A longtime progressive Democratic activist and former Jewish outreach director for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) warned that his party is at “a crisis moment.”
Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant U.S. secretary of state, said that progressive Democrats are imposing a litmus test on Jewish Americans: “Oppose Israel, and you’re in. Support Israel, and you’re out.”
“They are being told that to be a full participant as a Jewish person, you must drop your support for Israel,” Rubin told JNS. “They are being told that Israel is a foreign country, and that Jews should just drop it if they want to still participate.”
“That is inherently antisemitic,” he said.
Rubin told JNS that Sanders, who is Jewish, and his allies have “shaped a political environment that’s deeply hostile to any Jewish person who cares about the State of Israel.”
“He’s going where the wind blows, and the progressive base wants to go a certain direction,” Rubin said. “Because of his background, he can add a layer of legitimacy. His critique of Israel that is pretty special for the movement and the hard Jewish left is, in many ways, completely intolerant of criticism of the left on antisemitism.”
“They do not want to hear it,” he told JNS. “And he is the leader of that community.”
Rubin sounded the alarm in an article in the Free Press, the website founded by current CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss. He wrote that far-left party activists aligned with Sanders have imposed a litmus test restricted to Jews—oppose Israel or you’re not welcome.
“If we believe the Democratic Party is worth preserving as a broad, tolerant political home—and it is—then we must fight for that party ourselves,” Rubin wrote in the article.
“If Democrats allow the Sanders-aligned movement to determine who is sufficiently pure to belong, then the party will become smaller. A smaller Democratic Party does not protect abortion rights, voting rights or workers, nor does it appoint judges or defend democratic institutions,” he added. “It loses elections. Remember: No political party is healthy when it kicks out the Jews. A very great deal is at stake.”
JNS sought comment from Sanders.
Rubin told JNS that his history of progressive activism gives him the credibility to raise the issue, even as other Jews excuse the rhetoric of Democratic nominee for Senate in Michigan Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Graham Platner, who was forced to abandon his Senate campaign in Maine not because he wore a Nazi tattoo but because of credible allegations, including of sexual assault.
“I find there’s a desperation in the Jewish community about the Democratic Party and I felt like I have a track record that I can deploy to explain what I see going on because I have real experience—it’s not just commentary,” he told JNS.
Rubin added that he “needed to speak out, because if someone like me doesn’t speak out, who will?”
“That’s why I did it,” he told JNS.
Rubin said that elements of the Democratic Party are trying to excise pro-Israel Jews, and one of the party’s most loyal constituents needs to fight back.
“We need to turn this around for the sake of the Jewish community, for the sake of the Democratic Party,” he told JNS. “You need to have two healthy political parties. If you kick out the Jews, it’s not a healthy political party.”
But Jews increasingly are being made to feel unwelcome in the political party.
“Anti-Zionism is no longer one position among many in the Democratic Party,” Rubin wrote. “It has increasingly become the boundary marker separating the politically acceptable Jew from the politically suspect one.”
“Yes, some Democratic candidates still call themselves ‘Zionists.’ But many of them refrain from advocating positions necessary to the continued existence of the Jewish state—for example, that Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas—lest their political success be jeopardized,” he wrote in the article.
The criticism intensified after Oct. 7, when Jewish Democrats discovered that being critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and advocating for a two-state solution wasn’t good enough, according to Rubin.
“American Jews are targeted for rhetorical harassment, penalized in public association and in organizations, prevented from participating fully in democratic political life in many instances, if they support Israel,” Rubin told JNS.
“I’ve said, ‘Then tell Armenians, they can’t care about Armenia, tell Turks, they can’t care about Turkey. I mean, what are you talking about?” he said. “ Tell Italians they have to cancel the Italian American foundation. Every ethnic group in America has affinities to homeland types, and they just are singling out Jews for a particular offense.”
Rubin told JNS that Jewish Democrats need to understand the goals of the party’s left wing.
“It’s very important to ensure that people are aware that this is a deliberate attempt to politically marginalize Jews,” he said. “It is a deliberate attempt to break apart the American relationship with Israel. It’s a deliberate attempt to do that by trying to terminate Jewish advocacy for Israel within the Democratic Party.”
“The way it gets that done is by trying to intimidate Jews in the Democratic Party to be silent and afraid,” he told JNS.
“This is our challenge,” he said. “But we’ve been through challenges before, and we can succeed in this one as well if we’re willing to stand up and speak out.”
