Mayor Bruce Harrell attends Combat Antisemitism Movement event in New Orleans
Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell has been conspicuously absent from public life since his concession speech in November.
This week, Harrell made an unannounced appearance at a Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) conference in New Orleans. In a photograph published by CAM, Harrell is seen participating in a panel discussion with New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who recently returned from a trip to Israel in November, where he also attended a CAM event in-country and professed that he had "served" Israel as Mayor.
Barney Breen-Portnoy
CAM has worked directly with the NYPD, teaching that symbols like the Palestinian Keffiyeh and even the watermelon are antisemitic.
Behind the curtain, CAM's board members include Evangelical religious-Zionist Johnny Moore, who ran the infamous program in Gaza, which Médecins Sans Frontières called "sites of orchestrated killing." Whistleblower Anthony Aguilar personally witnessed Palestinians killed at Israeli-backed-American-funded aid distribution sites, which he said were "designed as death traps."
"We, the United States, are complicit," Aguilar told Democracy Now. "We are involved, hand in hand, in the atrocities and the genocide that is currently undergoing in Gaza."
Other CAM staff and board members include alumni of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), including intelligence officers.
One CAM board member, Martin Oliner, told an Israel Heritage Foundation (IHF) event, including a sitting Israeli government official, that “Look, we’ve been accused of genocide, so maybe it’s up to us to actually kill civilians."
CAM Board Member Martin Oliner.
The IHF later deleted the video of Oliner after Prism reported on a network of links between the IHF, top Israeli officials, and Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
One of those links was Arie Lipnick, who also serves as a CAM board member and attended the CAM conference with Harrell in New Orleans. Lipnick is a Republican party operative and works directly with NORPAC.
While CAM claims to be nonpartisan, it released a video in 2023 slamming "woke" ideology and some of its CAM coalition organizations, such as Young Israel, have embodied right wing political ideology. Recall that Young Israel was linked to convicted pro-Trump operatives Igor Fruman and Lev Parnas.
While CAM says it operates to counter antisemitism, Current Affairs writer John Ross wrote that "CAM is doing something extremely dangerous. It is making it easier for neo-Nazis and fascists like the streamer Nick Fuentes, an open admirer of Adolf Hitler, to claim that accusations of antisemitism are nothing more than political weapons wielded on Israel’s behalf. If 'antisemitism' is redefined as 'opposition to a U.S.-backed genocide,' the term will become completely meaningless."
Harrell's office has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
While it's unclear why Harrell traveled to New Orleans for the CAM event and how he made the decision to affiliate with the group, as I reported this week, the Israeli government has a long history of seeking to influence Seattle politicians.
12/4/25 Update:
CAM has published a Municipal Antisemitism Action Plan dated December 2025. It's unclear if Harrell has made any commitments to adopting this plan in Seattle. Among the proposed initiatives are to legislate the IHRA antisemitism definition, which falsely equates anti-Zionism as antisemitism, to prohibit wearing masks in public, and to adopt anti-BDS policies.