There was a time in America, immediately after a Democratic politician announced a run for high office, when he or she would let everyone know that they supported Israel. That would range from a major address before an American Jewish audience, to the required trip to Israel.
In a way, even mild criticism of the Jewish state would have amounted to a political suicide to a politically ambitious Democrat. Historical, cultural, political and geo-strategic considerations – including the influence of a politically active American-Jewish community whose members resided in key electoral states and contributed money for the Democratic party – made it politically axiomatic to back Israel.
While the support for the Jewish state reflected a bipartisan consensus, it was the Democratic party – the political home of the majority of American Jews – that had been seen as promoting a more pro-Israel agenda than the GOP. Liberals lauded Israel as a Democratic and progressive bastion in the Middle East, while the Republicans were regarded as aligned with the Arab oil producing nations in the Middle East.
That would sound like ancient history if you are a millennial observing the American political universe these days: waving the Israeli flag is for the Republican party, backed by a political base of Evangelical Christian Zionists, and represented by a president and lawmakers who sound at time as spokesmen for the right-wing Israeli Likud party.
At the same time, members of the old guard of the Democratic party whose worldview was formed in the aftermath of World War II – when the trauma of the Holocaust and Israel’s was of existence played a central role in driving the political agenda – are beginning to leave the stage.
They are replaced by a new generation of political activists – millennials, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims – whose ties to the Jewish community and attitudes toward Israel are at best ambivalent, and like in the case of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York, hostile.
From Ally to Adversary: A New Progressive Lens on Israel
To describe Mamdani as an enemy of the Jewish state would not be overstating the case. Even the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was for Mamdani an occasion for anti-Israel propaganda. He began on Oct. 8 with perfect moral equivalence: “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.” “The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid,” he stated.
By Oct. 13 Mr. Mamdani said Israel was “on the brink of genocide,” and he was arrested while protesting against Israel. He now pledges to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York.
Mamdani co-founded the Bowdoin College chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the national group that would instruct its chapters on Oct. 8 to celebrate the “historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”
As a New York State Assemblyman Mamdani made denouncing Israel his priority. He called a boycott “the only solution” and can be expected to advocate it as mayor. He proposed a 2023 bill cracking down on most Jewish institutions that donate to Israel. He even declined to co-sponsor Holocaust remembrance resolutions the past few years and he defends the chant “globalize the intifada.”
This is the candidate who ended up winning the majority of Democratic voters the primary for mayor of the city with the most Jews in the world outside of Israel. Which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the dramatic change in Democrats’ attitudes towards Israel.
Hence while in 2013, according to a Gallup poll, Democrats sympathized with Israel over the Palestinians by a margin of 36 percentage points, a Gallup poll released this February found that Democrats sympathize with the Palestinians over Israel by a margin of 38 percent.
Similarly, according to a February survey by the Economist and YouGov, 46 percent of Democrats want the United States to reduce military aid to Israel. Only 6 percent want to increase it, and 24 percent want it to remain at its current level. Overall only one in three Democrats now views Israel favorably, according to Gallup.
Projecting this growing hostility towards Israel among Democrats, Representative Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, the two Muslim female Democrats elected to Congress, tweeted in the past that the support for Israel was “all about the Benjamins’; a reference to hundred-dollar bills and to the power of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the so-called Israel lobby.
What Congresswoman Omar like many other Democrats, including Jews, seem to believe is that Jews do not have the same right that other historical-cultural communities have – to national self-determination, and that Zionism, the national movement of the Jewish people is neo-colonialist and racist, and by definition is illegitimate.
In a way, the problem is not only that the Democratic party is now becoming less dependent on electoral and financial support from American Jews, whose members are shrinking anyway, but that many members of the new electoral base of the party see Israel as a European outpost in the Third World, and Israelis as oppressors of non-white “indigenous” Arab population.
The war in Gaza seems to fit into this narrative: so-called genocidal Israeli colonialists vs. the native Palestinian population. That Israel and its Prime Minister Netanyahu also enjoy the strong support of President Trump and the Republican party only helps to intensify these sentiments, especially among young left-leaning Democrats.
The readiness on the part of many on the political left to bash, if not to demonize what is in essence of form of national Jewish identity, contrasts with the enthusiasm with which these same critics of Israel, like Mamdani, celebrate other white non-white ethnic and racial identities – that of Africans, Muslim, Palestinians – while denouncing anyone who dares to criticize these groups as “racist.”
Beyond Criticism: When Anti-Zionism Blurs into Anti-Semitism
Moreover, this obsessive preoccupation with Israel and the anti-Zionist tendencies it breeds, does seem to merge at some point with classic anti-Semitism. The notion spreads that American Jews who support Israel are after all members of what is probably the most ‘privileged” group of an overall ‘privileged’ white America and seem to be intent on maintain their power and wealth while denying them to oppressed non-white communities.
It is not clear how this trend is going to affect the voting patterns among American Jews, the majority of whom have voted for Democratic candidates in most recent presidential elections.
Surveys suggest that a relatively high percentage of Jewish New Yorkers, especially millennials voted for Mamdani. Many of the young American Jews, not unlike Jewish politicians, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, identify themselves as progressive Democrats and subscribe to a universalist progressive worldview and disassociate themselves from Zionism and other forms of “tribal” Jewish identity.
The new to maintain their alliance with the rising stars of the Democratic Party on the left, , overrides their diminishing commitment to the Jewish state which in any case has been moving to the right. They seek the adoration of Mamdani and not that of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.
