Jewish congressman-elect Biss hits back after ADL Midwest voices “serious concerns” on election night
Biss made opposition to AIPAC a central theme of his campaign after the lobbying group spent millions against him. The district’s electorate is 11% Jewish
Daniel Biss, the former mayor of Evanston, Illinois, won the seat for the state’s 9th Congressional District on Tuesday with 75% of the vote, and ADL Midwest issued a statement as soon as the race was called. The group said it “has serious concerns” about his “approach to antisemitism.”
Biss, a progressive Jewish critic of Israel and the grandson of Holocaust survivors, will succeed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, who held the seat for nearly three decades.
The statement pointed to Biss’s response to the 2024 encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston. “ADL documented antisemitic conduct at the encampment, including threats of violence toward Jewish students,” said Rebecca Weininger, the group’s senior regional director for the Midwest.
Weininger said Biss's decision as mayor not to provide requested police support “raises serious questions about whether the safety, dignity and equal access of Jewish students were treated with the urgency they required.” She also said the concerns were compounded when Biss “dismissed scrutiny of his response as a politically motivated attack fueled by AIPAC.”
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Congressman-elect Biss was quick to respond, telling the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that, “It saddens me to watch the ADL, once a preeminent civil rights organization, devolve into an entity that traffics in fear, intimidation and extremism.” He said such rhetoric “does nothing to keep the Jewish people safe” and “undermines that very cause.”
He added that “Jewish safety has always been intertwined with the safety of every marginalized community,” and that President Donald Trump “has made Jews less safe at home and abroad.”
Biss has defended his decision not to send police to the encampment, writing in response to a congressional inquiry that forcibly clearing the protest would have gone against police department advice and suppressed “constitutionally protected speech.” He made opposition to AIPAC a central theme of his primary campaign after the lobbying group spent millions opposing him.