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Progressives condemn Meeks for handing Moskowitz the Middle East panel
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The Democrat who will speak for his party on Middle East policy in the US House of Representatives is one of its most committed defenders of Israeli government policy, and the appointment has opened a fight inside the party.
Representative Gregory Meeks of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, named Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa Subcommittee on 25 August. The New York Times reported the backlash two days later.
The post matters beyond its title. If Democrats take the House in November, the ranking member becomes the chair, with the gavel over hearings, witnesses and the questions Congress asks about Gaza.
The record that produced the objection#
Moskowitz was one of only twelve Democrats to vote for a Republican Israel aid package in 2023. He has consistently opposed conditioning US military aid to Israel on human rights compliance, and he rejects the characterisation of the war in Gaza as genocide.
Common Dreams reported that he has received $833,288 in contributions associated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. On taking the post he said he would work to strengthen ties with Israel and with American allies in the Gulf, and to advance peace and diplomacy in the region.
Who objected, and in what words#
Cavan Kharrazian of Demand Progress called elevating someone who consistently sides with President Trump in support of Israel clear political malpractice. Mitchell Plitnick of ReThinking Foreign Policy called Moskowitz a completely inappropriate choice, wildly out of step with Democratic voters.
Erik Sperling of Just Foreign Policy called the decision shocking and asked whether the leadership was signalling that anti-war and pro-Palestinian movements are unwelcome in the party. The writer Wajahat Ali asked how much damage Democratic leaders would do to their own brand for AIPAC money.
Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, was among the House members who criticised the pick.
He is wildly out of step with Democratic voters.
Mitchell Plitnick, ReThinking Foreign Policy
The Palestinian stake#
The appointment is Meeks's, but much of the anger has landed on the House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, with critics reading the choice as leadership installing a check on the party's growing pro-Palestinian bloc.
For Palestinian readers the practical question is narrower than the party quarrel. A subcommittee decides which hearings happen and who testifies. Whether a Democratic majority next year would examine arms transfers, settlement expansion or the conduct of the war depends substantially on who holds that gavel.
The dispute also measures a gap that keeps widening. Surveys have repeatedly shown Democratic voters far more critical of Israeli government policy than Democratic officeholders, and this week the party's leadership answered that gap by promoting one of its firmest defenders of the alliance.
