Jewish Democrats are facing a choice that they don’t want to make this fall: Elect a candidate whose views on Israel are abhorrent to them or help Republicans keep control of the House and Senate and prevent a check on U.S. President Donald Trump.
“It is concerning that there are an increased number of Democrats vocalizing views on Israel that are not aligned with the values and views of the vast majority of American Jews,” Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told JNS.
“There’s a handful of them and they’re increasing in number, and they’re increasingly loud,” Soifer said. “Their voices have been heard on this campaign trail in ways that we have not seen before, and we are concerned about that.”
“I’m not blind to it,” she told JNS.
Such rhetoric has the Republican Jewish Coalition eager to woo disaffected Jewish Democrats.
“Our message to Jewish Democrats is simple: If your party won’t stand with the Jewish community, you don’t owe them your vote,” Sam Markstein, the group’s political director, told JNS. “There is only one party today where American Jews can be proudly Jewish and loudly pro-Israel, and it is the Republican Party.”
Outside groups have involved themselves in races involving Jewish Democrats, to the concern of some.
During his first term, Tom Malinowski, a former New Jersey Democratic congressman, was endorsed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But when he ran earlier this year for an open seat and suggested that he was open to limiting some aid to the Jewish state, AIPAC spent more than $2.3 million against him.
Malinowski continued to receive backing from J Street, which has called for an end to U.S. security funding to Israel.
Meanwhile, the Democratic Socialists of America attacks “Zionists” for the actions of the Israeli government, although the DSA has never, for example, gone after Russian-Americans for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“On the one hand, you have the most well-funded, so-called Jewish organization AIPAC forcing Democrats to support the Israeli government unconditionally, which many of us cannot do right for a variety of reasons,” New Jersey-based Democratic consultant Julie Roginsky told JNS.
“Or you have the DSA supporters, who very often use the words ‘Zionist’ and ‘Jew’ interchangeably, which troubles many of us, who believe that all Zionism is the right of Jews to self-determination in their ancestral homeland,” she said. “That is veering into antisemitic territory—not anti-israel but antisemitic.”
Far-left opponents of Israeli policies are winning some early primaries in heavily Democratic congressional districts, ensuring that the chorus of Israeli critics will swell in the new Congress.
And their voices could be amplified if Democrats become the majority party next year, especially if some of those who now oppose Israeli policies toward the Palestinians get to chair subcommittees come January.
So far, voters in New Jersey’s overwhelmingly Democratic 12th Congressional District nominated Adam Hamawy, a surgeon and U.S. Army veteran, who called Israel’s actions in Gaza a “genocide.” He has connections to “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, who was linked to the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center and went to prison for life for planning several terrorist attacks.
And in Pennsylvania’s heavily Democratic 3rd Congressional District, Democrats nominated state representative Chris Rabb, who attacked pro-Israel lobbying groups and also accused the Jewish state of “genocide.”
The concern is amplified in swing states, where Jewish voters’ turnout could make the difference in tight Senate races.
“It’s putting a tremendous pressure on Jews, who now are forced to either cast a ballot for somebody who maybe does not wish them ill, but certainly acts like he wishes them ill,” Roginsky said.
“Or I sit it out and therefore, in some swing districts, deliver the vote for Republicans,” she said. “That’s also unacceptable for us, because we’re equally panicked about what’s happening on the right.”
One of the top Democratic candidates in Michigan’s Senate Democratic primary is Abdul El-Sayed, who agrees with those accusing Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza and who has campaigned with far-left streamer Hasan Piker, who has called the Israel Defense Forces a “Nazi army” and Orthodox Jews “inbred.”
And the favorite for the Democratic nomination against Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) is Graham Platner, a critic of Israel who also had a visible Nazi tattoo, until he recently covered it up.
A loss in either state would make the Democratic path to a U.S. Senate majority, already a difficult climb, that much steeper.
The Republican Jewish Coalition has taken note of these candidates.
“For decades, Jewish Democrats told themselves that their party still had room for them,” Markstein told JNS. “That story is collapsing in real time, as the Democrats nominate candidates with a Nazi SS tattoo and campaign with apologists for the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.”
“These aren’t fringe missteps,” he said. “This is who the Democratic Party is choosing to elevate in some of the most critical battleground races in the country.”
Despite this, a recent poll shows Jewish voters so far unwilling to leave the Democratic team. In a Jewish Voters Resource Center survey, 67% of Jews planned to vote Democratic candidates in this fall’s midterm elections. Only 13% said they couldn’t support a candidate they felt was insufficiently supportive of Israel.
The poll of 800 self-identified Jewish voters—76% of whom said that Judaism was their present religion, and 68% of whom said they are or lean Democratic—was conducted April 28 to May 3 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) told JNS that Platner needs to tell voters how he wound up with a Nazi tattoo,
“He has an obligation to explain how something such a horrific symbol could appear,” Booker said.
The JDCA has withheld an endorsement of Platner and has backed both of El-Sayed’s primary opponents, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.), who is pro-Israel and has drawn AIPAC’s support, and Mallory McMorrow, a state senator who has accused Israel of “genocide.”
But Jacob Rubashkin, deputy editor of Inside Elections, which tracks congressional races, said that endorsing two candidates for the Senate seat doesn’t make it easier for one to consolidate the vote against El-Sayed.
“It is both an understandable move that they feel like both those candidates align with them, but also politically it does nothing to consolidate the vote and prevent El-Sayed from winning,” Rubashkin told JNS.
“I think that really demonstrates the pickle that Jewish voters who find El-Sayed objectionable find themselves,” he said.
There’s a big difference between critics of Israeli policies and critics of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, observers said.
At the same time, Democratic criticism of Israeli policies has increased even among traditional supporters of the Jewish state. In April, all but seven Senate Democrats voted to cut off some weapons sales to the Jewish state.
“Just as we American Jews, and frankly, Israelis, have a deep emotional attachment to Israel and care deeply about Israel’s security and right to self defense and future as a Jewish democratic state, we also disapprove of some of the policies of the Israeli government,” Soifer told JNS.
“So I don’t necessarily see it in contradiction with where a lot of Democrats stand in this moment,” she said. “Absolutely, there’s a clear distinction between those Democrats who are critical of policies of the Netanyahu government and those who deny Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.”
Soifer said such votes allow Jewish Democrats and their allies to signal their dissatisfaction with the current government in Jerusalem. In the aforementioned poll of Jewish voters, 67% had unfavorable views about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, similar to the 73% who said the same thing about Trump.
“They have not fundamentally changed their views on Israel,” she said. “What has changed is their willingness to vote in ways that demonstrate their disapproval of this Israeli government.”
Just criticizing Israel’s policies doesn’t make you an antisemite, but the rhetoric against the Jewish state is growing harsher, Joel Rubin, executive director of the Jewish Electorate Institute, told JNS.
“We now have candidates who are openly using language or have been affiliated with people who have been very dangerous to Jewish safety,” Rubin said. “It’s a test for the Democratic Party right now. This is a test moment to see the kinds of candidates that make it through the primaries.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla,) told JNS that these critics, on both sides of the aisle, need a history lesson.
“The bottom line is that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state,” Wasserman Schultz told JNS. “We have more than 50 countries that are based in the Islamic faith, and there are certainly other countries that have a Christian base—not ours, but there are others.”
“The disproportionate criticism and attacks against Israel by any candidate is antisemitic, bigoted and unfair,” she said.
Booker—who is married to a Jew, has voted against some arms sales to Israel and opposes the war against the Iranian regime—told JNS that the continued rise in Jew-hatred since Oct. 7 is a “real crisis.”
“It’s a canary in a coal mine for the health of our democracy,” Booker told JNS. “It’s not only what we’re seeing about the Jewish community, it’s what is it saying about the rest of America?”
By the time Jews go to the polls in the United States, however, Israelis will hold their own elections, and that could tone down some of the rhetoric.
Jewish Democratic activist Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi said that a new Israeli government without Netanyahu and right-wing ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich could create a very different relationship with Jewish Democrats stateside.
“There’s no chance there’s going to be a left-wing government in Israel,” Mizrahi told JNS. “But there is a very good chance there can be a government without Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and Netanyahu.”
“It will give Israel a chance to push the restart button or the reset button and try and build a new relationship under new leaders,” she said.
