With House seats at stake, Republicans' Jewish voters are in turmoil over the war

During the campaign, Mazi Pilip wears a Star of David around her neck. She speaks with a thick Ethiopian-Israeli accent. And when it comes to the war between Israel and Hamas, Ms. Pilip, the Republican candidate for a special House election in New York, adds no political flavor.

“October. “It changed me forever,” she said recently, her voice cracking, at a vigil for a local man taken hostage by Hamas. Ms. Pilip, an Israeli military veteran, called him “my brother.”

“Hamas' vicious attack continues Mine people, op Mine siblings, and us Jewish land – a vicious attack – that we will never forget,” she said, as the packed gymnasium of the Jewish community center in the suburbs nodded along.

Since the war began, many politicians have rushed to rally behind American Jews. But few have made the conflict as deeply ingrained at the center of their political identity as Ms. Pilip, 44, a little-known provincial lawmaker whose remarkable personal story and unusual overtures to Jews from across the political spectrum have propelled her into a dead heat with Tom Suozzi. a former Democratic congressman.

Their Feb. 13 contest will touch on numerous national issues, most notably the border crisis. But Ms. Pilip's approach has also transformed the race into a test of how deeply the conflict and fear of rising anti-Israel sentiment will undermine political alliances for suburban American Jews, long a bedrock of the Democratic coalition. have shaken.

“October. 7 was a seismic event in more than just Israel,” said Lawrence Levy, dean of the Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University on Long Island. “Fair or not, there is a perception I hear from Jews, who I know have been loyal Democrats with their time and money, who are now wondering if the party is safe for them.”

It is far from clear whether this will be enough to tilt the race, which was sparked by the expulsion of George Santos from Congress. Mr. Suozzi has waged a frantic campaign to show his own support for Israel. He made a surprise stop in Israel and has argued that he — not Ms. Pilip — is the most useful enemy of progressives whose criticism of Israel has alarmed more mainstream Democratic Jews.

But in recent weeks, there have been signs across the district that the debate will not be easily settled. Outside a Pilip event on anti-Semitism in the suburb of Great Neck, two Jewish voters had to be separated during a shouting match over the candidates.

At the Jewish Community Center, about 15 miles east in the more liberal Plainview, a man who attended the hostage vigil confided that he was hiding his support for Mr. Suozzi from his wife, who had recently become a “one-issue voter” for Israel had become. And rabbis described congregations divided between a known ally and the ability to choose one for themselves.

“We've had plenty of Jewish government officials here, but it's probably fair to say she's one of the more Jewishly committed candidates we've ever seen,” said Rabbi Steven Conn of the Plainview Jewish Center. But he added that Mr. Suozzi was also well-known and well-liked.

“I don't think anyone knows at this point how it's going to turn out,” he said.

It's no wonder. Stretching from Queens to the affluent suburbs of Nassau County, New York's Third District is one of the most Jewish districts in the country; depending on election turnout, Jews could make up as much as 20 percent of the electorate. Jewish voters here have long been more moderate than their urban counterparts, equally uncomfortable with the far left and the far right.

In reality, there is little difference between the candidates' policy positions on Israel. Both oppose placing conditions on U.S. military aid to Israel, which Israeli authorities say has lost 1,200 lives in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Both oppose a ceasefire in Gaza, where 25,000 people have since been killed in Israeli bombardments, Gaza health officials say.

But there are signs, first noticed in last November's local elections, that voters are looking beyond policy documents.

“My race last year was kind of a shot across the bow,” said Jon Kaiman, a Democrat who lost a bid for town supervisor in normally friendly territory North Hempstead.

Mr Kaiman said he saw several services at the same time. Voter turnout soared in Great Neck, Ms. Pilip's hometown, where Iranian and Orthodox Jews have voted reliably Republican in recent years. At the same time, he heard from Jewish voters who typically side with Democrats but now seemed less interested in his positions, or in President Biden's support for Israel.

Their concern was growing voices on the party's left flank – especially from the group of progressive members of the House of Representatives known as the Squad – demanding a ceasefire.

“There was almost anger in the Democratic Party,” Mr. Kaiman said. “We constantly hear: what are you doing with the team?”

Mrs Pilip enters.

Although the Nassau County lawmaker had little political or policy experience, Republican leaders chose her as their candidate largely because of her unique potential to accelerate the trend among some Jewish voters to support Republicans.

She speaks in compelling personal terms about anti-Semitism and the fragility of the Jewish state. Ms. Pilip was 12 when Ethiopia fell into unrest and the United States and Israel rushed to transport thousands of Jews, including her family, to the Middle East.

At the age of 18, she enlisted in the Israeli army. She was stationed in Beit Lid just years after a deadly bombing by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (Ms. Pilip became a U.S.-Israeli citizen in 2009 after marrying a Ukrainian-born Jewish American.)

For some Jewish adherents, the attraction is unusually deep.

“She embodies my tradition, she embodies everything I believe in,” said an Iranian Jewish businessman in Great Neck, who agreed to be identified only by his first name, Dennis.

But Ms. Pilip clearly also faces her own obstacles that cut across party lines. Several Jewish voters said they were impressed by her passionate positions but simply could not ignore her personal opposition to abortion and refusal to disavow former President Donald J. Trump.

Andrew Laufer, a civil rights attorney and registered Democrat, said he would vote for Mr. Suozzi even as he acknowledged that Oct. 7 “had shifted the Overton window to the right for many Democrats.”

“A lot of what I'm hearing and what I've felt myself is that the far left of the Democratic Party has just stabbed us in the back,” he said. “That shouldn't get through to Tom,” he added, referring to Mr. Suozzi, “but unfortunately I think he may pay a price.”

Ms. Pilip had “great appeal,” he said, but he feared she might be a “Trump sycophant.”

Ms. Pilip has also faced questions about how she described her military service.

In official bios on Instagram and But as Ms. Pilip herself admitted, she was a gunsmith who maintained weapons in the paratroop brigade, not a paratrooper or a trained paratrooper. She has not experienced any struggle.

Ms. Pilip's campaign declined to make her available for an interview. Michael Deery, a Nassau County Republican official, dismissed the distinction as “form over substance” and argued that the term “paratrooper” was widely used in Israel.

But former Israeli military leaders and scholars who study women in the armed forces said Ms. Pilip's use was neither common nor accurate. The Hebrew word for paratrooper, they noted, does not have a feminine form.

“As a gunsmith, she was not a paratrooper,” said Nachman Shai, a former Israeli military spokesman and Labor Party minister.

In an interview, Mr. Suozzi rejected Ms. Pilip's attempts to lump him in with left-wing Democrats on Israel or any other issue, saying he was prepared to fight that faction of his party.

“The key to the long-term success of the US-Israel relationship is bipartisanship,” he said in an interview. “Now more than ever, you need strong, outspoken Democrats.”

While his stance has reassured some Jewish voters, it could have a political backlash, especially at a time when polls show Democratic voters increasingly wary of Israel's tactics.

It is home to about 17,000 Muslim voters, many of whom are traditionally Democrats, according to the Asian American Institute for Research and Engagement.

“I've spent the last few weeks almost begging people to vote,” said Sarah Eltabib, a legal historian in the district. She said she supported Mr Suozzi with “a very, very heavy heart” and had resorted to hoping fellow Muslims did not pay attention to his comments about the war.

Mr Suozzi has acknowledged the tension during the race. But when he took the microphone at the hostage vigil in Plainview, he asked Ms. Pilip to stand next to him to show unity.

“It's a very, very difficult time in our country because everyone is so divided,” he said. “We have to find a way to let some of that go and come together.”