a United Nations commission that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, frequently using that word on the campaign trail, and has said he supports legislation to block U.S. military aid to the country until it meets human rights standards.

Mr. Goldman’s views hew more closely to the longtime status quo in American politics regarding the U.S.-Israel relationship. He is a critic of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but has said he supports continuing to provide the military aid that underpins the decades-long alliance between the two countries.

And he has said he does not believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza or that its treatment of the Palestinians can fairly be described as apartheid — another word Mr. Lander frequently uses — calling them ideologically charged terms.

Mr. Goldman accepted the endorsement of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a hard-line pro-Israel lobbying group increasingly shunned by Democrats, but was also endorsed by J Street, a more liberal pro-Israel group.


https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/nyregion/ny10-primary-lander.html

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      33 minutes ago

      Fashioning himself a “liberal Zionist,” Lander attacked Goldman relentlessly on the campaign trail over the perception that the incumbent hasn’t been forceful enough in speaking out against Israel’s war in Gaza, which has left more than 75,000 Palestinians dead after being launched in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack. Lander has blasted Goldman for not supporting legislation to block more U.S. military aid for Israel and accused him of kow-towing to pro-Israel lobbying groups by not calling the country’s war a “genocide.”

      In his victory speech, Lander kept taking shots at Goldman on that front — and even took aim at former President Joe Biden.

      “Our party needs to admit that Joe Biden’s ‘hug Bibi’ strategy was a catastrophic mistake. I believe it made us complicit in genocide,” Lander said, refrring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Neyanyahu. “Bombs we paid for killed more than 70,000 Palestinians — most of them women and children. Tanks we paid for left a million people homeless. Humanitarian aid still is not getting in.”

      If this is where the ‘liberal zionists’ are, then this is a win; yes, one day this milquetoast bullshit will be viewed as the soft genocide denial that it is, but if the left can get Jewish American politicians in the heart of Jewish America to utter these words, then we’re winning

    • SevenSkalls [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      8 hours ago

      Liberal or progressive Zionism makes no fucking sense. In order to keep Israel a Jewish country, that means settlements, concentration camps, murder, ethnic cleansing, etc. They want their land back, you don’t. You can’t both sided that issue.

      How do you do that progressively? Steal land but be really cool about it?

      • SickSemper [she/her, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 hours ago

        it’s a fucking joke. It’s just less fashionable to be an outright fascist so they have to pretend to give a fuck about muslims

        9 people at a table with a nazi mfs when you ask them about zionist/anti zionist coalitions

      • PKMKII [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        7 hours ago

        Many of the Founding Fathers has this idea that they were going to expand westward and take land from the natives in an amicable, voluntary way.

      • robot_dog_with_gun [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        6 hours ago

        my best guesses:

        liberal zionism makes sense to them in the context of being a status-quo guy opposed to both the expansionist greater israel types and to liberation.

        it could stop expanding at any time and freeze the genocide in some stable equilibrium but the liberal zionists don’t control the knesset or whatever it’s called and the US isn’t making them not expand.

        progressive zionism would be that plus inter-jewish equality in israel instead of the racial and gender/orientation hierarchy they have now, and likewise rainbow washing the genocide by elevating the secondary contradictions in palestinian society.


        it’s all still genoicde, just maybe faster or slower and with or without gay marriage.

  • halfpipe [they/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 hours ago

    They went 3 for 3, everyone Mamdani backed won their primary. Apparently they also had hundreds of volunteers turning up to call and knock doors, to the point that literally everyone in those districts who voted Democratic in the past five years got contacted.