Democratic Leaders Shift Away From Israel
On Tuesday night, City & State editor Peter Sterne broke the news that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who is widely seen as a standard-bearer of progressive politics and a potential 2028 presidential contender, pledged at a private New York City Democratic Socialists of America meeting to vote no on any funding for Israel military aid in Congress, including for so-called “defensive” weapons.
Ocasio-Cortez followed up on this publicly, tweeting that “The Israeli government is well able to fund the Iron Dome system” and “I will not support Congress sending more taxpayer dollars and military aid to a government that consistently ignores international law and U.S. law.”
Since October 7th, elected officials have struggled to balance the entrenched bipartisan Washington consensus in support of Israel and the sea change in the Democratic base’s sentiment. Perceptions of Israel have collapsed to an unprecedented degree among U.S. voters as the Israeli government’s crimes in Gaza have piled up; per March polling, only 32 percent of Americans hold positive views of the country. Democratic-leaning voters jumped from 35 percent disapproval of Israel in 2023 to 57 percent disapproval now. With voters increasingly and rapidly alienated from U.S. support for what appears to be a rogue apartheid state, Democrats with national profiles are playing catch-up to their base, who are now making demands that would have been unthinkable as recently as Joe Biden’s election.
The terrain has shifted seismically under elected Democrats’ feet, and many are now adapting to save their careers.
Ocasio-Cortez has perhaps been dogged the most by the challenge of “defensive” security assistance to Israel. She was famously photographed crying after voting “present” on a 2021 bill that appropriated $1 billion to Israel’s “Iron Dome” missile defense system; eight progressive Democrats and libertarian Republican Thomas Massie voted against the bill. Ocasio-Cortez was also criticized heavily for her speech at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, where she said that Kamala Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a cease-fire.”
Last year, she came under fire from the left after voting against iconoclast former GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) amendment cutting funding to the Israeli Cooperative Programs; only four Democrats joined Greene and Massie on the vote that only one group on the Hill whipped in favor of. Ocasio-Cortez later explained on X that the amendment “[did] nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza” and that it solely “cut off defensive Iron Dome capacities while allowing the actual bombs killing Palestinians to continue.” Foreign-policy analysts may quibble over whether or not the Iron Dome and other missile defense systems give Israel a freer hand to pursue an aggressive policy in Gaza and elsewhere, but this explanation largely fell flat with the U.S. left.
Ocasio-Cortez is not the only rumored 2028 presidential candidate looking to move left on Israel aid. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), viewed by his critics as a cynical political weather vane with little ideological conviction of his own, recently described Israel as a “sort of an apartheid state,” though he would walk the comments back within a week and proclaim his reverence for the country. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), the Silicon Valley congressman who might contest Ocasio-Cortez for the left lane in the Democratic presidential primary, has expressed regret for his past Israel backing, touted his support for the Block the Bombs Act, which would cut offensive weapons to Israel, and, at time of writing, issued his own tweet that Israel “can pay for the defensive systems it needs” and that “we should not be subsidizing them.” Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), an Iraq War veteran whom pro-Israel site Jewish Insider described as a former “pro-Israel moderate”, stated that he would no longer take AIPAC money because “you have to basically be endorsing what’s happening right now, and it’s … it’s not good.” Pennsylvania governor and former IDF volunteer Josh Shapiro appears to be the only presidential aspirant holding to the increasingly lonely pro-Israel road within the party.
The Israel debate has progressed even further among left-flank congressional Democrats and candidates. Two years after AIPAC successfully spearheaded primary defeats of progressive, pro-Palestine firebrand Reps. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), using money-bomb tactics that conspicuously avoided Israel policy and were deployed at scale in Illinois Democratic primaries this year, Bush is running to take her seat back, and a slew of Justice Democrats–endorsed candidates are running with moral clarity on Israel’s genocide front and center. AIPAC-funded candidates won only two of the four seats contested in Illinois and lost a special election in New Jersey so far this year. Incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee (D-NC) joined the Block the Bombs Act as a co-sponsor to mitigate criticisms of past support for Israel before a left-wing primary challenge that she barely fended off (along with the help of massive outside spending).
The terrain has shifted seismically under elected Democrats’ feet, and many are now adapting to save their careers.
Progressives are also contending with newfound Israel skepticism on the right, as politicians and commentators seek to capitalize. While that skepticism remains a fringe position—54 percent of Republicans view Israel positively, compared to just 18 percent who view the country negatively—it is a growing one, especially among disaffected young Republicans. Greene paid for her foreign-policy iconoclasm with her political career for the time being, as she’s become a favored punching bag for President Trump, but she continues to use her public platform to decry Israel’s crimes and the war with Iran with a moral clarity to which some commentators have compared unfavorably the mealymouthed opposition of Democratic congressional leadership. Tucker Carlson continues to cast blame on Israel for the current war and has become one of the country’s most prominent American critics while remaining in Trump’s outer orbit, if only just, as a rare right-wing anti-war commentator. Some extreme candidates like Florida’s James Fishback have channeled opposition to Israel’s wars into overt antisemitism. While polling shows this is still a marginal group on the right, it may eventually become a landing spot for Israel-skeptical independents if progressives cannot meet voters on the issue.
Ocasio-Cortez’s clarification on X downplayed the significance of the pledge, framing it as less of a shift or concession than an adherence to a long-held position. Ocasio-Cortez has not taken a position on whether the U.S. should sell those “defensive” weapons to Israel beyond the limited restrictions of the Leahy Law and the Foreign Assistance Act, and it is also unclear whether she would vote differently on something like Greene’s funding cut (which was not an affirmative vote for funding) if given the chance. Her pledge may prove difficult in practice, too, as Israel aid could come packaged in party-line appropriations bills that will prove politically damaging to oppose. Should those conflicts arise, Ocasio-Cortez may face renewed criticism from unsatisfied left-wing supporters.
At any rate, the chance of a vote passing to cut “defensive” aid to Israel remains politically remote, compared to direct War Powers Act votes that would pull U.S. participation from Israel-backed wars with Iran and Lebanon.
While aspiring Democratic Party leaders jockey over Israel policy now, there is still room for further changes before this year’s midterms, let alone the 2028 presidential primary. The economic fallout of the Iran war, already being felt at the pump, is bound to increase, and the relationship with Israel figures to take heavy blame if the U.S. teeters into a recession. Voters may sour precipitously further on the “special friendship” over the next two years. The debate over “defensive” Israel aid is just a preview of the battles to come.
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