Bowman: West Bank Is Like Jim Crow South and Israel Won’t Have Security Without ‘Palestinian Freedom’

On Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Alex Wagner Tonight,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) stated that “We have been saying for so long, we are pro-Israel, pro-Israel’s right to exist, pro-Israel’s right to defend itself and self-determination. But we haven’t been saying the same thing about Palestinians.” And “Israel’s safety and security [are] directly connected to Palestinian freedom, safety, and security.”

Bowman said, “I think, for a very long time, we’ve been having one conversation without the other. We have been saying for so long, we are pro-Israel, pro-Israel’s right to exist, pro-Israel’s right to defend itself and self-determination. But we haven’t been saying the same thing about Palestinians. And so, what I’ve been trying to communicate…Israel’s safety and security [are] directly connected to Palestinian freedom, safety, and security. So, we’ve been using a lot of rhetoric around the two-state solution for decades. And when I went there, I saw that we are nowhere near a two-state solution. Myself, as a sitting member of Congress, could not walk through certain checkpoints in the West Bank because I wasn’t Jewish. So, we’re using rhetoric, but our policies aren’t matching the rhetoric and our policies aren’t matching the urgency of the moment. October 7 was a horrible day, a horrific day and Hamas must be condemned and we must get the hostages back, absolutely. But condemnation is only step one. How are we going to do the work to actually get to a state for Palestinians?”

Later he added, “[E]ven before I went to the West Bank…I spoke to Israeli and Palestinian scholars over the phone just to learn more about it. And one of them — I forget his name — told me that we’re at the Civil Rights Era moment here in the West Bank. This is like Jim Crow. And when I heard Ta-Nehisi Coates say that, I felt what he was saying, because although I didn’t live during the Jim Crow South, I read about it. And when I went there, it felt that way. It felt suffocating, it felt stifling, it felt immobile. And again, for me, as a sitting member of Congress, who has voted in support of the Iron Dome…I felt what he was talking about there.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett