From WNYC Studios, I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, June 17th.

Now we turn again to the hotly contested Democratic congressional primary and parts of the Northern Bronx,

including Wakefield and Coop City, and much of Southern Westchester.

Last week, we had the Challenger, the Westchester County Executive, George Latimer,

and now the incumbent, two-term Congressman Jamal Bowman.

As we mentioned last week, the Israel-Hamas War has been a central issue in the race, so we will talk about Congressman Bowman's As we mentioned last week, the Israel Hamas war has been a central issue in the race.

So we will talk about Congressman Bowman's views on that in some detail, as we did with

Executive Latimer. Congressman, thanks so much for doing this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Of course, Brian. Thank you for having me. Good to be with you. Congressman, I'll follow the same

format we had for your opponent.

With Executive Latimer, we established that he declines to support President Biden

in asking Israel to take a step back in the war, as Biden put it, step back. He declined to

urge Israel to publicly accept the Biden ceasefire plan, declined to support

Senator Schumer and calling for new elections there, and declined to criticize Prime Minister

Netanyahu in any way by name when I asked him if there was any reason to for him.

He said he won't criticize any individual in Israeli politics by name.

So he is different from President Biden and Senator

Schumer in those ways. And the voters will make their judgments about those positions with

respect to him. For you, I have a different set of questions, and I'll start here. My first

Middys question is this. You said in the News 12 debate that Hamas has to go. I think you said it in those words. Hamas has to go. But you're calling for a permanent ceasefire, not a temporary one. Permanent ceasefire is a Hamas condition for a ceasefire, precisely so they can continue as a military fighting Israel.

So how do you explain what could be seen as a contradiction, saying Hamas has to go, but

you're for a permanent ceasefire, which would guarantee that they stay and have continued power?

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