Angela Grabovsky, Republican nominee for Indiana’s 7th Congressional district, is in Israel for a visit.
The newcomer to politics, who is Jewish and immigrated from Ukraine to the United States in 1989, tells Israel National News that her time in Israel has been “wonderful” and that’s she has made many new friends and has been connecting to the land. She also has family in Israel.
Her Democratic opponent in the upcoming midterm elections is André Carson, who has been in Congress for 14 years and is one of three Muslim representatives in the House. Before him, his grandmother held the seat for eight years. So it has not been Republican for 22 years.
“I strongly believe that I’m the candidate who can turn the seat and this is the year,” Grabovsky says.
According to Grabovsky, Carson recently tweeted against Israel, regarding the death of the Al Jazeera reporter. Grabovsky called his tweet “very unfortunate.”
“Carson had been neutral toward Israel and toward the Jewish population of the district, which is around five to seven thousand people, which is a pretty large constituency," she says. "But in the last couple of years, I started noticing that just like the Democratic Party, he started voting against Israel, he voted for BDS, he was one of nine people who did not vote to fund the Iron Dome, and there is a major friendship that’s developed with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – the Squad. More and more he is beginning to follow their footsteps when it comes to American policy toward Israel and toward Israelis.”
Many times we hear the statement that there’s bipartisan support for Israel, but Grabovsky explains that’s not true in reality.
“The truth is that I have never felt that the Democratic Party shows any support for Israel. They’re trying to be in control, they’re trying to manipulate decisions that Israel is making when it comes to a lot of local issues with the settlements or the way that Arab Israelis are treated here. When I look at the Republican Party – and this is why I have the R behind my name and not the D – they’re much friendlier and they’re looking for a partnership with Israel, not necessarily to be that father figure who’s going to be telling Israel what to do, but to be in a partnership and to try to develop relationships with the rest of the Middle East for hopefully peace one of these days.”
Grabovsky is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor whose extended family was murdered by the Nazis at Babi Yar, in Kyiv, Ukraine. At age 23, Angela and her family fled Soviet tyranny and antisemitic oppression, arriving to the United States as refugees in 1989.
As someone from Ukraine, who experienced antisemitism, how does she see the rise of antisemitism in the United States?
“We see it everywhere. We see it in schools, we see it in colleges, it starts very early now,” Grabovsky says. “The educational system is not where it needs to be… It’s happening in the workplace. We have to do something to stop it. We see all of the demonstrations in New York, in Los Angeles that are being provoked by Palestinians living in the United States. Nobody wants to sit down at the table and have a conversation. All they want to do it rio to fuel the fire with their rhetoric. It’s the 21st century, we need to sit down and have a conversation and find the solutions.”
How does she see the war in Ukraine and the world’s reaction, and what does she think of Israel’s approach?
“I think Israel understands that importance of diplomacy and Israel has been in wars before, Israel doesn’t want to lose one Israeli guy or girl to a war. Israel is always ready to negotiate,” she says. “My hope was that American with the rest of the world would listen to the concerns that Russia had prior to the conflict and sit down at the table, have a conversation and prevent the war from happening. What we see in the last three months is that [the United States] continues fuelling the war by sending military equipment there and no diplomacy coming from the United States. I really like the idea when Israel said that they would be the intermediary between the two countries so hopefully they will be able to put the two leaders together in the same room and finish this devastating war.”
Grabovsky was born in Odessa and says that the situation with Russia threatening to take Odessa is “very sad.”
“I hope the city is not going to be destroyed. It’s absolutely beautiful architecturally and it has beautiful, wonderful people who want peace. The humanitarian crisis is horrible. We can’t even send money to them. We can’t send anything to them while banks are closed. They have very limited use of electricity and water. This is why I said diplomacy has to prevail.”
Grabovsky says she’s running for Congress as a political novice because “It comes from the heart, I care for America.”
“This is my adopted country. I care for Israel, I care for the world, and I see that unfortunately the Democratic Party is not coming up with solutions that are beneficial either to America or Israel or the rest of the world.”