{"id":133332,"date":"2026-08-26T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=133332"},"modified":"2026-08-26T07:12:48","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T05:12:48","slug":"29-05-121","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=133332","title":{"rendered":"Jewish Democrats must fight the DSA, not tolerate it"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Jewish Democrats must fight the DSA, not tolerate it<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

Jonathan S. Tobin<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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The hard-left faction is organizing and winning elections, even if many in the party don\u2019t agree with them or share their antisemitism. They will take it over in 2028 if not stopped now.<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Pro-Palestinian activists join a \u201cNakba Day\u201d march amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict, in New York City on May 15, 2026. Photo by Adam Gray\/Getty Images.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

For 20 years now, I\u2019ve been hearing the same story from Jewish Democrats. They keep insisting that most of those who identify as members of their party are not extremists, and that they don\u2019t hate Israel and Jews. And they bitterly resent claims to the contrary coming from Jewish Republicans or political conservatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back when George W. Bush was president, such complaints could sound reasonable, even if they were rooted firmly in a denial of facts\u2014namely, that the gap between the parties on Israel was growing into an abyss dooming efforts to maintain a bipartisan consensus. They grew even less persuasive once Barack Obama became president, and appeasement of Iran and pressure on Israel to make suicidal concessions to the Palestinians became Democratic Party doctrine.<\/span><\/p>\n

A lurch to the left<\/b><\/h4>\n

But the pretense that there isn\u2019t a widening chasm between the two major parties not only about Israel, but also about the surge of antisemitism that followed the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab terror attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, is no longer even remotely credible. The Democrats\u2019 lurch to the left in recent years was made obvious by the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), turning what was once a likely possibility into a fact.<\/span><\/p>\n

Pro-Israel Democrats still exist, and some hold high office in Washington and in many states. Nevertheless, polls of voter opinions, congressional votes and the outcome of most primary elections held in the last year make it clear that they have become a minority in their party.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hostility to the Jewish state has become the organizing principle of American politics on the left. What makes it even more worrisome is that the faction pushing this agenda is one that is intent on doing more than just destroying Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

The DSA wants to remake America in the image of their Marxist and intersectional ideological fantasies, throwing the U.S. Constitution and economic freedom into the garbage bin of history, along with Israel and the Jews. What\u2019s more, they believe that they are on the brink of taking over the Democratic Party and, while nothing in politics is certain, they could be right about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was once just an unpersuasive argument in defense of the partisan attachments of Jewish liberals is rapidly becoming more a matter of denial of a stark political reality than anything else. The victories won in party primaries, and even in some general elections, by candidates affiliated with or allied to the DSA are creating political facts that could determine the outcome of elections and accomplish radical policy shifts. In the next Congress, so-called progressives allied with the far left will dominate the Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate, whether or not they win majorities in the fall midterms.<\/span><\/p>\n

And with the start of the preliminaries of the 2028 presidential election cycle about to begin early next year, the notion that someone who will succeed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as the standard-bearer of the left in the primaries winning the party\u2019s nomination is by no means a long-shot bet. Those who think that a figure such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) can\u2019t be nominated by a Democratic Party that appears in thrall to the intersectional left and her DSA pals aren\u2019t paying attention to the shifts that have occurred since she and her progressive \u201cSquad\u201d entered Congress in January 2019.<\/span><\/p>\n\"Polling<\/picture>\n

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Polling station. Credit: mounsey\/Pixabay.<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

What will they do about it?<\/b><\/h4>\n

The question is: What are the pro-Israel Democrats, who blithely assured us that this was a figment of the conservative imagination, going to do about it?<\/span><\/p>\n

While I know that many rank-and-file Jewish Democrats and other mainstream liberals are panicked by the ascendance of people like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed\u2014and the way DSA-backed candidates are winning primary elections\u2014their leaders aren\u2019t acting like it\u2019s a problem. Leading Jewish Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer<\/a><\/span> and many other party leaders have not only made their peace with Mamdani but are backing candidates like El-Sayed and other radicals in general elections.<\/span><\/p>\n

For them, their animus toward President Donald Trump and the GOP is the only priority, and nothing\u2014not even the DSA\u2019s Soviet-style anti-Zionism that is a tissue-thin cover for traditional Jew-hatred\u2014is more important.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those moderates and pro-Israel Democrats who continue to pooh-pooh the DSA\u2019s success may not be wrong about the disconnect between the group\u2019s radical ideology and how most voters think about the world. But their increasingly shaky confidence that the hard-left\u2019s plans for a nationwide putsch are a passing phenomenon is no longer merely complacent. It\u2019s a dangerous case of wishful thinking that is inducing otherwise decent Democrats to lapse into a state of moral paralysis when it comes to fighting the hate-mongers hijacking their party. If they don\u2019t wake up soon, in the next election cycle, they\u2019ll be confronted with a state of affairs in which those Jews not willing to disavow a central element of their faith and peoplehood will find themselves linked to a party dedicated to the isolation and murder of half the world\u2019s Jewish population.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of which means that rather than parrying the criticisms of conservatives with an insistence that most Democrats are reasonable people who are not antisemitic, coupled with justified ripostes about Jew-hatred on the right, won\u2019t be enough to save the Democratic Party, let alone its Jewish adherents. Nor will continuing to blame their dilemma on Trump\u2014a false claim they\u2019ve been sticking to for a decade\u2014suffice to deal with the culture change on the left that has tolerated and normalized Jew-hatred in a way that simply has no precedent in American political history.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oct. 7 was the turning point<\/b><\/h4>\n

The political left\u2019s reaction to Oct. 7, when they embraced the side of thousands of bloodthirsty killers who committed the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, wasn\u2019t merely appalling. It has proven to be the ideological engine that enabled an effort by the DSA and its allies to hijack the Democratic Party.<\/span><\/p>\n

That obliges liberals, who still make up the majority of American Jews, to come face to face with what can only be described as an existential crisis. And their response to it can\u2019t be half-hearted or motivated more by old political loyalties and a deep-seated antagonism for Trump and the GOP.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the DSA isn\u2019t stopped in its tracks and sent back to the fever swamps of the far left, where it belongs, the problem won\u2019t just be that Jewish Democrats will be politically homeless. The consequences of allowing a faction that is inherently antisemitic, as well as opposed to the basic principles of American liberty that guarantee the safety of American citizens, will go far beyond the grim prospects for some Jewish politicians or the problems this will cause for the U.S.-Israel alliance.<\/span><\/p>\n

We have already seen what happens when antisemitism becomes normalized in academia, culture, Hollywood, the arts and the media. While DSA members say they hate Israel, but not Jews themselves, it resembles an old trope of Soviet-era propaganda. Anti-Zionism is just the way the modern left expresses its antisemitism. Blood libels about Israel and its Jewish supporters being guilty of the \u201cgenocide\u201d of Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip are a way to delegitimize and demonize the victims of an actual historical \u201cgenocide\u201d in mid-20th-century Europe at the hands of the German Nazis. It also lends tacit support to the Palestinians\u2019 hopes to slaughter more Jews, for which the unspeakable atrocities of Oct. 7 were just a trailer for what they intend to do to the rest of Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Toxic doctrines<\/b><\/h4>\n

This is the inevitable result of the acceptance of toxic left-wing ideas like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that now dominate liberal intellectual society, which forms the base of the Democratic Party. That these doctrines falsely label Israel and the Jews as \u201cwhite\u201d oppressors was either ignored or dismissed by many Jewish liberals eager to remain in sync with traditional left-wing allies. They argued that concerns about the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) were just right-wing culture-war talking points.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yet they have not only been abandoned by these erstwhile friends since Oct. 7, but are now having to adhere to demands to bow their knees to woke orthodoxy and hatred for Israel lest they, too, be labeled as \u201cracists\u201d or Trump supporters. That was the fate of Rep. Dan Goldman<\/a><\/span> (D-N.Y.), despite his impeccable anti-Trump record. That many liberal Jews were willing to oppose<\/u><\/a><\/span> Trump\u2019s efforts to rid academia of antisemitism affiliated with these doctrines speaks volumes about the desperation felt by those faced with the choice of supporting the left, even when it means accepting the targeting of their own children.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2015, liberal Jews were forced to choose between their partisan loyalties and concern for the survival of Israel when Obama shoved his nuclear deal with Iran down the throats of their party. In 2020, they felt obliged to line up behind a Black Lives Matter movement that was not only determined to exacerbate racial divisions, but tainted by Jew-hatred even after a summer of \u201cmostly peaceful\u201d riots.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since Oct. 7, the DSA and its allies have used the spread of blood libels about Israel not only to undermine support for the Jewish state, but to win elections and become the face of the Democratic Party, especially for young people. In this way, they illustrate the teachings of scholar Ruth Wisse, showcasing that rather than an ordinary prejudice, antisemitism is always a vehicle for attaining political power.<\/span><\/p>\n

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