Top House Democrat blasts threats by Israel foes

A top House Democrat is blasting anti-Israel activists for a “campaign of intimidation” outside his home.

Rep. Adam Smith, the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, condemned activists who planned to demonstrate outside his private residence in Bellevue, Wash.

“There are no circumstances that anyone should be allowed to show up at elected officials’ private residences or anyone’s private residences to try to pressure them and intimidate them and threaten them into doing something,” Smith told JNS on Monday.

The group Seattle Against War said a rally outside Smith’s home would call on the congressman to “stop arming Israel.”

“They don’t want to meet and discuss,” Smith told JNS. “They want to use threats and intimidation to try to silence people who disagree with them.”

He said activists have repeatedly targeted his neighborhood, distributed leaflets to his neighbors accusing him of murder, and burned Israeli and American flags in his driveway. Protesters once arrived at 5 am,“banging on drums and screaming through a bullhorn,” he said.

“Coming to someone’s personal residence is a threat,” Smith said. “It’s well understood when someone says to you, ‘I know where you live,’ that is meant to be a threat, and that is exactly what this is.”

“We we have an election process,” Smith said. “I’m up every two years. They’re not happy with that, recruit a candidate, support that candidate and the election.”

He also accused two challengers in Washington’s 9th Congressional District — nonprofit consultant Melissa Chaudhry and former Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant — of joining protests outside his home.

He called their actions “unethical and a bastardization of the democratic process.”

“Both Kshama Sawant and Melissa Chaudhry have decided that intimidating elected officials in their homes is a legitimate way to campaign,” Smith said.

JNS reported that Sawant’s husband, Calvin Priest, 54, was charged after he allegedly assaulted a 22-year-old woman who works as a staffer for Smith at one of the congressman’s town hall meetings in August 2025. Priest appeared to lead a group of protesters into the meeting at Renton Technical College.

At a recent Bellevue City Council meeting, where an ordinance protecting private residences from protests was passed, a member of Seattle Against War testified that Smith would not meet with the group, leaving disruptive protests as its last resort.

Smith rejected that claim.

“I have listened to them. I have met with various different groups. I’ve met with these people a couple of times,” he told JNS. “But they always just take out their phones and start reading pre-prepared scripts, which insult me and tell me how awful and terrible and horrible I am. It’s not a dialogue.”

Smith said extremists on both sides of the political spectrum increasingly use harassment to target public officials.

“The far-right and the far-left have decided that threats and intimidation are another way to try to either drive people out or make them so scared that they acquiesce,” he said.

The tactics have not changed his views on Israel, he said.

“I’ve been outspoken in opposition to the Iran war, but really the activists want Israel to cease to exist as a country,” Smith said. “They certainly want the United States to stop supporting them in any way.”

He said Israel’s actions cannot be judged without considering the country’s history and the threats it faces.

“People have been trying to eliminate Israel from the day it was created,” he said. “To judge Israel’s actions outside of that context, which they want to do, whitewashes all of the history to act like Israel’s persecuting Palestinians for the fun of it as opposed to actually fighting a conflict for survival.”

Smith called Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis “bat-sh** crazy people.”

“Once they’re done with Israel, they’re going to move on to other folks, too,” he said. “They are homicidal, suicidal religious fanatics who are a danger to civilized society.”

Still, Smith said his support for Israel is not unconditional.

“I’m not in love with everything Israel does,” he told JNS. “In fact, I’ve been critical of them on a number of fronts, particularly when it comes to what’s going on in the West Bank.”

Smith said he hopes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will try harder to find Palestinians who can serve as an alternative to Hamas, and Lebanese people who can combat Hezbollah.

Regarding the protests, “If this becomes the acceptable way of getting your point across, then we’re in a downward spiral,” Smith said.

—JNS