California Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, a leading critic of Israel in Congress, said he believes in the “right for Israel to exist” and that it is antisemitic to oppose the existence of a Jewish state.

Khanna made the comment during an interview Friday with J. The Jewish News of Northern California. Speaking with the J’s Gabe Stutman, Khanna said he supports Zionism and that modern antisemitism stems from “denying the idea of a Jewish state.”

“I believe that Zionism is self-determination of the Jewish people, and the right for Israel to exist. And I support that. What I don’t believe is if it means Greater Israel,” said Khanna, adding that he believes there needs to be a “two-state solution.”

Last month Khanna led an unsuccessful effort to push President Donald Trump to recognize Palestinian statehood at the United Nations General Assembly. He also said he agreed with a United Nations commission’s finding that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, making him one of only a handful of members of Congress to endorse the charge that Israel rejects.

“I agree with the UN commission’s heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,’ wrote Khanna in a post on X. “What matters is what we do about it — stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.”

Later in the interview, Khanna went on to frame his support for Jewish self-determination within his broader understanding of antisemitism.

“The original antisemitism was denying the Jewish people based on religion,” said Khanna. “Then, under Nazism, it became denying the Jewish people based on race. And today, antisemitism is denying the idea of a Jewish state. And I reject all three of those antisemitism premises.”

During the interview, Khanna also defended his appearance in a documentary earlier that month that featured antisemitic influencer Ian Carroll. Following the YouTube documentary’s release, where Khanna spells out his reasoning for rejecting AIPAC funding, he posted a clip that featured Carroll following his own interview.

“I had, genuinely, no idea who he was,” Khanna told Stutman. “I had never met him, never spoken to him. The broader point I was making was about PAC money, lobbyist money, not taking it. And not taking money from AIPAC. And that was what I said in the video. But once I came to know who he was — I, of course, unequivocally denounce his comments that somehow Israel was to blame for 9/11. I mean, that’s ludicrous.”

Khanna has also faced criticism for his appearance at the ArabCon conference last month, where several panelists defended Hamas as “Palestinian resistance” and laughed at the idea of condemning the Oct. 7 attacks.

“My brand, my politics, political philosophy is I will go and have a conversation anywhere,” said Khanna in defense of his appearance, adding that he told the conference he “unequivocally denounce the viewpoint that there was any justification for Hamas.”

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Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani attends an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, following an Israeli attack on Hamas leaders in Doha, Qatar, at UN headquarters in New York City, US, Sept. 11, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

President Trump made sure to thank Qatar for helping get his Gaza ceasefire. Yet amid the negotiations leading up to this deal, and even if it completely ends the war, his decision to give Doha a formal security guarantee will undermine his broader efforts to assert diplomatic leadership and ultimately secure his Nobel Peace Prize.

Trump’s promise — the first-ever official public US commitment to defend a Middle East country militarily — the security guarantee for Qatar departs entirely from the mutual defense treaties that underpin American deterrence and the global stability it brings. As “mutual” suggests, our pacts with 53 countries across five continents embody the principle that allies must contribute their fair share to defending each other.

This includes NATO’s “Article 5” commitments to treat an attack on one member of an alliance as an attack on all. For example, NATO invoked Article 5 after September 11, 2001. It also includes “Article 3” clauses that all parties maintain capable armed forces. Recent NATO additions Sweden and Finland — with their well-trained and motivated militaries — are shining examples of what we look for in allies. With a small handful of exceptions like Turkey, all our treaty partners also share democratic values.

Qatar stands apart. It is an absolute monarchy that has poisoned generations of Middle Eastern minds with state-sponsored anti-American misinformation on par with that of Russia. It has supported Muslim Brotherhood-style extremism across the region, including well before hosting Hamas leaders. Perversely, Qatar leverages these destabilizing policies to portray itself as an indispensable intermediator for American efforts, and thus ostensibly deserving of protection, to help undo them.

In these contexts, extending a security umbrella over Doha is a giveaway. The deal asks nothing new of Qatar. Instead of helping Qatar ensure it can help protect itself and support America’s freedom of action, the deal requires advance US contingency planning to do all the heavy lifting, and ties our hands operationally. Our alliance with South Korea, by comparison, joins our two countries’ forces under combined command in wartime.

Nor will Qatar reciprocate by allowing US forces to use al-Udeid Airbase for operations against Iran’s threat network. Notably, in World War II, we gave security guarantees to Australia and Brazil in exchange for, among other things, using their bases to project power against the Axis.

The Qatar freebie promises the opposite, both regionally and globally. Because of this deal, our partners in Jerusalem, Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Amman, and elsewhere — all of whom shoulder burdens for US-led collective defense — will look askance at American leadership and question the value of deeper partnership, precisely when we need them to take on more of those burdens.

And how can Washington credibly demand its NATO allies do likewise in Europe, if problematic and freeloading Qatar is gifted such an unmerited handout? Similar questions naturally arise for Taiwan, Singapore, and certain Southwest Pacific nations that do what America asks of its partners, despite having no Article 5-type backstop.

Iran certainly welcomes these sharpening divides that undermine the incredible regional security integration being driven through US Central Command.

There was a telling absence of urgency to seal this deal earlier this summer, after Iran attacked al-Udeid. Whatever the wisdom of Israel’s decision to target Hamas leadership in Doha, the Israel Defense Forces do not remotely threaten Qatar’s strategic viability or existence, nor its Arab Gulf neighbors. But Iran’s missiles, drones, naval forces, and nuclear ambitions certainly do, hence the longstanding American tripwire at al-Udeid.

It’s all the more concerning, then, that the US-Qatar pact effectively is aimed at a fellow American partner rather than the shared threat from Iran.

America’s first collective defense treaty, the 1947 Rio Pact, cemented the Monroe Doctrine in a hemispheric alliance. President Trump’s similar vision for the Middle East, an alliance that combats extremism and sidelines Iran, China, and Russia, requires doubling down on his successes with the Abraham Accords, Israel’s assignment to CENTCOM, Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran’s nuclear program, and other initiatives that bring our regional partners closer together and enable them to do more.

Rather than a blank check for Qatar, President Trump should pursue mutual defense treaties with our allies, and perhaps even countries such as Saudi Arabia. True partnerships like these can supercharge his diplomatic achievements and promote his overarching vision of a more stable and prosperous Middle East.

Jonathan Ruhe is Fellow for American Strategy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

US Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA) speaking at a press conference at the US Capitol. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect

When Representative Seth Moulton (D) of Massachusetts recently announced that he was returning donations from AIPAC and refusing future support, the story barely made national headlines. Yet this small act — a single line on an FEC filing — reveals something much larger. It marks the moment when an ambitious, mainstream Democrat concluded that distancing himself from the organized Jewish community is a political asset, not a liability, and when moral cowardice began to masquerade as conscience.

Moulton is no progressive firebrand. A Harvard-educated Marine veteran, he built his brand on national security and bipartisanship. His decision is not about ideology; it is about survival. Over the past two years, the Democratic Party has entered a new phase of moral performance politics, one in which proximity to Jewish or pro-Israel institutions carries reputational risk among the activists who increasingly shape primaries and online discourse.

Not long ago, Moulton faced an online firestorm for something utterly ordinary: defending his young daughters. During a 2024 interview, he said he did not want them “getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete.” The remark — hardly radical — provoked furious denunciations from progressive activists, staff resignations, and a public shaming campaign that painted him as transphobic. He had stumbled across a sacred boundary of the new moral order and learned its central rule: dissent is dangerous.

That experience left its mark. Now, as the next purity test forms around Israel, Moulton has taken no chances. By refunding AIPAC donations, he signals compliance with a rising moral code that defines virtue not by conviction, but by disavowal. In today’s Democratic ecosystem, the act of rejecting traditional Jewish institutions has become a badge of progressive credibility.

This transformation can be understood through what might be called the Mamdani Effect: the process by which Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) ideology, once confined to New York City, has begun reshaping the Democratic Party’s moral and political vocabulary. Named for New York State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani, one of the most visible DSA figures in state politics, this effect blends anti-capitalism, anti-Zionism, and performative solidarity into a single moralized aesthetic. It is a politics of accusation and purity: one advances not by building coalitions but by identifying oppressors and cutting ties.

New York City has served as the laboratory. Once the bastion of pragmatic liberalism — of Ed Koch’s centrist governance and the Jewish-Catholic labor coalition — the city’s politics now turn on moral spectacle. Candidates compete to condemn Israel, police “colonial complicity,” and signal distance from Jewish civic life. The new left does not want to coexist with traditional Democratic institutions; it wants to replace them with a moral movement that prizes purity over pluralism.

The pattern is spreading. Across the country, the activist wing of the Democratic Party has increasingly absorbed the language of the DSA: colonizer, decolonization, abolition. The Democratic Socialists of America formally calls for “the full decolonization of all the occupied lands of the United States” and has established working groups for “police and prison abolition,” and “BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions).” This rhetoric has migrated from campus protests into the language of progressive representatives — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) spoke at the 2020 DNC of repairing “the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny, and homophobia.” What began as fringe rhetoric now increasingly defines the emotional grammar of the party’s activist base.

Polling confirms the shift. Gallup found that in 2016, 53 percent of Democrats sympathized more with Israel than with the Palestinians; by 2025, that number had collapsed to just 21 percent, while sympathy for Palestinians soared to 59 percent — a nearly three-to-one reversal.

The shift represents a complete reversal from a 30-point advantage for Israel to a 38-point advantage for Palestinians among Democrats over nine years. Among younger Americans (Millennials), sympathies are now essentially tied, with 42 percent sympathizing with Palestinians and 40 percent with Israelis. What was once a bipartisan consensus on the legitimacy of the Jewish State has become a generational and partisan fault line.

For centrist politicians like Moulton, the implications are clear. The activists who dominate social media and small-donor networks increasingly treat Israel as shorthand for Western capitalism and “settler power.” In that moral framework, defending the Jewish State, or even maintaining ties to mainstream Jewish institutions, is suspect. So politicians adapt. Moulton’s decision to reject AIPAC funding is not an act of conviction but of fear: fear of the social media mob, fear of being labeled an oppressor’s ally, fear of losing favor with a base that now equates moral virtue with repudiation. What looks like moral clarity is in fact moral conformity.

That fear is corrosive. It does not only alienate Jews; it hollows out the liberal tradition itself. The Democratic Party that once celebrated pluralism now traffics in exclusion. The heirs of Bella Abzug and Daniel Patrick Moynihan are being replaced by the apostles of Zohran Mamdani: a politics that thrives not on solidarity but on sanctimony.

For American Jews, the cost of this transformation is profound. For nearly a century, Jews were among the architects of the Democratic coalition; builders of unions, schools, and civic institutions. They embodied the idea that liberal democracy worked: that minorities could flourish through education, engagement, and shared civic purpose. The synagogues that hosted voter drives, the Jewish Community Centers that welcomed refugees, the federations that funded civil-rights lawyers. These were not instruments of power but of civic faith. Yet as the party moralizes, belonging itself has become conditional. The new progressive creed demands repentance for association with power, success, or Israel.

Jewish institutions — synagogues, federations, philanthropic networks — are recast not as engines of community but as symbols of privilege.

The Moulton moment and the Mamdani Effect together capture the collapse of liberal pluralism into moral puritanism. What began as a movement for equality has hardened into a system of ideological compliance. Its adherents are sincere, but their sincerity is illiberal. They mistake outrage for justice and purification for progress. When mainstream Democrats start treating Jewish civic life as a reputational hazard, they do not merely abandon a community. They abandon the civic model that sustained American liberalism itself. The party that once trusted persuasion now rewards excommunication.

Yet there is still time to recover a better tradition. Courage is contagious. Moulton could have chosen differently; others still can. It is possible to defend women’s sports without fear. It is possible to support Israel’s right to exist without apology. It is possible, even now, to build a Democratic politics rooted not in shame but in shared responsibility.

This is the new political fault line: not left versus right, but Marxism versus capitalism, moral theater versus civic realism, conformity versus courage.

Moulton may think he is protecting his political future, but what he is really revealing is the fragility of a party that now punishes independence and rewards retreat. If Democrats wish to remain a serious moral force, they must rediscover what liberalism once knew: that pluralism is not complicity, and that solidarity requires standing with allies even when it is unfashionable.

As Alexis de Tocqueville warned nearly two centuries ago, “Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.” The Democratic Party’s crisis is not tactical but moral. Liberty cannot endure without the faith that binds citizens together and that faith begins with courage.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.