Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Last week, the Democratic National Committee failed to advance two competing resolutions that would have clarified the party’s stance on Israel’s war in Gaza. One proposal, voted down, called for the suspension of military aid to Israel. A second resolution, advanced by DNC chair Ken Martin, called for “secure and unrestricted delivery of humanitarian assistance” in Gaza, reaffirmed the DNC’s backing of a cease-fire and the release of hostages, and stated the committee supports a two-state solution. Martin, though, withdrew his own resolution, hoping instead to discuss it with the committee further. “There’s divide in our party on this issue,” Martin said. “This is a moment that calls for shared dialog. It calls for shared advocacy.”
DNC resolutions, on their own, mean little as Israel continues to bombard and starve out Gaza, where the death toll exceeds 60,000. Donald Trump controls the government, not the Democrats, and he has enabled, like his predecessor Joe Biden, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu at every turn, pumping the nation with armaments and sanctioning all military action. But the feebleness of the Democratic Party is notable; its leaders truly have no sense of the current moment. Half of Americans now believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll, and 60 percent oppose sending more military aid for its war against Hamas. The numbers are more stark when broken down along party lines: A stunning 75 percent of Democrats in the poll do not want to send more military aid.
Martin, who took over the beleaguered party this year, can’t shoulder all the blame. He is straining to build consensus among party apparatchiks and a donor class that is badly out of touch. If the war in Gaza does not quite reach the scope of Vietnam — no American troops are deployed, and the protest marches aren’t nearly as large or intense — it is fast becoming a generation-defining issue that is threatening to leave the old-guard Democrats in the dust. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the two Democratic leaders in Congress, wouldn’t dare oppose sending more military aid to Israel even though a full three-quarters of their party, in a nonpartisan poll, now demand this. The Israel hawk constituency is vanishing from the Democratic Party. Netanyahu’s disproportionate response to the October 7 attacks, which killed more than 1,100 Israeli civilians, is deeply alienating to the left, as is the general political orientation of the Jewish state. An American liberal has nothing in common with the right-wing, ethnonationalist parties in the government.
For now, the bipartisan consensus around blind Israel support will hold because Democratic leaders are comfortable ignoring their constituents. DNC members, who represent a cloistered minority, can’t even bring themselves to back a resolution that would be common sense to most of the American electorate. The question remains how long this status quo can hold. The John Fetterman wing of the Democratic Party, which might just be a constituency of one very soon, will never budge. But other hawks are giving ground. Two Democrats very close to AIPAC, Ritchie Torres and Cory Booker, have acknowledged the starvation in Gaza with Torres going even further, likening the war in Gaza to the “quagmire” of the Iraq War. Even ardent defenders of Israel mostly admit now that Netanyahu’s version of total war — killing civilians indiscriminately, immiserating as many Gazans as possible — isn’t furthering the cause of the Jewish state or even leading to the release of all the hostages. Backers of the two-state solution understand that Netanyahu has no intention of ever granting the Palestinians their own functioning country with land in Gaza and the West Bank. The road ahead is very dark.
Democratic leaders will eventually shift — it’s more a question of when. Jeffries, in 2027, may be Speaker of the House, and if rank-and-file lawmakers demand that the U.S. gets tougher with Israel, he will have to listen to them if he wants to keep control of his caucus. Barring an unforeseen shock, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist, will be the next mayor of New York City. A pro-Palestine Democrat triumphing in the city with America’s largest Jewish population cannot be ignored, especially since plenty of non-Orthodox Jews were willing to vote for him. Before Mamdani, an Israel hawk could argue that pro-Palestine politics wouldn’t play well with a large electorate. Mamdani’s triumph in a primary in which more than 1 million voters put that to rest — and a general election win — would underscore the point even more powerfully. (Disclosure: In 2018, when I ran for office, Mamdani was my campaign manager.)
In the near future, perhaps, the DNC will find the gumption to back a resolution that is in line with the rest of the electorate. The Democrats running for president in 2028 will be forced, in time, to cater to these voters — those who are against a taxpayer-funded slaughter. The old consensus around Israel will die, and it won’t come back.
