Howard Horowitz is a socialist ^{1 2} Jewish activist, far-left racial and economic justice activist, and the current president of the Westchester People’s Action Committee (WESPAC) Foundation board. ¹

Horowitz supports the left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow Movement. ¹ He has said that Zionism as a nation-state project “denigrates” Jewish tragedies by acting in ways that are “hateful” and called Israel’s military response to the Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel in 2023 a “genocide involving forced death marches and indiscriminate bombing and killing” of tens of thousands of Gazans. ¹

Career

Howard Horowitz is a socialist ^{3 2} Jewish activist, far-left racial justice and economic justice activist, ¹ and the current president of the Westchester People’s Action Committee (WESPAC) Foundation board. ¹

Horowitz is active in the Israel Action Committee of Temple Israel of New Rochelle, a founding member of the Westchester Jewish Coalition for Immigration, member of the WESPAC Mideast Committee, and an active member of the left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace. ¹

He is active in the New York Caring Majority and the campaign for Fair Pay for Home Care legislation in New York State, which would raise elder care workers’ pay to 150 percent of state minimum-wage requirements. Horowitz couches this activism as a struggle for the far-left concepts of racial and economic justice and equity due to the largely immigrant nature of this workforce. ¹

Early Life

Howard Horowitz was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household in Monticello, New York. ² His father’s side of the family was affiliated with the left-of-center Jewish organization Workers Circle. During his youth, Horowitz moved away from Orthodox Judaism and embraced Zionism as a “secular, socialist” ideology. In the 1970s, Horowitz spent time at a Kibbutz where he “appreciated” socialism and Jewish secularism. Throughout the 1970s, Horowitz supported left-of-center Labor and Socialist Zionism in Israel. ^{1 2}

Later Activism

Howard Horowitz has since referred to the Palestinian territories as the “occupied territories” and has claimed that the “Nakba,” the Palestinian nationalist term for the displacement of Arabs from Israeli territory after the armistice concluding the Israeli War of Independence, was an ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. ¹

Horowitz has said that Zionism as a nation-state project “denigrates” Jewish tragedies by acting in ways that are “hateful.” ¹ Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel, Horowitz said that it was “important to understand why the Palestinian fighters broke out from the ghetto wall.” He also said that his outrage at Hamas’s atrocities gave way to outrage at Israeli retaliation and called Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza a “genocide involving forced death marches and indiscriminate bombing and killing” of tens of thousands of Gazans. ¹

In 2022, Horowitz wrote an article in Mondoweiss where he said he was very “thrilled” that his Congressman, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), opposed the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords agreement, which has received bipartisan support ⁴ to help stabilize relations in the Middle East. ⁵

Horowitz supports the left-wing Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow Movement. He has said he is heartened to see young Jewish activists standing up for the Palestinian territories and called the Benjamin Netanyahu-led Israeli government fascist and right wing, claiming that it kills, beats, arrests, and displaces innocents at a massive, genocidal scale, in the Palestinian territories and Israel proper. ¹

He has also claimed that Israel’s Jewish establishment is in an alliance with “right wing anti-Semites and Christian Zionists” and said that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) undermines democratic processes in the United States by working to unseat left-of-center minority and Jewish candidates who stand up for the far-left principles of racial justice, economic justice, and global human rights. ¹ In 2018, Horowitz called for the Jewish people to “light a candle” for the Palestinian people as a part of Hannukah celebrations. ⁶

1. Khader, Nada. “WESPAC Board Chair on his Jewish Identity.” WESPAC Foundation. February 13, 2024. Accessed June 13, 2024. https://wespac.org/2024/02/13/wespac-board-chair-on-his-jewish-identity/.
2. “Activist Spotlight: Howard Horowitz.” The Workers Circle. Accessed June 13, 2024. https://www.circle.org/activist-spotlight-howard-horowitz.
3. ^[1] Khader, Nada. “WESPAC Board Chair on his Jewish Identity.” WESPAC Foundation. February 13, 2024. Accessed June 13, 2024. https://wespac.org/2024/02/13/wespac-board-chair-on-his-jewish-identity/.
4.  “Abraham Accords Caucus Forms Bipartisan Gaza Working Group.” Office of Congressman Brad Schneider. June 11, 2024. Accessed June 14, 2024. https://schneider.house.gov/media/press-releases/abraham-accords-caucus-forms-bipartisan-gaza-working-group.
5. Horowitz, Howard. “MY Rep opposes the Abraham Accords – and I’m thrilled.” Mondoweiss. February 23, 2022. Accessed June 14, 2024. https://mondoweiss.net/2022/02/my-rep-opposes-the-abraham-accords-and-im-thrilled/.
6. Horowitz, Howard. “When will the mainstream Jewish community call us to ‘light a candle’ for the Palestinian people?” Mondoweiss. December 9, 2018. Accessed June 14, 2024. https://mondoweiss.net/2018/12/mainstream-community-palestinian/.