Trouble for US support of Israel? Democratic criticism grows.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog received a strong bipartisan show of support in Congress today, celebrating 75 years of friendship since Israel’s founding. But the visit also underscored growing tensions within the Democratic Party over Israel, which burst into view again in recent days. 

“Today, dear friends, we are provided the opportunity to reaffirm and redefine the future of our relationship,” said Mr. Herzog, a left-leaning scion of Israeli politics now holding the mostly ceremonial position of president. He acknowledged the criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government at home and abroad while emphasizing the deep bonds between Israel and the U.S. A long-time advocate of the two-state solution, he repeatedly voiced support for Israel upholding minority rights, but also took a strong stand against Palestinian terrorism.

“Israel and the United States will inevitably disagree on many matters,” he added. “But we will always remain family.”

A handful of progressive lawmakers boycotted the speech, reflecting growing concerns in the party about Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and the lack of progress toward a two-state solution nearly 30 years after the historic Oslo peace accords laid the groundwork for Palestinian statehood.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, sparked a backlash over the weekend when she assured disruptive “Free Palestine” protesters at a progressive conference that “we have been fighting to make it clear that Israel is a racist state, that the Palestinian people deserve self-determination and autonomy, that the dream of the two-state solution is slipping away from us – that it does not even feel possible.” 

She later clarified that her criticism was directed toward current Israeli government policies, and on Tuesday she voted in favor of a House resolution of support for Israel that passed 412-9. But the flap raised concerns that the ironclad bipartisan support Israel has long enjoyed in the United States may be fracturing. A Gallup poll this spring indicated that, for the first time, more Democratic voters now sympathize with the Palestinian cause than with Israel.

The U.S.-Israel alliance, originally grounded in shared religious roots and a commitment to democratic principles, buoyed the nascent Jewish state amid the hostility of its Arab neighbors and gave the U.S. an anchor in a tumultuous region. Though the two states still have strong mutual interests, including opposition to Iran’s nuclear program, the sense of shared values that has long underpinned their relationship is increasingly being called into question on the left. 

In part, the pushback is a reaction to the increasingly right-wing policies of the Israeli government, which is looking to overhaul the country’s judicial system and advance policies in the West Bank that undermine – if not preclude – the possibility of an eventual Palestinian state. It also coincides with the growing U.S. movement for social and racial justice, which characterizes the Palestinians as another oppressed minority group to be defended and has raised awareness about their cause through social media. 

“One of my values is rooted in human rights of all people, and I strongly believe that if we continue to have a one-sided conversation about Israel-Palestine, then we’ll never get to a place of peace,” says Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, who boycotted the Israeli president’s speech. He says he’s seeing a shift among younger and more progressive Jewish constituents in his district in their attitudes toward Israel, and he challenges more conservative ones to rethink Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. 

“You fight tooth and nail to ensure there’s not a repeat of the Jewish persecution of the past,” he says. “How can you do that and completely ignore what is happening with Palestinians right now?”  

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the sole Palestinian American in Congress and one of Israel’s strongest critics in the House, also boycotted the speech today. She gave an impassioned floor speech Tuesday calling Israel an “apartheid state” that limits the freedoms of Palestinians like her grandmother. 

Democratic defenders of Israel say that seeing the Mideast conflict through the lens of U.S. race relations or South Africa’s apartheid regime oversimplifies the complex history of Israelis and Palestinians, who have engaged in modern-day hostilities going back to the 1930s. At that time, the burgeoning Zionist movement – facing persecution in Europe and urging a return to the Jewish homeland – began to clash with the Arabs who had settled in the area and considered Jerusalem the third-holiest site of their Muslim religion. 

But some warn that the rising generation of younger Americans, many of whom lean left politically, holds substantially less sympathetic views toward Israel.

“I’m not worried about Congress. I’m worried about college campuses,” says Democratic Rep. Jake Auchincloss, the great-grandson of Jews who fled pogroms in Ukraine, whose district includes an ideologically diverse Jewish community outside Boston. 

For Democratic leaders in Congress, the politics of this split are an unwelcome distraction from their efforts to present a united front against the GOP agenda. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both of New York, have been unequivocal in their support for Israel in recent days. Though some Jewish voters may feel increasingly frustrated with fellow Democrats’ increasing sympathy for Palestinians, they still remain a key source of support for the Democratic Party – even as conservative Republicans are increasingly casting themselves as the strongest defenders of the Jewish state. Tuesday’s resolution, brought by House GOP leaders, was widely seen as an attempt to highlight and exploit that Democratic divide for political purposes. 

A number of progressive lawmakers declined requests to comment on intraparty tensions over the U.S.-Israel relationship. And the fact that only 2% of Congress voted against the pro-Israel resolution underscored how important the relationship between Israel and America, which President Herzog repeatedly referred to as “our greatest friend,” continues to be for both parties. 

Still, Rep. Brad Sherman, an Ohio Democrat who has been on the House Foreign Affairs Committee for more than a quarter-century and is descended from Russian Jews, says the vote would have been different among rank-and-file Democrats – and that could be an issue going forward for Israel.

“Israel has one friend in the world, plus Guatemala, and cannot afford to have only one half of one friend in the world,” he says. 

In Israel, Ms. Jayapal’s comments got little play, but President Joe Biden’s relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu – whom Mr. Biden on Monday invited to come to the U.S. later this year – featured prominently on news sites this morning. 

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote Tuesday that in the same phone call, President Biden also warned his Israeli counterpart that he needed to slow down and secure consensus for his government’s judicial reforms – or risk losing America’s support. The reforms, which would readjust the balance of power between Israel’s left-leaning Supreme Court and its right-wing government, have sparked massive protests – including by military reservists whose ongoing service Israel depends on for its national security.

It’s a delicate balancing act for Mr. Biden, whom Mr. Friedman characterized as potentially “the last pro-Israel Democratic president.” He is trying to respond to an increasingly influential progressive wing of his party, while still maintaining a strong U.S.-Israel alliance based on shared democratic values.

“Israel has held a larger-than-life hold on the American imagination not because of sharing intelligence information or even sharing military cooperation, but it’s because they’ve been seen as a country committed to a Western sense of shared values,” says David Makovsky, former senior adviser on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at the State Department and a fellow at The Washington Institute. “You don’t give up on that easily.”