A Texas congressional candidate’s call to imprison and castrate “Zionists” rocked her Democratic party this week, as lawmakers expressed alarm and decried antisemitism in politics.
Two Democrats — US Reps. Josh Gottheimer and Jared Moskowitz — said in a joint statement that if the candidate, Maureen Galindo, enters Congress, “We will force a vote to expel her every single day.”
Every Democrat in Congress signed onto a joint statement saying her “vile, bigoted and antisemitic views” were anathema to the party.
Galindo’s anti-Jewish rhetoric is not an isolated incident, though, but highlights the mess surrounding Israel, Jews, and anti-Zionism that has become endemic in American politics.
Galindo won a primary in March in Texas’s 35th Congressional District, around San Antonio, with 29% of the vote, beating her rival, Johnny Garcia, who had 27%. The party’s candidacy will be decided in a runoff election next week.
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Her campaign made the vow to imprison Zionists in an Instagram post last week that circulated widely on Tuesday.
“She’ll turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists and former ICE officers for human trafficking. (It will also be a castration processing center for pedophiles which will probably be most of the Zionists),” the campaign said.
In other recent statements, Galindo railed against “Zionist billionaire Jews,” blamed Israel for immigration enforcement in the US, demanded treason charges against politicians linked to Israel, and said that Zionists control the media.
Unlike other anti-Zionists in US politics, Galindo often refers to “Zionist Jews.” She also attacks Christian Zionists, but is overwhelmingly focused on Israel.
She views Zionists as a malevolent, controlling force, and as a threat, both hallmarks of antisemitism.
She said of her opponent, “He’s funded by the Zionists who control San Antonio. I know that sounds like a conspiracy theory, but we have the Epstein files now.”
Same message, new package
Her statements reflect a hodgepodge of antisemitic, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel views, echoing the far left, the far right and anti-Israel sources in the Middle East, sometimes blending the different influences into a single statement.
“They run the Epstein networks and they control DHS, because that was the whole point of DHS and ICE, was for the Israelis to occupy America,” she said earlier this month.
Tying US law enforcement to Israel is common on the far left — see New York’s Zohran Mamdani saying that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF” — while the allegation that Zionists are occupying the US is more common on the far right. White supremacists refer to Washington as the “ZOG,” or the “Zionist Occupied Government.”
“This is an Israeli occupation of America,” she said in a radio interview.
Galindo has also said she is “concerned, though, about the genocide that Israel is doing and they might try to bring it here, too,” bringing together the left’s genocide allegations in Gaza with the far right’s portrayal of Jews as an existential threat to the US.
An anti-Zionist protester in New York City, June 10, 2024. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
Galindo also draws from Middle East anti-Israel sources. After coming under criticism this week, she posted a video of the former spokesperson for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, Ghassan Kanafani, in her defense. She has cited Al Jazeera documentaries as a source of information and commemorated the Palestinian Nakba Day.
Much of her rhetoric is grounded in the left, like calling Zionists “genocidal colonizers” perpetrating “crimes against humanity,” framing the conflict as a struggle for indigenous rights, blaming Israel for health care woes in the US, and attacking companies tied to Israel like Caterpillar.
Her references to a cabal of “Zionist billionaire Jews,” “the synagogue of Satan,” and “all of the Jews who own Hollywood” are more classic, run-of-the-mill antisemitism.
Her mixed rhetoric reflects how anti-Zionist talking points are increasingly crossing over between the left and right, marking a rare point of convergence. Tucker Carlson sometimes sounds like a progressive academic while accusing Israel of genocide and murdering journalists. A recent video by Canary Mission shows the hard left Ana Kasparian and the far right Nick Fuentes issuing nearly identical statements about Israel. Anti-Zionist ideas also have a history of traveling between the different camps.
Galindo has stepped up her anti-Zionist rhetoric in recent weeks. Earlier in her campaign, she mentioned Israel, but she was more focused on domestic issues like housing, opposition to the Trump administration and immigration. Her February campaign announcement made no mention of Israel or Zionism. In more recent appearances, though, in social media posts, interviews and campaign events, nearly every statement involves Israel.
Anti-Zionist protesters in New York City, May 5, 2026. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
She repeatedly says she is not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist. She views anti-Zionist Jews as the “real Jews,” and accuses Zionist Jews of antisemitism.
“Semites are indigenous people to the Middle East and Northern Africa region. Zionists are European colonizers to Israel. They are the antisemites,” she said.
Despite Galindo’s disavowals of antisemitism, her vow to imprison and castrate Zionists went too far for Democrats who are normally comfortable with anti-Zionism.
“This bigoted garbage and antisemitism should be nowhere near our politics,” said New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Jewish Democrats in Congress weren’t buying Galindo’s distinction either.
“Her ever-increasing hateful rhetoric, most recently threatening to put Jews into concentration camps, merits no safe harbor anywhere in American politics,” said the joint statement from all Jewish Democratic members of Congress.
Not the only bigot in politics
Galindo’s statements were not the only Israel-related controversy in US politics on Tuesday. Chris Rabb, an anti-Israel progressive who shared a post that said the Bondi Beach massacre was a false flag by “Zionists,” won his primary in Pennsylvania. (Rabb later disavowed the post and said it was shared by a former staffer.)
On the other side of the spectrum, anti-Israel US Rep. Thomas Massie, conceding in a primary race, said he was unable to congratulate his opponent immediately because his rival was “in Tel Aviv.”
US Representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, speaks during an election night watch party after losing the Republican party’s nomination at the Marriott Cincinnati Airport, May 19, 2026, in Hebron, Kentucky. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
Adding to the imbroglio, Galindo is reportedly receiving funding from a Republican-linked super PAC, apparently to boost the weaker Democratic party candidate in the race.
Jewish Democrats and party leaders laced into Republicans for allegedly assisting Galindo.
“They are deliberately elevating one of the most grotesque antisemites in American politics this cycle because they think it helps them win,” the Democratic Majority for Israel said.
In response to the controversy, Galindo on Wednesday said, “When I say that I want billionaire Zionists in prison, that does not mean I want Jews in internment camps, so why am I getting a whole bunch of death threats and MAGA insults?”
“I realize MAGA and Jewish Zionists apparently are the exact same people, they talk the exact same way,” she said. “They want to create a religion state in the United States of America… the goal of Zionism is to create these white supremacist religion states.”
“You’re a danger to humanity and belong in prison,” she said.
None of Galindo’s ideas are new. The Nazis threw Jews into camps where some were castrated or sterilized, viewed Jews as a genocidal threat to their society, and portrayed Jews as pedophiles. Many leftist anti-Zionist ideas, such as portraying anti-Zionism as separate from antisemitism, were promulgated by a Soviet propaganda campaign in the mid-20th century. Galindo’s claim that Jews are Europeans echoes the debunked Khazar hypothesis. Anti-Zionist protesters often chant for the purge of Zionists and call Jewish passersby “pedophiles.”
Galindo brings all these strands, from past eras and different ideologies, together in a single candidate.
An aberration or a harbinger?
It remains to be seen whether Galindo is an aberration or a harbinger in US politics, as the lines continue to blur between anti-Zionism, antisemitism and Israel-related conspiracies, and between hostility to Israel on the right and the left. The window of acceptable Israel-related discourse in US politics has already moved miles since the start of the Gaza war.
It isn’t even clear why Galindo’s call to imprison Zionists provoked such a reaction from Democrats, and not her earlier statements, or other antisemitic controversies in the party, such as Graham Platner’s Nazi tattoo or Abdul El-Sayed’s equivocations about Iran, Hamas and an attack on a Michigan synagogue.
Even Hasan Piker, a hardline leftist and cheerleader for anti-Zionist candidates, expressed confusion at Galindo while viewing her comments for the first time on a livestream.
“I’ve just never encountered something like this, where there’s certain things that she says, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s awesome,’ and other things that she says, where I’m like, ‘Oh my God, that’s insane,’” Piker said. “I don’t know what to say about it.”