Hatred of Israel is ascendant in the Democratic Party
Washington Examiner
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When anti-Israel protesters shouted down a panel discussion at the far-Left Netroots Nation conference last weekend, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) tried to assuage the protesters by making it clear she agrees “Israel is a racist state” — as if it were a baseline, commonsense assumption.
The backlash among Republicans and reasonable Democrats was swift. But one should not pretend to believe that hatred of Israel is a minority belief in the Democratic Party. It has, rather, become normal and is growing in the party’s heap of fertilizing left-wing extremism. The proof is everywhere.
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First, there is a growing faction of elected anti-Israel Democrats in Congress. At the same conference last weekend, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) claimed Palestinians have been occupied for 75 years — since 1948, when Israel was founded. This suggests Omar’s real problem is not with Israel’s control of the West Bank, blockade of the Gaza Strip, or annexation of the Golan Heights because none of these areas were controlled by Israel until 1967. Her problem is with the existence of a Jewish state in any land between the Jordan River and the sea. This extinguishment of Israel is a radical position, adopted by the mullahs of Iran and the terrorist groups they sponsor.
Not to be outdone, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) often tweets that Israel is an “apartheid state,” even though all Israelis may vote, whether they are Jews or not, and may live anywhere in Israel, and there are Arabs in the Israeli parliament. In 2020, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) withdrew from a memorial event for the liberal Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was murdered in the 1990s for pursuing peace with the Palestinians, after being criticized by anti-Israel activists.
The problem is more widespread than being merely to do with outspoken Democratic members of Congress. In 2021, while Israel was at war with Hamas, which was firing thousands of rockets at its cities, 10 Democrats refused to vote to replenish munitions for the Iron Dome, Israel’s anti-missile defense. They did so not for fiscal reasons but because they didn’t want Israel to be able to defend itself against terrorists. These numbers are not massive, but compared to a few years ago, they are notable.
Polls show support for Israel has plummeted among Democrats, especially among progressives. Gallup found that Democrats’ sympathy for Israel declined every year from 2016 onward. They now support the Palestinians over the Israelis by an 11-point margin. Even more striking is that liberal democrats sympathize with the Palestinians more than with the Israelis by a 24-point margin. This is despite the fact that the public broadly supports Israel. Millennials generally make up the only age demographic that does not, on net, back the Israelis in the conflict.
Polling is backed by observation of college campuses, where anti-Israel activists are notoriously extreme, going so far as to support terrorism. Even the more moderate College Democrats of America recently tweeted a statement attacking Israeli President Isaac Herzog despite the fact that he is a member of the liberal Labor Party and serves in a primarily ceremonial, rather than political, role. It is the kind of statement that signals a real shift in opinion.
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The picture coming into focus is concerning: There remains a large pro-Israel faction of the Democratic Party, but it is quickly being eaten up by its more radical and younger party members. The status quo cannot last. As campus radicals and more centrist leftists graduate, the Democratic Party will become far more antagonistic toward America’s staunchest ally and only true democracy in the Middle East.
This is deeply regrettable and dangerous. The U.S.-Israel relationship has long been among the only areas of bipartisan agreement in Washington. But as Democrats become more extreme, there will be an ever-shrinking number of issues of which that can be said. This will hurt not just Israel, but the United States too.