Benjamin Netanyahu may be the most polarizing figure in American politics outside of Donald Trump. Democratic voters loathe Israel’s prime minister, in part for his close association with this president and the Republican Party generally. That opposition has steadily pushed Democrats in Congress to question U.S.
military support for the embattled Jewish state.
Democratic lawmakers’ seeming turn against Israel has been fueled by hostility from the party’s activist base lately motivated by the war in Gaza—even though Israel was retaliating for Hamas’ massacre of Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. The U.S. negotiated a ceasefire in Gaza last October, but left-wing animus toward Israel has remained amid the Jewish state’s military operations to neutralize deadly terrorist threats in Lebanon and Iran. The result has been that this month, 40 of 47 Senate Democrats voted against the sale of military hardware to Israel, opposition that had grown from 15 to 27 to 36 in successive votes over the past year. (Senate Republicans have been overwhelmingly supportive.)
In interviews with The Dispatch, key congressional Democrats argued that their problem isn’t with Israel or Washington’s historic and vital role in ensuring Jerusalem’s survival in a dangerous Middle East. Rather, their issue is specifically with Netanyahu and what they view as a belligerent militarism that is undermining American national security interests. “I’ve always and will continue to support Israel and value the relationship. We want Israel to be safe, prosperous,” said Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a potential 2028 presidential contender who opposed the sale of heavy ordinance bombs and armored bulldozers in the most recent floor votes.
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to vote that way next time—it’s important that [Israelis] have what they need to defend themselves,” Kelly explained. “But when we have a prime minister in Israel that’s not operating in accordance with all of our values—we also have a president who’s doing the same thing here—that worries me, and I think Israel’s weaker because of the steps Israel has taken and also now the steps that the United States has taken.”
“It’s not about Israel,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, another Democrat eyeing a 2028 bid who opposed the arms sale, said flatly. “It’s policy.” She added: “I’m going to do this on a case-by-case basis because I’m extremely hopeful that we get back to a different place in U.S.-Israel relations.”
In a Pew Research Center poll fielded in late March, 45 percent of Republicans and independent voters who lean GOP expressed “confidence in Netanyahu to do the right thing regarding world affairs.” Among Democrats and independent voters who lean Democratic, confidence in the Israeli prime minister was a meager 12 percent. The survey showed similarly sharp partisan divisions regarding Trump’s handling of the U.S.-Israel alliance, with 73 percent of center-right voters giving the president positive marks and 83 percent of center-left voters viewing him negatively.
Parallels in the data gauging Democratic and Republican views of Netanyahu, 76, and Trump, 79, are not coincidental or simply a function of both heads of state representing center-right political parties. American support for Israel has historically been bipartisan. But that has gradually shifted in the 21st century, with Democratic voters and especially the party’s left-wing base becoming even more critical of the Jewish state since it retaliated for Hamas’ October 7 attack in a multifront war against terrorist groups that, in Gaza, led to tens of thousands of civilian Palestinian deaths.
The blame for growing opposition to Israel on the left belongs entirely to Netanyahu versus some wholesale souring on the Israel-U.S. alliance, Democratic-aligned groups that exist to cultivate support for Israel inside the party asserted to The Dispatch. The prime minister has held Israel’s top post for 19 of the past 30 years and nearly all of the past 17 years, often aligning himself with the GOP during that latter period. And because Netanyahu has been in charge for so long, many Democrats view him as synonymous with Israel.
“The seeds to where Israel is today weren’t planted three years ago, they were planted a decade ago. What the prime minister was doing was setting a course where Israel would become a partisan issue in American politics.”
Rahm Emanuel
“Recent votes in Congress do not reflect a wholesale shift in views of the U.S.-Israel relationship, support of Israel’s future, or its security,” Halie Soifer, chief executive officer of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in an email exchange. “This message is unique to this right-wing Israel government, the most extreme in Israel’s 78-year history, led by Prime Minister Netanyahu.”
“This is a lot about Netanyahu. He’s the one that broke the U.S.-Israel relationship,” added Jeremy Ben-Ami, president and founder of J Street, a liberal group that supports Israel’s existence as a majority Jewish state but has long advocated for the creation of a neighboring Palestinian state and opposes unconditional American financial and military assistance for Jerusalem.
“Netanyahu has been prime minister, on and off, for the better part of most people’s adult lives who are in politics. The separation between Netanyahu and Israel gets harder and harder every year,” Ben-Ami explained. “There’s a sense that Bibi Netanyahu crossed a line into American politics and there’s an anger that’s built up against him over the course of, it’s really two decades at this point.”
Israel has endured decades of deadly terrorist attacks targeting civilians perpetrated by Palestinian militant groups (often funded by Iran) intent on wiping the Jewish state off the map. The October 7 raid on southern Israel by Hamas, resulting in the murder of nearly 1,000 Israeli civilians and the kidnapping of hundreds more, was simply the latest and most lethal. But in recent years, grassroots Democrats and party activists have grown more sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinians, viewing them as marginalized victims of a powerful Israeli state that is denying them a homeland.
That sentiment, driven by the views of younger center-left voters, accelerated during Israel’s two-year war against Hamas, with a February Gallup poll showing 65 percent of Democrats being more sympathetic to the Palestinians, versus 17 percent who felt that way about the Jewish state. (Republican voters’ feelings in the survey were almost exactly opposite.) Still, Democratic operatives and elected officials long involved in Washington-Jerusalem relations say Netanyahu is ultimately the culprit of this shift on the political left, previously and for much of Israel’s history more supportive of the alliance than Republicans.
And it’s not, they emphasize, just because Netanyahu’s government opposes a Palestinian state—at least anytime in the near to medium future—and has waged wars in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran that have resulted in civilian casualties. Indeed, veteran Democratic insiders say the prime minister sowed the seeds of the party’s discontent with Israel years ago by injecting himself into American politics on the side of the GOP.
They point to Netanyahu’s campaigning against President Barack Obama during the Democrat’s 2012 reelection bid. And they highlight the prime minister’s 2015 address to a joint session of Congress during which he urged lawmakers to oppose a deal to constrain Iran’s nuclear weapons program that Obama was negotiating with Tehran. Netanyahu, who argued the budding agreement would facilitate rather than restrain Iran’s ability to threaten Israel’s existence, was invited to speak by Congress’ Republican majorities. But he did so against the wishes of the Obama White House, a move considered a breach of diplomatic protocol.
“The seeds to where Israel is today weren’t planted three years ago, they were planted a decade ago,” Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff and a possible 2028 contender, told The Dispatch during a telephone interview. “What the prime minister was doing was setting a course where Israel would become a partisan issue in American politics.” Emanuel, 66, an Illinois Democrat who served in the House of Representatives prior to joining the Obama administration, no longer supports U.S. military aid to Israel, and says the country is prosperous enough to purchase weaponry—as are most American allies.
The influential Republican Jewish Coalition rejects claims that Netanyahu has been central to the deteriorating support for Israel on the left, saying Democrats are scapegoating the prime minister to obscure rampant antisemitism in their midst. (Jew hatred and opposition to American support for Israel has been spreading on the right, too, such that the RJC was compelled to act. In March, the group partnered with National Review to host a “Symposium on Antisemitism” in Washington, D.C. )
“Attempting to lay the blame for Democrats’ cratering support of Israel at the feet of Prime Minister Netanyahu is a lazy red herring designed to distract from the main issue of Democrats appeasing and embracing an increasingly radicalized, antisemitic, anti-Israel party base,” Sam Markstein, the RJC’s chief spokesman, told The Dispatch. “You saw it at the Michigan Democrats convention in Detroit where they nominated a raving antisemite, who called Jews ‘demons’ and praised Hezbollah, to the University of Michigan Board of Regents. This is the reality on the ground in today’s Democratic Party.”
Democrats have historically been able to count on receiving two-thirds or more of the Jewish vote in most elections, including in 2024. But the simmering problem with antisemitism has boiled over in Democratic primaries across several states—and, as Markstein referenced, at a Michigan Democratic Party nominating convention held in mid-April.
During the weekend gathering in Detroit, convention delegates nominated a candidate for a seat on the University of Michigan Board of Regents—attorney Amir Makled—who once circulated an antisemitic social media rant describing Jews as “demons” and saying they “lie, cheat, murder and blackmail.” (In Michigan, university regent is an elected position.) Meanwhile, convention delegates booed some Democrats who support the U.S.-Israel alliance and maintaining Washington’s key role in helping the Jewish state defend itself, among them Rep. Haley Stevens, who is running for Senate.
This comes on the heels of one of Stevens’ primary opponents, physician Abdul El-Sayed, campaigning with Hasan Piker, the left-wing streamer who has said the U.S. deserved the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, that Hamas is “a thousand times better” than the Israeli government, and repeatedly disparaged Jews using antisemitic tropes. From the perspective of many Jewish Democrats, this is just the latest example of opposition to Israel either morphing into antisemitism, or being used to disguise Jew hatred. Federal and non-governmental agencies have confirmed that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. are way up.
In Michigan, some prominent, pro-Israel Jewish Democrats are now doubting whether they are still welcome in the party. With the high concentration of Jewish voters in suburban Detroit, that could be a problem for Democrats this fall in close races for governor and Senate, to say the least.
“The question we have to ask as Jews is whether we still belong here,” University of Michigan Regent Jordan Acker told the Detroit News. Acker, defeated for renomination by Makled, was booed at the convention (some Democrats claim Acker was felled by scandal.) State Rep. Noah Arbit, founder of the Michigan legislature’s Democratic Jewish Caucus, posted on Facebook after the convention that he knows there are many Jews who are “wondering where they fit in politically … I am wondering that too.” Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said the behavior of convention delegates reaffirmed his decision to run for governor as an independent.
“It was a convention filled with anger and intolerance, which is more and more coming to define the Michigan Democratic Party,” Duggan told The Dispatch in a statement. “We will never solve Michigan’s problems with that approach and it’s a good reminder of why I left the party to run as an Independent.”
Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Curtis Hertel is downplaying episodes from the mid-April convention that are receiving so much national attention, noting that among the nominees for major offices elevated by the delegates was progressive Eli Savit, who is Jewish, for state attorney general. However, Hertel conceded in an interview with The Dispatch—albeit delicately—that what unfolded during the weekend event was troubling, not to mention counterproductive to party efforts to win competitive contests for state and federal office in 2026.
“Antisemitism should never be tolerated in the Democratic Party—and Islamophobia should never be allowed in the Democratic Party,” he said. “I understand the fear and frustration of what happened, and I am bringing together the [state party] Jewish and Arab caucuses along with candidates from both sides that were endorsed by both caucuses to try and find a way to work together—to heal moving forward.” (Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank in Washington, D.C., has warned Democrats the party could experience the same problem nationally if they don’t address the antisemitism percolating on the left.)
Democrats in Hertel’s shoes may confront more political obstacles if it turns out that the growing Democratic opposition to Israel is not primarily about Netanyahu, who is likely going to face Israeli voters this October, perhaps just days before midterm elections in the U.S. And in fact, some Democrats have concluded that changing attitudes about Israel are about much more than the Jewish state’s 14th prime minister. Even some Democrats who say Netanyahu is the root of the problem believe the issue runs deeper.
It’s also about the policy of “occupation” of Palestinian territory. (Israel still rules the West Bank but unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, only returning after the October 7 attacks.) As J Street’s Ben Ami wrote in a Substack piece, “Democrats refusing to sell bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank isn’t evidence of abandoning Israel or the Jewish people.” And if the policy doesn’t change with a new prime minister, views of Israel among Democratic voters won’t change, either.
“If it’s a different government and it doesn’t include Bibi but the actions are the same as this extremist government, then our policies should be based accordingly,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat often critical of Israel, told The Dispatch. Over on the other side of Capitol Hill, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state, a pragmatist and the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said it may be too late to reverse his party’s slide into a state of permanent antagonism toward the Jewish state, even if Netanyahu fades away and Israeli government policies change.
“Once Netanyahu’s finally gone, there’s going to be a big reckoning. I would say I think it is more serious than just Netanyahu,” Smith said. “Within the broader party, there are concerns about where Israel is going, some of which I share, a lot of which I don’t. But yes, I think there’s a—clearly—fundamental change in the way the Democratic Party [views] Israel right now.”
