Wishing all those who celebrate a Shana Tova u’Metukah
A sweet and happy new year from me personally and from J Street organizationally.
I couldn’t walk down the hall this week at a high-powered gathering of Jewish Americans and Israelis without someone stopping me to ask, “What’s wrong with the Democratic Party?”
I hear it all the time, not just in my work but from friends and family: “Why do the Democrats all hate Israel now? I don’t think you can even be a supporter of Israel in the Democratic Party anymore.”
Similar questions and reactions followed this week when the U.K. and other western democracies announced that they are – reluctantly and belatedly – moving to impose economic and other costs on Israeli actors facilitating the de facto annexation of territory and taking other steps they regard as illegal under international law.
In response, so many friends of Israel point the finger at those speaking and acting against permanent occupation as if they were the problem.
That misses the point.
There are, in fact, changes underway in the Democratic Party’s relationship with Israel and Palestine.
For decades, Democratic presidents and members of Congress – along with their Republican colleagues – have bent over backwards to support Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge and its right to defend itself.
It was under Democratic President Barack Obama that a ten-year Memorandum of Understanding with Israel was signed, committing $38 billion in security assistance and that Iron Dome was funded and deployed. It was under Democratic President Joe Biden that the United States stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel after the horrific October 7 attack and when Iran launched ballistic missiles at Israel in April 2024.
Democrats continued to back the “special relationship” with Israel even as its governments expanded settlements, entrenched the occupation and increasingly rejected Palestinian statehood.
To my mind, Democrats stayed silent for too long, failing to confront the growing reality of Palestinian dispossession and the erosion of the possibility of two states.
Israeli leaders, meanwhile, increasingly took American support for granted. Benjamin Netanyahu openly disrespected Barack Obama with his lectures in the Oval Office and his 2015 address to Congress.
While there may be a handful of Democratic elected officials around the country who actually oppose Israel’s existence, the fundamental commitment by most Democrats to Israel and its people remains.
But most Democrats can no longer reconcile providing Israel with unconditional support with their core beliefs about democracy, equality, human rights and the rule of law. And they’re no longer willing to let American support for Israel and its security be taken for granted or to support without question every policy and action of every Israeli government.
Palestinians and Arab governments have made catastrophic mistakes. Palestinian rejectionism, terrorism, and diplomatic failures have helped perpetuate the conflict. Hamas bears responsibility for the atrocities of October 7 and the enormous suffering that followed, including for its own people. Opportunities for peace have been missed repeatedly by Arab and Palestinian leaders.
But the failings of its adversaries don’t relieve Israel of responsibility for its own actions.
Israel does not have to build settlements and ethnically cleanse occupied territory. It does not have to empower extremists who advocate annexation and enable settler violence. And it does not have to wage war in immoral ways that produce the devastation we have seen in Gaza.
These are choices. And choices have consequences – consequences being felt beyond the United States.
This week, Britain’s foreign secretary, Ed Miliband, a British Jew with a deeply personal connection to Israel, announced new measures designed to impose economic costs on those facilitating and profiting from illegal settlements. Britain has said the measures are directed at settlement expansion, not Israel itself, while reaffirming Israel’s security interests and condemning October 7.
Is Britain suddenly antisemitic? Is Milliband just another self-hating Jew? Are European governments – like the Democrats – suddenly filled with Jew-haters?
Perhaps Israel’s friends are actually trying to tell the Israeli people something difficult — and painful — to hear:
While we want Israel to exist and to be safe and we want the Jewish people to have a safe home – we can no longer accept that policies of successive Israeli governments to which we vehemently object should have no consequences.
And this is not merely a view held by Israel’s critics.
Listen to former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert who called the British sanctions “unavoidable” in response to what he described as a continuous effort of ethnic cleansing perpetrated by “Jewish terrorists” in the West Bank.
It’s the policies themselves.
So to my friends who ask me, “What’s wrong with the Democratic Party?” I say simply: You are asking the wrong question.
To restore a healthy relationship with the Democratic Party – and frankly with much of the Western world and the majority of Jewish Americans – Israel needs to change course. Look in the mirror and recognize that the problem isn’t the critics. It is the policies, pursued over many years and under many governments, that increasingly contradict the values that form the foundation of Israel’s relationship with its democratic allies.
I’ve written before about the fork in the road at which Israel finds itself. On one road, Israel retains control of all the land while denying millions their rights – or worse, driving them out. This is the road to international isolation.
On the other road, Israel works with the world to build a successful Palestinian state as part a regional, comprehensive diplomatic and security arrangement.
At this fork in the road, Israel’s friends shouldn’t be calling those flagging the stakes of the choice at hand antisemites. They should be pressing those with the power to choose the right path.
Wait! Before you go …
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