Cori Bush Bet It All on Israel and Lost

By Noah Rothman

Wednesday, August 05, 2026

 

“I have not heard one single tangible policy from the other side,” Missouri Congressman Wesley Bell (D.) told his supporters on Tuesday night. “What we’ve seen over and over is talking about an issue that is not impacting folks right here in St. Louis.”

 

“You know, the ‘M’ in Missouri doesn’t stand for Middle East,” he quipped. “It stands for Missouri.”

 

Having resoundingly defeated former Congresswoman Cori Bush by over 30,000 votes, Bell had earned his victory lap. Moreover, the aspersion he cast on Bush’s crankish obsession with Israel wasn’t just a righteous admonition. It was also a political prophylactic.

 

Bush and her allies were toying with a face-saving narrative ahead of her loss that would attribute it to the pernicious influence of Jewish money.

 

“In total, Bell’s campaign and outside allies outspent Bush by a staggering 27-to-1 ratio,” NBC News reported. That included $2 million in pro-Bell spending by AIPAC. The socialists wanted to argue that the Democratic voters of Missouri’s first district were bamboozled by mesmeric Jews into voting against their interests. Wisely enough, Bell fended off the attack by contending that the only person who lost sight of Missourians’ interests was Bush herself.

 

If only Bush were pretending to fixate on the Jewish state’s malign omnipotence. Rather, her monomania is sincere.

 

“AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” Bush barked two years ago in the wake of Bell’s victory over the incumbent congresswoman in the 2024 primary elections. “All they did was radicalize me, so now they need to be afraid.”

 

Bush blamed her defeat on “pro-Israel” forces in America, and she was half right about that. But those forces were guided more by their moral obligations than the manipulations of “MAGA megadonors.”

 

“Bell had initially been running for the Senate, but he decided to challenge Bush in a primary a few weeks after the Hamas attacks on Israel,” read an NBC News report. Within days of the October 7 massacre — indeed, within 24 hours of the start of Israeli ground operations against Hamas in Gaza — Bush had already accused Israel of an “ethnic cleansing campaign.” She proceeded to spend the remainder of her term railing against an imagined “genocide,” all while alienating her constituents. But Bush didn’t lose her primary only because she angered Israel’s supporters. She lost because her own voters did not share her myopia.

 

In her rematch against Bell, Bush made good on her pledge two years ago. She ran as hard against AIPAC as she did against her opponent, accusing Bell of being “bought” and “paid for” by Israeli interests. But Bell did not shrink from the charge. While he is no “fan” of Benjamin Netanyahu, Bell articulated the logic of his support for Israel’s defensive priorities — not because he was in league with Jewish fifth columnists but because he is an American:

 

“Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, the Houthis, they don’t just say death to Israel, period,” Bell observed. “They say death to Israel, comma, death to America.”

 

“These are our sworn enemies, and we have allies in Israel, in Ukraine, in Taiwan that are on the front line fighting our sworn enemies,” he continued. “So, why would we not support them with everything that we have now?”

 

Apparently, Bell’s outlook is a 60–40 proposition in his D+29 district.