Peace Groups Promote Hind Rajab as Write-in Candidate

New Yorkers will head to the polls today to vote for President, Congress and numerous state and local offices. Polls will be open from 6 a.m.-9 p.m. In New York City, most incumbents are safely entrenched. However, that is not stopping antiwar activists in two of the city’s congressional districts from running write-in campaigns featuring a six-year-old Palestinian girl whose death at the hands of Israeli soldiers earlier this year made international headlines. On last Tuesday’s Indypendent News Hour, we spoke with Nicole Noble of New York-10 Neighbors for Peace about the write-in campaign. For more, see below. 

New York City voters will also vote on six ballot measures today. The first is a statewide referendum that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitutions and expand legal protections for people based on sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability and national origin. Items two through six were placed on the ballot at the behest of Mayor Eric Adams and have been denounced as a “power grab” by the mayor’s critics. We checked in with progressive City Councilmember Shahana Hanif to get her thoughts. You can listen here. 

On last week’s show, we also spoke with Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani about his newly launched mayoral campaign. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, spoke about his plans to make New York City more affordable for its working class as well as what parts of the NYPD’s $12 annual budget he would like to cut. 

On today’s edition of The Indypendent News Hour on WBAI-99.5 FM from 5-6 p.m., we’ll have Election Day analysis from The Indy’s John Tarleton, Nicholas Powers and Ariana Orozco; take listener call-ins; and speak with Brooklyn super-activist Nancy Romer, who just returned from six weeks of door-to-door canvassing in several key Rust Belt states. Before she left, she wrote this piece about her love of canvassing and why she was going to be “couch surfing for Kamala” this fall. 

Peace Groups Promote Hind Rajab as Write-in Candidate
By John Tarleton

Click here to listen to this interview.

Most Democrats in Congress have supported Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza and the expansion of the war into Lebanon. Somehow Dan Goldman has managed to be even worse on the issue than most of his colleagues, despite representing New York’s 10th congressional district, a +30 Democratic bastion in Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn. Goldman is certain to be re-elected to a second term. But peace activists in his district are trying to put him on notice with a write-in campaign. His opponent: A six-year-old Palestinian girl whose death made international headlines when she was killed in the Israeli onslaught that Goldman helped fund and whose consequences he’s refused to acknowledge. This interview with Nicole Noble of NY-10 Neighbors recently aired on The Indypendent News Hour on WBAI-99.5 FM. It has been edited for length and clarity. 

What is New York-10 Neighbors for Peace? How did it get started, and what have you all been up to the past year?

New York-10 Neighbors started in October 2023. It’s a grassroots collective group of neighbors and activists living in New York's 10th congressional district. We aim to build political awareness and pressure Congressman Dan Goldman and our other elected representatives to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to military funding for Israel, and to ensure the release of all hostages and political prisoners.

Talk about Dan Goldman and why you all are so critical of his response to the war on Gaza. 

We don't believe that he represents his constituents, the majority of whom want a ceasefire. He refuses to call for a ceasefire. In the last year alone, he's voted to send $40 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to Israel in the form of military aid. We know how that aid is being used. We know that civilians are being harmed with that aid. He's also gone a step further than other members of Congress by questioning the Palestinian death toll, referring to them as Hamas statistics, which is extremely upsetting. And lastly he refuses to meet with our group or other pro- Palestinian constituents. 

Goldman insists that Israel is fighting a war of self defense and that it’s unfair to call on them to agree to a ceasefire. 

Yes, he's been very consistent. We believe there's no military solution to this problem. Dropping more bombs will not save the hostages. There have been numerous reports that Netanyahu has been the primary obstacle to a hostage deal. But we are focusing our energy where we think we can make a difference and get Dan Goldman to stop sending our tax dollars to indiscriminately bomb a trapped and starved civilian population.

Talk about your write-in campaign against Goldman and why you’ve chosen Hind Rajab as the person whose name you want people to write in?

There’s been a lot of talk among the activist community in Brooklyn and Manhattan about what to do when we have these Democratic candidates who are sure to win their elections, but we don't feel like they represent us. So it was bubbling about in the community about doing a write-in, and then New York-10 Neighbors heard that our sister organization, New York-9 Neighbors was planning to do a write-in using the name of Hind Rajab instead of their congressperson Yvette Clark. That really resonated with us, and we decided to piggyback on their campaign and to amplify it. 

The reasoning behind both our groups choosing Hind was that she was a real Palestinian girl. She's one of the many, many children that were killed by Israel, and her name is one of the few that managed to break into the Western media. 

She was the sole survivor when the Israeli soldiers shot up the car her family was fleeing in. She spent three hours on the phone with the Palestinian Red Crescent begging for help from inside the family car surrounded by her dead relatives. The Israeli military supposedly okayed an ambulance to come rescue her. The paramedics came on site. They're like, “We see her. We see her.” And then at that moment, the ambulance and the two paramedics were bombed. The two paramedics died, and the world waited in agony for 12 days to find out what happened to little Hind, and 12 days later they found her lifeless body in that car. 

The students at Columbia University renamed Hamilton Hall “Hind’s Hall” in her honor during the encampment, and American rapper Macklemore has named two songs after her. One is “Hind’s Hall.” Another one is Hind’s Hall Two. Her mother has been very supportive of her daughter's name being used for activism, and she says she hopes her daughter's memory can help save other children from death.

How exactly does a write-in vote work? And how can we know that these write-in votes will be counted? 

When it comes to the general election, all names that are written in for congressional and Senate seats are counted by the Board of Elections. So we're asking that constituents in New York-9 and New York-10 find their congressional slot and they'll see either Yvette Clark's name or Dan Goldman's name as a Democratic candidate. There are Republican candidates listed as well. And then you're just going to go all the way over to the right-hand side of your ballot, and there's a little section that says write-in. And you will bubble in that bubble like you're taking a test for write-in. And then you can write out Hind Rajab’s name. All the write-ins are reported for the district in one big document.

What impact do you look to make by getting a significant number of write-ins for Hind?

We’ll use the number of write-ins as a way to say to Congressman Goldma, “Listen, a lot of your constituents aren't in line with your position on Gaza.” Our ultimate hope is that this will help encourage a more progressive candidate to run against the incumbent in the 2026 Democratic primary.

For more about NY-10 Neighbors for Peace, click here.