A lot seems to escape Dan Goldman. When the writer and Red Hook resident Sousan Hammad stood in front of his office decrying the war that has claimed the lives of dozens of her family members, Goldman didn’t seem to notice. The letters delivered to him pleading for an end to the violence in Gaza, signed by more than a thousand of his constituents, have gone similarly unremarked upon. As for the rally last Sunday at Grand Army Plaza, where a peaceful gathering had hoped to engage him in conversation, Goldman managed to ignore that too.
Despite possessing this clever knack for avoiding the people in his district, Goldman does occasionally stick his head out to release a prepared statement. A recent one, dated November 27, gives some insight into why Goldman has so little time for those unfortunate souls grieving over lost loved ones. In asking for continuing military aid to Israel “without conditions,” and for all Americans to “unite in support of our close ally without any domestic political brinkmanship,” Goldman implies that if you don’t like this war, you’re dishonoring the country by saying so. His statement makes no mention of the more than fourteen thousand people, almost half of them children, killed in Gaza so far.
Many of his constituents are opposed to Goldman’s bellicose stance. “We don’t believe there is any military solution,” said Megha Barnabas, an artist, dancer, and mother living in Park Slope, and co-founder of the NY-10 Neighbors group advocating for an immediate ceasefire. “A lot of us are just very heartbroken, not only by what is happening but also by [Goldman’s] refusal to acknowledge the energy we’ve all put in. He’s not even saying anything.”
Dan Goldman will never agree with NY-10 Neighbors’ calls to, in Barnabas’s words, “address military aid to Israel” and its further goal of “ending the occupation and apartheid.” And he’s of course entitled to his own viewpoint. But a Representative’s job is to listen to reasonable dissenting ideas from the people who elected him. Killing children is always unacceptable and never justified. That Goldman can’t even countenance this opinion with a response is unfathomable.
What has Dan Goldman been doing since October 7, if not engaging with the concerns and pain expressed by the people in his district? For one, he voted to censure the only Palestinian-American in Congress, a fellow Democrat no less.
As the death toll in Gaza was first beginning to mount, Congressmember Rashida Tlaib posted a video on X (Twitter) calling for a cease-fire. Among the featured footage was a group of protesters using the phrase, “from the river to the sea.” When pressed about why these words had appeared in the video, Tlaib tweeted, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.”
Goldman disagrees, and says the phrase is “widely understood to call for the elimination of Israel and all of the Jews living there.” Again, Goldman is more than entitled to his opinion. But he is far from justified in taking the extraordinary step of siding with the extreme right members of Congress in their hit job on Tlaib.
If Tlaib, in calling for an end to violence but using the wrong phraseology, is worthy of censure, then what about Congressman Max Miller, who went on Fox News and said of Palestine: “we’re going to turn that into a parking lot”?
Or Senator Marsha Blackburn who accused Tlaib, without any evidence, of having “alleged ties to Hamas?”
Dan Goldman hasn’t commented on either of these statements, let alone advocated for a formal censure of those elected politicians.
“Your vote in favor of this censure of Congressmember Rashida Tlaib was out of step with your constituents, and is nothing short of a betrayal of the leadership we expect from elected officials in our district.” So reads a letter delivered to Goldman’s office by NY-10 Neighbors. No counterargument has yet been put forth.
It is surprising for a freshman Congressman, elected in a primary with 25.9% of the vote, to take a position so out of step with his peers. Only about 10% of his fellow Democrats joined the Republicans to censure Tlaib. Less surprising is that NY-10 Neighbors are considering launching a challenge for Goldman’s seat.
“The vast majority of the votes actually went to more progressive candidates than him,” Barnabas said about last year’s primary for the newly created congressional seat. “That’s something we can leverage.”
She added that the group’s current focus continues to be getting Goldman to do “all he can to prevent genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.”
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