The Israel lobby is fracturing as young Jews abandon Zionism

It’s finally happening: support for Israel is collapsing in U.S. politics due to the horrors of Israeli aggression.  And this shift is being driven, in part, by the growing generational divide over Zionism in the Jewish community.

I focus on the Jewish community because it has long provided the political bulwark for Israel, and it is now divided into three warring camps. 

On the right are the major Jewish organizations, which continue to back Israel’s wars to the hilt. 

On the left are the anti- and non-Zionists. They are a key member of the diverse coalition that is putting pressure on politicians to stop giving Israel bombs that kill children.

In the middle are the liberal Zionists who love Israel but criticize Netanyahu. But they are scrambling to maintain the balancing act. J Street seems to recalibrate its stance every day – coming out for an end to military aid but describing Israel as a “valuable ally” to the U.S. No mention of Israel’s genocide in Gaza or its slaughter of 350 in Lebanon last week. 

Pro-Israel forces still have “a stranglehold” on the organized Jewish community, says Sonya Myerson-Knox of the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace, JVP. But “for the first time we have seen elected officials welcoming anti-Zionist voices.” 

Young Jews are propelling these changes. The difference between young and old Jews on Israel’s actions is “astronomical,” says Tali deGroot, a J Street political strategist.

“There is really a radical shift occurring in the younger generation of Jews who have been radicalized by watching the Gaza genocide,” says Simone Zimmerman, a co-founder of the non-Zionist group IfNotNow. “The Mamdani political project was extremely attractive to these Jews, while everything about the political establishment is completely antithetical to them. And anybody whose program does not engage seriously with Palestinians is out of step.” 

These young Jews are still a distinct minority in the Jewish community but hardly a “fringe,” says Peter Feld, a longtime political consultant on the left. “Jewish youth is breaking away from all Zionist groups. They see that Israel is bad for Jews, for the Middle East, for Palestinians. There is no longer the potential for a vibrant J Street U, as there was in 2013.”

Feld’s point was seconded by a Columbia University official who said last week that Jewish students are deeply polarized—“into either JVP or Republican.” And some of the latter youth are “super pro-Trump.” 

These Jewish divisions are important because no community has had more sway over Middle East policy in the U.S. in the last 75 years. The Israel lobby was built by the Jewish community, and is the main reason that a tiny country half a world away has had unfettered access to the White House. (Netanyahu was in the situation room before the Iran war.)

The leading Jewish organizations generated that power by insisting that Zionism is part of Jewish identity. They inculcated Israel solidarity by telling American Jews that we hold the breathing tube for Israel and must never express criticism, lest we harm Israel’s support. And of course, political donors communicated that solidarity to American officials. 

“A small, organized and well-funded group of American Jews” made support for Israel a “threshold question” in U.S. politics, former White House aide Ilan Goldenberg, now at J Street, wrote recently. Former Obama aide Ben Rhodes has also described the “list of Jewish donors” he had to call when Obama got in a spat with Netanyahu.

These donors are the reason Obama buckled on his commitment to a two-state solution and why Democratic leaders buckled on even a faint protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Though their influence remains a verboten topic. Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin lately lashed out at a questioner who suggested that she was being funded by the Israel lobby, saying the criticism was antisemitic and the lobby has nothing to do with Jewish donors.

The good news is that a revolution is afoot inside the Jewish community that is weakening the lobby. 

The longtime lobby group AIPAC has become a toxic brand inside the Democratic Party. J Street says it now represents most of the Democrats in Congress. It seeks to provide a pro-Israel harbor for Democratic pols. J Street praises AIPAC’s historical work, says that it wants Jewish children to “love” Israel again, and even as it bashes Netanyahu, salutes him too.  

At the same time, J Street likes to describe anti-Zionists as a “far left” fringe. J Street argues—plausibly– that it represents the majority of the Jewish community. An overwhelming percentage of U.S. Jews feel an “emotional attachment” to Israel “as a Jewish, democratic state,” it says. 

A recent J Street poll reported that 70 percent of Jews say they have more sympathy for Israelis than for Palestinians, while 30 percent of Jews say they are more sympathetic to Palestinians. These numbers are virtually the reverse of Democratic Party voters (65 percent more sympathetic to Palestinians/17 percent Israelis). 

The “stranglehold” of the Israel lobby grows out of these pro-Israel attitudes. Indeed, they are the reason I have long described the American Jewish community as the most reactionary faction of the Democratic Party on this issue, and the reason that the U.S. abandoned its commitment to a Palestinian state. (Even J Street folded on its early opposition to illegal Jewish settlements.)  

And J Street is clearly afraid of the global left-wing movement that aims to isolate Israel. Just in the last few days, J Street has given a platform to a Jewish anti-Zionist, and its CEO has acknowledged that Israel has “crossed lines” in Gaza and Lebanon and the West Bank in ways that contradict “American law, policy and stated interests.” 

But J Street is in an “untenable” position because the Jewish base is shifting so rapidly, Peter Feld says. 

“They [J Street] are trying to carve off a little piece of the problem,” Feld tells me. “They want AIPAC to be the problem. They don’t want Israel to be the problem. But Israel is the problem…. Older Zionist friends of mine are repulsed by Israel’s behavior. People who screamed at me over my Israel views for years are now turning against Israel.”

Anti-Zionism used to be a heresy in the Jewish community. No longer. Five years ago, a poll by an organization that studies Jewish attitudes showed that 20 percent of Jews under 40 said that Israel had no right to exist as a Jewish state—and nearly twice that number said Israel practices apartheid.

Those numbers have surely grown since Gaza. Zionism is becoming a dirty word even in the Jewish community. A recent poll from the Jewish Federations (a leading Zionist organization) said that a mere 37 percent of Jews say they are Zionist, as opposed to 15 percent who said they are anti- or non-Zionist. 

Among Jews under 35, the numbers are nearly balanced: 35 Zionist, 32 percent non- or anti-Zionist.

Of course, money and public opinion are two different animals. The right-wing camp is older and continues to have way more money than liberal Zionists. J Street says that it spent $15 million in campaign contributions in the 2024 cycle—small change next to the AIPAC Super PAC that entered 2026 with “a whopping $95 million on hand,” Politico reports. 

AIPAC can unleash an “avalanche of money” if a candidate agrees to put no limits on aid to Israel, says Daniel Biss, a J Street endorsee for Congress in Illinois.

Zohran Mamdani overcame such an avalanche when he won the New York mayoral race last year, thanks to a populist movement that included many Jews. 

Zionists are panicked by these shifts in attitude. Lately, a Zionist organization called For the Sake of Argument issued an appeal for healing inside the Jewish community over the conflict Zionism is creating. “We are fissured over Israel,” it said, calling for dialogue.  

But no anti-Zionist would talk to the authors to make the report! A non-Zionist who did talk bridled at the identity problem: “Can you please stop forcing me to see [Zionism] as part of my Judaism?”

Feld says that Zionist organizations’ biggest problem in the eyes of young Jews is that they are segregationist. They don’t include Palestinian voices, or non-Jewish voices.  

“Most progressive-leaning young Jews don’t want to join any Jewish organization – including J Street U – that will lead them back to Zionism,” he says. “And they’re not interested in segregated Jewish spaces.”

Diverse coalitions of anti-Zionists are exercising political power, Feld says. “Look at how much Valerie Foushee [a congressperson] in North Carolina moved, from being an AIPAC darling to saying … in her primary night victory speech [last month] that she will work to ‘pass legislation to block arms sales to Israel.’”

Meyerson-Knox, the communications director for Jewish Voice for Peace, says that anti-Zionist Jews are fostering a rebirth of Jewish identity. 

“The mainstream organizations speak of a surge in Jewish identity—and yes, there was a surge of young Jews back to the community after October 7,” she says. But “they could not escape the live streaming of Israeli genocide, and asking, Why is the Israeli government starving children in my name?” 

She says “It’s a moment of transformation and rebirth. There’s an incredible flourishing of anti Zionist Jews who are reclaiming a Judaism beyond Zionism, not dependent on an ethno-military state…. 

“A lot of other young Jews are hanging out in the middle, but even they ask, why do I have to go to a synagogue where I have to say prayers for the IDF.” 

It’s going to take a while. But the Israel lobby is starting to break up.