Brad Lander
D · U.S. House, NY-10 · Tier 3/4
Tier 3/4, between “Pro-Israel, critical” and “Critical / conditions aid”
Democratic nominee in NY-10 after defeating Rep. Dan Goldman in the June 2026 primary. A liberal Zionist, he condemns Israel’s occupation and calls its war in Gaza a genocide, but equivocates when Palestinians take up arms against the army carrying them out. He calls himself a “progressive/liberal Zionist” and says, “I long for a Jewish and democratic Israel. That’s impossible with occupation.” Yet his base is a Jewish left that does not use the label. He is a member of JFREJ and of IfNotNow, whose principles commit members to “grappling together with apartheid, Zionism, and the state of Israel” and “the harm they have caused for Palestinians”; both endorsed him, as did J Street. Jewish Voice for Peace, which is anti-Zionist and calls for an arms embargo, has not endorsed him, but it has failed to criticize him publicly in the past three years, his Hebron statement included, as far as can be found. It credited his 2023 decision on Israel bonds and listed him among the nominees at its September 24, 2026 protest at the UN. On October 21, 2026, Israeli forces detained him in the West Bank. On his release he called their campaign there “very clearly state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.” Two days later, two Palestinian gunmen killed two Israeli soldiers at a temporary army checkpoint at the exit from Hebron, in the occupied West Bank. He wrote: “I’m grieving the deaths of the two Israeli soldiers killed in Hebron today.” He called the attack “the criminal act of two,” branding as a crime an attack by Palestinians living under occupation on soldiers of the army that had just detained him: the army carrying out the occupation he calls ethnic cleansing and the war in Gaza he calls a genocide. The occupation “imposes violence on a daily basis,” he wrote, but “violence is not the path to ending it,” any more than Netanyahu’s promised collective punishment is. He spoke of an “excruciating cycle of violence,” as if occupier and occupied stood on the same footing, though on October 6 he had written that shared mourning was not meant “to equate the suffering on both sides.” He said “every life is sacred” without a word for the two gunmen, who were also killed. That day, the Associated Press reported, he called Israel’s closure after the attack an example of Israel enforcing an apartheid system on Palestinians: “It’s part of the effort to take more control, to make Palestinian life impossible.” His thread followed posts by J Street and T’ruah from earlier that day, with the same condolences for the soldiers and the same warning against collective punishment. Critics answered him. The Palestinian American legal scholar Noura Erakat wrote: “Listen more, lecture less. Framing the targeting of soldiers as a ‘cycle of violence’ — rather than resistance [to] apartheid & genocide — while also not demanding US sanctions/arms embargo is asking Palestinians to die politely.” Sana Saeed, a media critic formerly with Al Jazeera, wrote that he “condemns the ‘ethnic cleansing’ and settlers while simultaneously offering condolences for the soldiers tasked with maintaining, overseeing and enforcing said ethnic cleansing & genocide,” and that he “has stood staunchly against the bare minimum non-violent strategy of BDS.” Drop Site News wrote that “Under international humanitarian law, military personnel are generally legitimate targets,” and that the attack is “criminal” under Israeli military law, “which Israel unlawfully imposes on Palestinians in the illegally occupied West Bank.” His positions pull in two directions. He calls the war in Gaza a genocide, though as late as September 2025 he avoided the word because “it closes ears rather than opens them.” He will cosponsor the Block the Bombs Act and will oppose U.S. military aid to Israel “while it violates international law and Palestinian human rights,” Iron Dome funding included. Yet he stops short of an arms embargo and would let Israel buy Iron Dome with its own money. He calls West Bank barriers and segregated roads “Features of apartheid,” yet calls armed resistance there a crime. He wrote on Yom Kippur that “Antizionism is not anti-Semitism” and that his confession “must center on our complicity in what I view as genocide in Gaza,” yet he calls himself a Zionist, affirms Israel as a Jewish state, backs two states and rejects BDS. He moves between both camps. He told Jewish Insider he attended Jewish Voice for Peace’s protest against Netanyahu’s September 24, 2026 UN address, as well as protests hosted by T’ruah, J Street and Israelis for Peace. On the October 7 anniversary in 2026 he spoke at an Israelis for Peace vigil in Union Square, one of the few places, he said, where people even try “to mourn both Israeli lives lost on Oct. 7 and 75,000 Palestinian lives lost in Israel’s war since” (JTA). Within Our Lifetime, Pal-Awda and Students for Justice in Palestine protested the vigil as normalization; the BDS movement’s guidelines count as normalization events “based on the false premise of symmetry/parity between the oppressors and the oppressed.” At an October 11 Jewish Currents panel he was the only speaker to back a two-state solution (JTA). After Israel’s October 27, 2026 election, which left no bloc with a majority, he wrote that if Gadi Eisenkot and the opposition were “remotely serious about getting rid of Netanyahu, and about Israel’s democratic future,” they would do “the obvious, strategic, and non-racist thing of forming a government with the Arab parties.” From October 19 to 21, 2026 he joined the Protect the Harvest delegation in the West Bank with Tamar Glezerman, co-founder of Israelis for Peace, and rabbis from T’ruah, a liberal Zionist rabbinic group that backs two states and does not support the BDS movement. On October 21 Israeli forces detained him near Nahalin, outside Bethlehem, with dozens of volunteers, among them T’ruah’s CEO, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, and released him hours later with a warning. The next day Israel revoked his permit to enter the country. He called the move “petty” and “one small step in this much larger infrastructure of occupation and ethnic cleansing” (Jewish Currents); a spokesperson said he would try to get it back so he could join a J Street congressional delegation in February 2027 (JTA). On a press call after his release he pledged to back Rep. Joaquin Castro’s Stop the Settlements Act, which would sanction settlement expansion and bar imports of settlement goods: “I will certainly be signing on to Representative Castro’s bill when I get to Congress” (amNY). Touring the West Bank on October 22, he wrote: “It’s long past time to stop the settlements and end the occupation.” As comptroller he oversaw growth in the city pension funds’ investment in Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest weapons maker: their holdings grew from under $250,000 in June 2021 to over $1.5 million in June 2025, and about half of the teachers’ fund’s growth in the last of those years came from buying new shares (New York Daily News). He says the comptroller “doesn’t pick every individual company.” In March 2025 he wrote: “I oppose and have always opposed divestment from Israel.” He did let the city’s roughly $40 million in Israel bonds, held since the 1970s, mature in early 2023 without reinvesting, citing “financial reasons” (Times of Israel).
A 3/4 that could easily be a 3. What he would pull back reaches past offensive weapons: no U.S. military aid to Israel while it violates international law, Iron Dome funding included, and the Block the Bombs Act. He has pledged to back sanctions on settlements, and he took a real risk in the West Bank, where Israeli forces detained him and Israel then revoked his permit to enter the country. What holds him at 3/4 is the other half of his record. He calls himself a liberal Zionist, affirms a Jewish state, backs two states, rejects BDS and opposes divestment; as comptroller he told an Orthodox radio host that the city’s funds were “proudly invested” in Israeli companies including Elbit Systems, “and no, of course, we’re not going to divest from them.” His newest words weigh the same way: on October 23 he mourned soldiers of the army whose war in Gaza he calls a genocide and called armed resistance to its occupation a crime. Against that, he let the city’s Israel bonds mature in 2023 without reinvesting. With no votes or legislation of his own, his acts so far are the detention and the pension record. Counter-case: 3, on the October 23 statement, which is only days old, beside the pension record and his liberal Zionist frame.
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elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).