Julia Salazar
D · New York State Senate, District 18 · Tier 6
Tier 6, “Most critical of Israel / supports Palestine”
NY SD-18 (DSA); “Not on Our Dime” cosponsor. Said “I do support BDS” in 2018, and in 2021 called New York’s list of companies participating in BDS “embarrassing and shameful” — “Boycotts are political speech that must be protected.” Arrested at the 2014 IfNotNow anti-occupation sit-in at the Conference of Presidents, and took part in the Oct 27, 2023 JVP ceasefire action at Grand Central. She co-signed the April 2024 Socialists in Office statement in solidarity with the student encampments, which names the genocide and Israeli apartheid. On July 12, 2014, days into Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, Israeli border officers at the Allenby crossing held her for about ten hours and refused her entry to the West Bank, sending her back to Jordan “without a legitimate reason,” she wrote in Mondoweiss (as Julia Carmel); she had planned two months in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, to “learn, do research, and assist a friend’s community development project,” after earlier stays there with a Palestinian family. In 2018 she said visiting the West Bank as a student “really informed my political evolution on it.” In October 2026, after New York City’s comptroller said he would not reinvest city pension money in Israel bonds, she called on the state to follow suit, JTA reported.
A Tier 6: she backs BDS by name in her own words — “I do support BDS” (2018) — and she defended it again in 2021, calling New York’s list of BDS-participating companies “embarrassing and shameful.” It is backed by sustained activism: she edited Jewish Voice for Peace’s blog, organized for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, was arrested at a 2014 IfNotNow anti-occupation protest, took part in the October 2023 ceasefire action at Grand Central, was barred from entry by Israel at the Allenby Bridge, and cosponsors Not on Our Dime; she was the first DSA member elected to the New York State legislature. None of the usual hedges appears on her record since college, where she was active in Christians United for Israel and then co-founded Columbia’s J Street U chapter before moving toward the critical end: she has not backed two states — “I haven’t seen a two-state solution that would achieve that” — affirmed a Jewish state, or voted for an IHRA-type bill. The tension, kept in view: she has not described herself as anti-Zionist, and her recent framing centers ending “Israel’s illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza” rather than questioning Israel’s legitimacy itself.
Open the full card, with votes, money and every source, on elect26 →
elect26 places 2026 midterm candidates on a six-tier spectrum, from 1 (most pro-Israel) to 6 (most critical of Israel).