Hakeem Jeffries’s plan to install Jared Moskowitz as chair of the House Middle East and North Africa subcommittee — if Democrats retake the House — hands party foreign policy to an AIPAC favorite who backed Trump’s Iran war. Branko Marcetic argues it’s the establishment openly at war with its own voters.
The record:
- Polling from YouGov for the IMEU Policy Project: majorities of 60%+ of Democratic voters across key states want their 2028 candidate to cut off weapons for Israel and sanction it
- Moskowitz was one of 16 Democrats to vote to reverse Biden’s pause on the largest US bombs, opposed a ceasefire for months, led an effort to conceal Gaza’s civilian death toll, and voted to defund UNRWA
- He declared “From the river to the sea” an antisemitic call for violence, voted to censure Rashida Tlaib, supported deporting a green card holder critical of Israel, and wrote a bill to punish Americans who boycott Israel
- On Iran he put himself “to the right” of Vance and Witkoff, closer to Graham and Cotton; he refused to back the Khanna–Massie War Powers Resolution (calling it the “Ayatollah Protection Act”) and now insists “we have to get the uranium. We can’t just go home”
- Jeffries himself backed the War Powers Resolution — yet picked Moskowitz anyway
That last point is the tell. Marcetic reads it as evidence the leadership’s opposition to the war was always half-hearted: centrists are committed to unpopular hawkishness for ideological and donor reasons, and Moskowitz is the cover — a figurehead who takes the heat while the party pretends it shares voters’ anti-war convictions.