The rise of the anti-Israel Left in the United States was a main focus of the closing of the Jewish Federations of North America’s annual gathering in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
Last week’s blue-wave midterm election ushered in a new bloc of candidates vocally opposed to the Jewish state that Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Federation, likened to an earthquake in the U.S. Jewish community.
“I don’t think you can measure on a Richter scale in this room the concern about the El-Sayed election in Michigan,” Fingerhut said of senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed.
He also pointed to the successes of candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America in local elections.
“We now have DSA mayors, who ran on very strong anti-Israel platforms, in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles—for all practical purposes, Chicago, even though he’s not declared-DSA candidate,” Fingerhut said. “These are the largest Jewish communities in America.”
Fingerhut’s comments came during a panel discussion with David Axelrod, the longtime Democratic political strategist and former adviser to President Barack Obama, and Eliana Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Washington Free Beacon, in front of about 2,500 Federation staff, volunteers and lay leaders.
The audience was gathered for the Federation’s annual general assembly at the Marriott Marquis hotel in Washington.
Axelrod argued that opposition to Israel did not play a major role in the candidacies of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and some of the other recently-elected figures on the anti-Israel Left.
“Whatever their views on Israel, they did not run on those issues,” Axelrod said. “They ran on issues that were much closer to home, and they ran, in Mamdani’s case, famously, he was the kind of first guy to start trumpeting the issue of ‘affordability.’”
“It would be wrong to say they ran on an anti-Israel platform and that’s how they got elected,” he said. “They ran around their views on Israel, and they got elected.”There were audible murmurs throughout the audience in response to Axelrod’s claim about Mamdani, who in 2023 told a DSA conference that “Palestine is what got me into politics” and who has made a point of continuing to raise his objections to Israel even after his election.
He also campaigned on having the Israeli prime minister arrested, and his spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law when they host pro-Israel events.
By contrast, the crowd of Jewish leaders from 117 local Federations from across the country cheered Johnson when she pointed out that the “ticket to entry” to the DSA and the progressive Left is “loathing of the State of Israel.”
Shira Hutt, executive vice president of the Federation, told JNS on the sidelines of the conference that in its meetings with members of Congress later on Tuesday, the group would advocate for passage of the Jewish American Security Act, which would raise funding for the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion.
“That is what we are fully focused on,” Hutt said.Like the rest of the country, members of the Federation are still assessing the impact of the midterms, she told JNS.
“There’s a real appetite to engage in the issue to understand what the blue wave means for the Jewish community, for our security, for Israel’s security,” she said.
Fingerhut told the audience that Jewish groups have to continue to focus on domestic security amid the growing threat of antisemitism and the ongoing “merciless attack” on Israel in American media.
“We’d all rather just work on the joy, not the oy,” he said. “But you know what? It’s our job.”
