Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock, campaigning together in mid-November in Jonesboro, Georgia. Image by Getty Images

By David Ian Klein January 5, 2021

Just ahead of Tuesday’s contentious runoff elections for Georgia’s two Senate seats, Laura Ingraham of Fox News likened the Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock, to the so-called Squad in the House of Representatives.

“Warnock and Ossoff will be the Senate version, when you really think about it, of the Squad,” Ingraham said on her show, The Angle, Monday evening, referring to Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressly and Ilhan Omar. “Total nightmares.”

The four young, leftist Congresswomen, all of whom were first elected in 2018, have been lauded by progressives for taking on issues previously untouched by the Democratic establishment, but demonized by Republicans.

The Squad has also had a complex reception from many American Jews, particularly because of the pro-Palestinian advocacy of Tlaib and Omar, the first two Muslim women to serve in Congress.

Both Ossoff and Warnock have professed largely pro-Israel stances, in line with past Democratic policies favoring a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict. Ossoff, who is Jewish, has repeatedly defended Warnock, whose pro-Palestinian statements in sermons have been used in Republican attack ads.

Warnock has outlined his support for the Jewish state in a policy paper that quotes the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saying that “Israel’s right to exist as a state in security is incontestable.”

Ossoff has in the past received the endorsement of the left-leaning pro-Israel group, J-Street, and earlier this year declared his support of the Jewish state in personal terms.

“I am a committed supporter of the State of Israel,” he wrote last month in a letter to Georgia’s Jewish Community. “I have family in Jerusalem, and I am committed to Israel’s security as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

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