Facing a competitive primary next week, the New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, a member of the progressive (and firmly anti-Israel) clique known as the Squad, appears to be giving in to his worst instincts. Seth Mandel writes:

From a policy perspective, Bowman has turned against funding for Iron Dome—a purely defensive system—and the Abraham Accords, which expanded normalization with the Arab world and increased Jewish integration with formerly hostile countries. . . . But of course it goes beyond policy. Temperament-wise, Bowman is volatile.

As Bowman spins out, he keeps losing backers, such as the left-wing J Street and the progressive erstwhile ally Mondaire Jones. And so he has doubled down on whoever’s left in his camp, which he assumes to be exclusively made up of rabid anti-Semites.

His rhetoric has become indistinguishable from that of Ayatollah Khamenei. Recently he was caught on video saying to a crowd of supporters: “Because I am fighting against genocide, I am being attacked by the Zionist regime we call AIPAC.”

A conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, Bowman can be seen ranting that the documented rape of Israelis on October 7 by Hamas is made-up “propaganda.”

Recent reports suggest that the White House has at last acted to allow the shipments of weapons that had been withheld from Israel and to end further the delays. On this topic, Elliott Abrams comments, “I don’t know what and how much has been held up, but it shouldn’t have happened. The level of delay should be zero.”

In this interview with Ariel Kahana, Abrams also comments on the failings of U.S. policy toward Iran, and the Biden administration’s refusal to enforce existing sanctions:

According to Abrams, Iran has indeed halted the advancement of its nuclear program on rare occasions. “This happened when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, and when [President] Trump eliminated Qassem Suleimani in 2020. The U.S. needs to be ready to use force in Iran, but credibility is critical here. Only if [Iran’s leaders] are convinced that the U.S. is willing to act will they stop.”

Abrams claims that the U.S. president tried for two-and-a-half years to revive the nuclear deal with Iran until he realized it wasn’t interested. “Iran has benefited from this situation, and everyone outside the administration sees it as a failure.”