The traditional pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party, under the thumb of AIPAC and incapable of anything beyond the shallowest rhetorical empathy for Palestinians — if that — is clearly losing control. Its money and entrenched presence in Washington mean it will continue to be a problem for some time to come, but that wing has lost the support of an overwhelming majority of the Democratic base and cannot sustain its position of power.
The question is what comes next, and this week, there was a major development in how liberal pro-Israel forces are going to try to establish new guardrails around Israel policy.
J Street, the self-proclaimed “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobbying group, announced the formation of a new advisory committee.
“The Jewish Communal Advisory Council will serve as strategic advisors for J Street staff and leaders in their engagement with American Jewish leadership and related institutions,” the group announced on its website.
The Council features some of the most prominent names in the recent history of so-called “mainstream” Jewish institutions. Some of them fit easily into J Street’s liberal-Zionist identity; others signal that J Street is expanding its leadership to the right, even as it has modified some of its rhetoric.
The more conservative names include two former chairs of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations; a former president of the American Jewish Committee; a former chair of the Jewish Agency for Israel; two former members of the House of Representatives, and more.
The significance of this move should not be underestimated.
A different future for Democrats
AIPAC has become a dirty word among Democrats. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) is hemorrhaging credibility. Other major pro-Israel Democratic organizations are similarly seeing their impact diminish in the party.
This effect has largely been the work of Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, and anti-Zionist Jewish groups such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council, Americans for Justice in Palestine, the Arab American Institute, the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
Crucially, their work has been tremendously bolstered by lobbying and educational groups, most notably the Institute for Middle East Understanding, the Friends’ Committee on National Legislation, and, more recently, the Center for International Policy, among others.
J Street can certainly claim to be a part of this, but its efforts have been much more measured and mitigatory. For instance, they were eventually forced to grudgingly acknowledge the Gaza genocide, with J Street founder and President Jeremy Ben-Ami writing, “Until now, I have tried to deflect and defend when challenged to call this genocide. I have, however, been persuaded rationally by legal and scholarly arguments that international courts will one day find that Israel has broken the international genocide convention.”
But while J Street has also called for arms sales to Israel to be conditional and for the U.S.to stop selling some weapons to Israel, it remains dedicated, first and foremost, to preserving Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.
While many of the groups listed above do not specifically oppose that concept, in practice, it is at the very least not a priority, and is often seen as implicit in some of their policy stances.
This sets up a struggle over the direction of the Democratic Party, in which J Street starts with a distinct advantage.
Some of the leading figures in pushing for change among the Democrats are very comfortable in the J Street camp. An obvious example is Chris Van Hollen, senator from Maryland, who has been the most vocal proponent in the Senate for a different approach to U.S. policy in Palestine, and one of the clearest voices in defense of Palestinian humanity.
Van Hollen is an honored speaker at J Street conferences and a strong ally of the group. And while J Street doesn’t support Congressmembers like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other high-profile progressives, they also don’t act against them in most instances.
J Street gives Democrats a soft landing space where they can unload on Netanyahu, criticize Israeli settlements, and even call the assault on Gaza a genocide, all while affirming Israel’s ethno-state structure, which most supporters of Palestinian rights correctly call apartheid.
That soft landing spot is why pro-Israel figures who once wouldn’t have gone anywhere near J Street are now willing to join their board and engage in public advocacy—and, more importantly, lobbying—on behalf of the group. It’s either compromise or lose completely.
It’s a smart move. Unconditional support for Israel is dead among Democratic voters. Democrats, most Independents, and even a growing number of Republicans no longer want to be associated with Israel’s callous, racist, warmongering behavior, whether or not those people recognize how much that mirrors American activity in the world for much of the past century.
But will that extend to a true anti-apartheid policy? Democratic leadership and even most relatively progressive Democrats are not there and are not getting particularly close either. Advocates for full justice, like Rashida Tlaib or the sorely missed figures of Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, remain outliers in Democratic politics, even as so much has shifted.
J Street aims to keep it that way, as they must, especially in the face of several distinctly anti-Zionist voices either assured of a seat in Congress or with a very good chance of getting there in the next term.
J Street’s argument — which, unlike some Palestine solidarity activists, I believe is sincere — is that a secure, prosperous Jewish state requires a secure and prosperous Palestinian state next to it.
Yet, even if that is a sincere view, it still subordinates Palestinian rights to the maintenance of a Jewish ethno-state, albeit one — in J Street’s vision — with guardrails against the sort of extremism that Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich, and Itamar Ben-Gvir represent.
And here is where J Street must be opposed.
The current Israeli election illustrates the problem with J Street’s approach as a whole. No Zionist party with significant support in Israel even endorses a two-state solution, let alone a solution that recognizes the reality that two states are no longer feasible, if it ever really was. (Note: The Israeli party, The Democrats, officially supports two states, but uses October 7 to say it is not “feasible” now.)
Whence the ‘liberal Zionists’?
Many Palestinians and supporters of Palestinian rights see liberal Zionists as little, if at all, different from hardcore, AIPAC zealots. I have never subscribed to that view, though I understand it. My own take has long been that those who fight for justice for Palestinians, who put the rights of all on an equal level, can find places where it is beneficial to work with liberal Zionists, and oppose them where that is necessary.
The moment for opposition is now.
One thing J Street and other liberal Zionist groups have in common with AIPAC is that they see their role, in part, as establishing boundaries around acceptable discourse. They simply draw the line in a different place.
Where AIPAC, ADL, and similar groups demonize all criticism of Israel and label it antisemitic, J Street and its fellows understand, correctly, that Israel will eventually lose U.S. support if it continues to act as it does. They know that the best way to secure Israel’s future as a Jewish state is to remove it from the role of maintaining a boot on the Palestinian neck.
Thus, they engage in criticism of Israel. They’re willing to see the U.S. and Europe exert measurable pressure on Israel, and for that pressure to bring about policy change. But it must always be, first and foremost, for the sake of preserving Israel as what they call a “Jewish state.”
Leaving aside that Israel is not and never was a Jewish state but a Zionist one, and that there is a huge difference between the two, that stance ultimately implies that Israeli interests remain paramount over Palestinian rights.
That is not going to change for J Street. Indeed, given the kind of people they have just recruited, it is more certain than ever that when Israel’s Jewish nature comes into conflict with any democratic aspirations regarding Palestinian rights, the Jewish nature will prevail.
I have often cited the late Israeli historian Ze’ev Sternhell, who highlighted this in his work. It was not, Sternhell argued, that there were no idealists among Zionist ideologues, both before and after the creation of the state of Israel. It was that whenever their ideals of socialism or egalitarianism clashed with their nationalism, nationalism always prevailed.
Democrats still don’t recognize Palestinian rights
The most powerful tool Palestinians have in the United States is the suffering they have endured under Israeli occupation. That includes the genocide in Gaza and the settler violence in the West Bank.
Yet while most Democratic voters have turned against Israel’s apartheid regime as a result of what they’ve seen in Gaza and the West Bank, many have not fully empathized with Palestinians as people rather than only as victims.
American views of Israelis have plummeted, but their view of Palestinians has remained largely steady. That will need to change, because it creates a playing field where pushing Israel to halt settlement expansion or to allow for some reconstruction in Gaza will be the ultimate goal rather than the full restoration of Palestinians’ legal, civil, human, and national rights.
J Street recently reacted to Israel barring two Jewish activists from claiming the Israeli citizenship that, according to Israeli law, is the birthright of any Jew in the world by saying: “A Jewish homeland must be one that welcomes all Jews. Including Jews who care about Palestinian rights and safety.”
It’s a noble sentiment. But it raises significant questions about who has the right to emigrate to that homeland on the basis of nationality. J Street defends the z’khut ha’shiva, the right to return for Jews, but opposes that right for Palestinians, and would never do so until there is a separate Palestinian state on a mere 22% of historic Palestine to which return would be limited.
J Street does not support a fully sovereign Palestinian state, either. To be sovereign, a state must have the ability to defend itself, and J Street explicitly calls for a “demilitarized Palestinian state” that would forever be helpless against an Israeli neighbor that has committed horrifying atrocities against the Palestinian people.
J Street would surely call it absurd to suggest that Palestinians require a demilitarized Israel. So, again, we see that they are not actually calling for equality.
Until now, and even going forward, there are places where it will be important that Palestine solidarity activists work with J Street and similar organizations. In restricting settlers, getting humanitarian aid to Palestinians who desperately need it, and reining in some of Israel’s worst excesses — as well as those of the AIPAC-ADL drive to label all criticism of Israel as antisemitism — there is much good that can be done together.
But we have, after a long and arduous struggle, arrived at a plac where we can change the face of a major political party as Americans. That face is, in fact, going to change, and in many ways it already has.
Earlier this week, the Senate defeated a bill that would have demanded a full accounting of Israel’s abuse of Palestinian-Americans in the West Bank and the killing of Palestinian children. It would have been a first step toward some significant sanctions. The bill failed on a mostly party-line vote, with the radical anti-Palestinian racist John Fetterman being the lone Democrat to vote with all Republicans (except Rand Paul) against the bill.
The list of Democrats who one could never imagine voting for such a bill is long, and it starts with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. But they did, and whether that is because of a genuine change of heart (unlikely) or more cynical political calculations (almost certainly the case for most), it means there is real change.
J Street is determined that this change be one that still puts Israel first, but recognizes that it is not helpful for Israel if the United States simply indulges its and AIPAC’s every whim.
And J Street has a lot going for it. It is an organization that is well-liked and politically convenient for many in Congress. It allows for significant change, and many of its stances represent a real departure from American policy of at least the past 35 years.
More than that, J Street, especially with its new council, reaches into both the progressive Democratic world and the more corporate wing of the party.
But J Street, while certainly much closer to many Democratic voters than AIPAC, remains out of step with the forces in the party that have done the most to bring about this change. Those forces resist putting Israel’s interests first and have little sympathy for the state’s ethnocratic structure, whether they go as far as to call it apartheid or not.
The faces of Rashida Tlaib, Abdul El-Sayed, Ilhan Omar, Zohran Mamdani, Chris Rabb, Angie Nixon, and Darializa Avila Chevalier are the ones that Palestinians need to become the face of the party.
The first step was a huge one, showing the world the true face of Israeli apartheid, and Palestinians took that step.
But there is still work to do to get Americans to truly see the Palestinian people. There is a lot of racism — anti-Arab, anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, and simple xenophobia — to overcome. And that is the work of Americans, Palestinian and otherwise.
Democratic voters need to see Palestinian liberation, rather than mere opposition to Israel’s crimes, as their preferred policy. They’re not there yet. J Street would have the focus on stopping Israeli excesses. That’s important, but it is a step toward full Palestinian liberation, not as a way to protect Israel’s ethnocracy.
Democrats, I am convinced, can be brought around to support a policy that presses for justice, security, human rights, national rights, and equality for all, and that fully embraces the humanity of Palestinians. But that policy can only be promoted if the audience hasn’t already been convinced to support an ethnocracy, even one with a milder face.
