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What American Jews fight about when they fight about Israel
(JTA) — Eric Alterman, born in 1960, says the view of Israel he absorbed growing up in a Jewish family in suburban Scarsdale, New York, was decidedly one-sided.
“I went on this nerdy presidential classroom thing when I was in high school,” he recalls, “and some Christian kid from the South raised his hand and said to the rabbi, ‘I don’t get it, if the Jews could have a state, why can’t the Palestinians?’ And I was like, ‘How dare you?’”
Alterman would go on to attend Cornell University, where he wrote his honors thesis on Israel, Vietnam and neoconservatism; spend a semester abroad at Tel Aviv University; study Israeli military history while earning his master’s degree in international relations at Yale, and research a dissertation on American liberalism and the founding of Israel as a doctoral student at Stanford.
Although he frequently writes about Israel as a contributing writer at the Nation and the American Prospect, Alterman is best known for his liberal analysis of the media and U.S. politics. He’s written 11 previous books, including one on Bruce Springsteen.
Yet he never stopped thinking about the widening gap between the idealized Israel of his youth and the reality of its relations with the Palestinians, its Arab neighbors and the West. Even when Israel’s revisionist historians were uncovering evidence of massacres and forced expulsions of Palestinians during the War of Independence, and Israeli politicians and intellectuals began asking why, indeed, the Palestinians didn’t deserve a state of their own, he saw that such discussions were considered blasphemous in most American Jewish circles.
Alterman, now a CUNY Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, explores that gap in his latest book, “We Are Not One: A History of America’s Fight Over Israel.” The book surveys U.S.-Israel relations, but with a focus on the ways defending Israel have shaped public discourse. It’s a book about arguments: within the administrations of 14 presidents, between Washington and Jerusalem, and mostly among Jews themselves.
Earlier this month we spoke about how the pro-Isael lobby became a powerful political force, the Jewish organizations and pundits who fight to limit the range of debate over Israel, and what he thinks is the high price American Jews have paid for tying their identities so closely to Israel.
“I try to take on shibboleths that in the past have shut down conversation and take them apart and sympathetically show the complexity of the actual situation that lies beneath — so that [criticism and disagreement] over Israel can be understood rather than whisked away by changing the subject, or what-aboutism, or by demonizing the person who is raising them,” said Alterman.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Let me start by congratulating you: It’s the first book about U.S.-Israel relations with a chapter named after a Bruce Springsteen album: “Working on a Dream.”
Eric Alterman: Nobody else has caught that. But it’s not about U.S.-Israel relations. It’s the first book about the debate over Israel in the United States. There’s a million books on U.S.-Israel relations.
So let’s define that more narrowly. The title reminds me of the United Jewish Appeal slogan over the years, “We Are One,” which was about American Jewish solidarity. So who is the “we” in your title, “We Are Not One”?
There are three or four different meanings. The “we” in this book are obviously the United States and Israel. An awful lot of people argue that the United States and Israel have identical interests in the world and that’s crazy, because Israel is this tiny little country in the Middle East and we’re a global superpower thousands of miles away. So obviously, we’re going to have differences. Number two, American Jews and Israeli Jews are very different people. They have very different life experiences. And they see things quite differently as evidenced by the political split between them. The title also refers specifically just to Americans, because we can’t even discuss most things anymore. The pro-Israel community, such as it ever was, is enormously split and it’s split in angry ways.
Much of your book is about what happens to American Jews when the idealized portrait of Israel’s founding and its presumed blamelessness in its actions toward the Palestinians comes up against reality. In that context, tell me a little about your choice to devote a chapter to the Leon Uris novel “Exodus,” an extremely sanitized version of Israel’s founding, and the 1960 movie based on it.
The influence of “Exodus” is something I didn’t understand until I wrote the book. It’s crazy, because Leon Uris was this egomaniac who wrote kind of a shitty book and said that he wanted to add a new chapter to the Bible, and he kind of succeeded. I was born in 1960. When I was growing up in suburban New York, every single family had “Exodus” on their shelves. When the movie came out Israelis understood this. They said, “We can just shut down our public relations office now.” And from the standpoint of reality the movie is worse than the book because it has Nazis — the Arabs in the book are working with Nazism. Uris didn’t have the nerve to do that. So the book created this idealized Israel and this idea of [Palestinians as] evil, subhuman Nazis.
What most Americans don’t understand, or choose not to understand, is that before the 1940s most Jews were anti-Zionist, or non-Zionist. This changed in the 1940s, when, as a result in part of the Holocaust, and the reaction to that, and the triumph of Zionists, they became intensely pro-Zionist, leading up to the creation of Israel. But after that, they kind of forgot about Israel. One might have given their children JNF boxes to carry on Halloween instead of UNICEF boxes, or maybe they paid to plant trees. But Israel doesn’t show up in the American Jewish Committee’s 1966 annual report until page 35 or 36, and Nathan Glazer’s 1957 book “American Judaism” says that the creation of the Jewish state has had “remarkably slight effects on the inner life of American Jewry.”
With the events of 1967, Uris’ idealized notion of Israel came together with this terrible fear of a second Holocaust, and the terror and shame and frightening nature of that combined to transform American Judaism overnight to an enormous degree.
You are referring to Israel’s lightning victory in the Six-Day War, which even non-religious Jews saw as a kind of miracle, and redemption two decades after the Holocaust. And that transformation, you argue, put defense of Israel, combined with Holocaust consciousness, at the center of Jewish identity.
More than just the center: It basically comprised almost all of it, for many secular Jews. I quote the neoconservative Irving Kristol in the book saying in 1976 that “the Holocaust and the founding of the state of Israel” was 100% of what Judaism means.
Which in turn led to a the tremendous pro-Israel lobbying efforts, political activism and punditry.
The budgets of American Jewish organizations overnight went from social services and liberal social justice causes to defense of Israel. And rabbis were replaced at the center of public discourse by the heads of these organizations — most of whom had no religious training or knowledge of history or Judaism.
Joe Biden, then vice president, speaks at the AIPAC 2016 Policy Conference in Washington, DC, March 20, 2016.
(Molly Riley/AFP via Getty Images)
One distinction you repeatedly make is between what most Jews believe compared to the Jewish organizations that claim to represent them. Surveys show the rank and file is consistently more liberal on Israel and less hawkish than the big organizations — a gap that showed up markedly around the Iraq War and the Iran nuclear deal.
Right. The big mistake that so many in the media make is that they go to the heads of these organizations who pretend to speak for American Jews when they don’t speak for American Jews. They speak for their boards and their donors.
The shift to Jewish lobbying on behalf of Israel coincides with an era in which there is seldom daylight between what Israel wants and what the United States wants or agrees to — often to the frustration of presidents. You are critical of those who exaggerate the pro-Israel lobby’s influence — folks like Stephen Walt and John J. Mearsheimer, authors of the 2007 book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” — but, at the same time, you write, referring to the Israel debate in America, about “the continued stranglehold that money, power, organizational structure, and clearly defined paths to personal career advancement continue to hold over the shape of foreign policy.” How will you respond to critics who will say your book is trafficking in the myth of Jewish power and its conspiracy-minded hold over American policy?
The short answer is, that’s why I wrote a 500-page book — basically, for two reasons: One, everything is incredibly complicated. And some of those complications are consistent with antisemitic myths, and therefore they have to be teased out and broken down in such a way that you’re telling the truth rather than portraying the myth.
If you say things without context, they sound antisemitic. I say that yes, Jews are very powerful in the media and many use that power on or about Israel. But I think if you lay out the examples that I use, if you look at them and examine them, I don’t see how you can conclude otherwise. The people I describe often say that about themselves — how much power and influence they yield.
Secondly, I’ve always found it just about impossible to discuss Israel with anyone, because you have to share exactly the same assumptions with that person. And if you don’t, then they take it personally, or you’re an antisemite, or, at best, you’re insufficiently sensitive to how important antisemitism is. And if you describe ways in which American Jews act in ways that are consistent with antisemitic myth, it has a way of shutting down the conversation.
Undoubtedly there’s some criticism of Israel that is motivated by antisemitism, but there’s an awful lot of reasons to be critical of Israel, particularly if you are a Palestinian or care about Palestinians. This accusation [antisemitism] has shut down the discourse and part of my hopes in demonstrating the complexities of this history is to open this up.
So let me ask about your own stake in this. Your educational background and relationship to Israel are similar in many ways to the writers and thinkers in your book who tolerate no criticism of Israel. I don’t know if you call yourself a Zionist, but you have some connection to Israel, and you’re also willing to tolerate critiques of Israel. What’s the difference between you and some of the other people who went on the same journey?
For the longest time I was comfortable with the words “liberal Zionist,” but I don’t think they have any meaning anymore. I don’t think it’s possible to be a liberal Zionist — you have to choose. Israel is the only putatively democratic country that prefers Trump to either Obama or Biden, and it’s not even close. And young Israelis are moving further in that direction and young American Jews are moving further in the opposite direction.
So you ask me if I am a liberal Zionist. I don’t think the word “Zionist” is useful at all anymore, because Israel is a country and it’s not going anywhere. I sometimes call myself an anti-anti-Zionist, because anti-Zionism is dumb. I’m very anti-BDS. If I thought [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement] could end occupation, I would support it, even though the idea of boycotting Jews puts a bad taste in my mouth. But the theory behind BDS apparently, and I’ve spent a lot of time on this, is that the world will force Israel to give up its identity and turn the country over to its enemies. It’s inconceivable that Israel would do that and inconceivable the United States would pressure them to do that. So BDS is entirely performative. It’s more of a political fashion statement than anything else.
And to me, it speaks to the failure of Palestinian politics throughout history. I have a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinians and their bad politics because it’s based on two problems. One is that they have never been able to see the future very well. So they should have agreed in 1921 and 1937, or whenever they would have had the majority and they were being given a country by the British. They should have taken the lousy offer from Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton in 2000. I kind of get it because they have so many competing constituencies, and it’s impossible to satisfy all of them at the same time. I understand that. It’s hard to imagine a Palestinian politician who could say yes, and if you look at Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, in both cases, it’s hard to imagine making peace with them.
I read that in your book, and my first thought was, well, isn’t that basically just confirming what the pro-Israel right has always said — that Israel has no partner for peace? So maybe the best it can do is maintain a status quo that assures some security for Israel and a workable something for the Palestinians.
Well, number one I hold Israel significantly responsible for the conditions under which that has developed and that they can change those. And number two, that’s no excuse for the way Palestinians are treated, either in the occupation or in Israel. So yes, I agree. There’s no one to make peace with today, but there are many steps Israel could take that could vastly improve the lives of the Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and inside Israel. And there are a lot of steps they could take that could build confidence for a future that could weaken Hamas, that could strengthen the Palestinian Authority, so that one day peace would be possible. But they do the opposite.
An Israel supporter at a New York rally to tell the United Nations “no more anti-Israel documents or resolutions,” Jan. 12, 2017. (Don Emmert/AFP via Getty Images)
You talk about funding of Israel studies and Jewish studies departments as a reaction against fears of a pro-Palestinian takeover of academia. At the same time, you write how Palestinian supporters “succeeded in colonizing Middle East studies departments, student faculty organizations, and far-left political organizations.” Why does that matter in the long run if, as you also write, nothing’s really going to change American policy on Israel?
I gave a talk before the book came out at Tel Aviv University and someone asked me that question. I said, You care about these transformations for two reasons. One, you really will be all alone in the world. You’ll have the support of conservative [Evangelical] Christians who are in many respects antisemitic and are using you for their own purposes. So if you lose American Jews, you will be existentially alone in a way you’re not now and that strikes me as very unpleasant.
I do think that the quote-unquote pro-Israel community has a stranglehold on American politics that I can’t see changing anytime soon, and I think the change in the Democratic Party [that it will turn more pro-Palestinian] is very much exaggerated by both sides for their own reasons.
That being said, the people who are being trained now to be in the State Department and the National Security Council and the Defense Department and the think tanks and the places where the intellectual foundation of U.S. policy is made are learning something very different from what you and I learned in college. Right now, there’s no such thing as an influential Palestinian lobby in this country. There’s no pushing back. There’s no percentage for anyone opposing Israel who has a career interest in the future. That will change, and the whole shaping of the discourse will change and that will change the relationship between the United States and Israel. It’s not going to happen anytime soon, but it’s definitely going to happen.
As Jews in this country have remained largely liberal, Israel appears to be getting more illiberal, as we’ve seen with a new government that is more right-wing than any previously. And Israel has become more of a divisive element among Jews than a unifying force. As this gap appears to be widening, do you have any real hope for changing the discourse?
No, I don’t have any hopes for that. I don’t have anything optimistic to say about Israel. I think, politically speaking, from the standpoint of American Jews, everything is going in the wrong direction. But by demonstrating just how different Israeli Jews are than American Jews, and how little Israeli Jews care what American Jews think, I do think that it presents an opportunity for American Jews to think about what it means to be an American Jew in the Diaspora. Roughly half of the Jews in the world live in the United States. And since 1967 American Jews have defined themselves vicariously through Israeli Jews and taking pride in Israel. They expressed their identities by defending Israel and attacking the media when the media didn’t defend Israel.
Meanwhile, American Jews hardly ever go to synagogue. According to Pew, 20% of American Jews regularly attend synagogue and half of them are Orthodox, who are 10% of the community. What brought me back into Judaism was studying Torah. And hardly any American Jews are ever exposed to that.
So I think there’s an opportunity to reimagine Diaspora Jewry now that the Israel story doesn’t work, and it’s clear that it doesn’t work. Young American Jews are leaving or voting with their feet. They’re walking away. Israel-centric Judaism is in part responsible, although it’s not the whole story. Intermarriage is a big part of the story. The de-religionization of all groups is part of the story. But personally, I don’t see what a liberal American Jew would see in a Judaism that defines itself as it has for the past 50 years as defending Israel and remembering the Holocaust.
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The post What American Jews fight about when they fight about Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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These Michigan rabbis couldn’t get El-Sayed’s attention. Now they’re going national.
(JTA) — ANN ARBOR – Shortly before an Oct. 24 rally featuring Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed and former President Barack Obama in Detroit, 250 rabbis from across the country urged them both to take their concerns more seriously about El-Sayed’s position on Israel.
The rabbis were speaking on behalf of a group called Nonnegotiable Michigan, and they require El-Sayed to commit to their five demands before they will support him. In this case, they wanted him to vocalize support for “Jewish statehood in Israel” and a commitment to safety for “Zionist Jews” — and to do it onstage.
To their disappointment, neither headliner mentioned the movement or its demands — and El-Sayed will soon wrap his campaign, likely without having done so at all. Now the nascent movement is facing criticism from Jews to its left that the tactic backfired and made Jews more vulnerable.
In the campaign’s final days, Nonnegotiable’s attempt to find a voice in the race has also been overshadowed by pro-Israel Democratic congresswoman Haley Stevens’ endorsement of El-Sayed’s opponent, Republican former congressman Mike Rogers.
Still, the letter was the biggest rabbinical foray into U.S. politics since more than 1,100 clergy signed an open letter last year condemning “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalization” shortly before the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Michigan letter also signaled that even beyond the state, a sizable cohort of Jews are trying to state their principles amid shifting faultlines in the Democratic Party.
The organizers of Nonnegotiable are undeterred by the party’s silence. They are seeking a new national platform for liberal Zionist Jews to assert their priorities in politics.
“I do think it’s a template for a national model,” Rabbi Aaron Starr, one of Nonnegotiable’s co-founders, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “I’m certainly looking beyond this election. In two years there will be a presidential election, and another slate of candidates for elected office.”
Starr, of the Conservative Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, a Detroit suburb, said Nonnegotiable’s biggest goal was to “name the priorities that were most core to mainstream American Jews.” He believes they have accomplished that.
As Israel seems sure to remain a hot-button topic for the American electorate in the 2028 presidential race, Starr sees the need for Jews to assert their priorities as urgent.
“Everyone recognizes the growing extremism among political parties and politicians these days,” he said. “Everybody, and especially rabbis, recognizes that extremists could pop up in their own districts and their own states. So they want a forum to be able to communicate ways by which we reject extremism.”
National spotlight
Nonnegotiable’s organizers told JTA they have gathered 1,900, mostly anonymous, signatures to date within Michigan. That figure would be larger than the combined totals of named Michigan Jews who have signed open letters pledging to vote for El-Sayed (1,000) and Rogers (560).
Nationally, the organization says 4,560 people have signed the petition, including the rabbis from out of state who have joined up with the movement in its final days. The other clergy were sourced from rabbinical networks on social media, and come from 34 different states and Washington, D.C. A good chunk of them serve active congregations.
Many are from liberal or swing states, including Rabbi Samuel Stern of Temple Beth Sholom in Topeka, Kansas, where another close Senate race is unfolding. Stern told JTA he signed in order to call out “the anti-Zionist hatred that we see coming out of different political sides and candidates.”
For the rabbis on the letter, El-Sayed’s rhetoric in Michigan looms large in their states, too — in some cases, larger even than more local antisemitism controversies.
At a recent rally in Kansas, President Donald Trump used the term “Shylock,” widely considered to be an antisemitic slur, when referring to a controversy involving the GOP incumbent senator suing patients with medical debt.
Stern, though, said that his Kansas congregation was generally more concerned about El-Sayed’s rhetoric on Israel several states away than Trump’s remarks closer to home.
“It really didn’t play that much here,” the rabbi said, of Trump’s comment. “I don’t know what that means for us, or for any of the other Jewish communities, but it wasn’t as prevalent here. We’ve heard more about what Dr. El-Sayed has said, his anti-Zionism, and been more concerned about that, than about the offhand comment by President Trump.”
Nonnegotiable has also expanded onto college campuses, with an organizing campaign that has quickly formed at the University of Michigan. Around two dozen Jewish students have publicly added their names to the letter.
“I really resonated with what Nonnegotiable stands for,” student organizer Jacob Reich, who is involved in various Democratic Party initiatives on and off campus, told JTA. “I felt torn between both my Jewish identity and my identity as a Democrat.”
Among Reich’s biggest concerns about El-Sayed, he said, was the candidate’s widely criticized “hurt people hurt people” remark made after a March attack on the state’s Temple Israel. The attacker’s family members were killed in Lebanon in an Israeli strike.
El-Sayed has since apologized for those comments, and his campaign has sent mailers to Jewish households in which he pledges to fight antisemitism. Reich said he appreciated the letter, but added, “I don’t think it went far enough to address a lot of the missteps that he’s taken.”
Whose nonnegotiables?
Rabbis friendlier with El-Sayed have argued the movement is ineffective at messaging; could boost Republican policies most Jews strongly oppose; and ignores ways in which the candidate has sought to improve his relations with Jews.
Some have aired those grievances to the movement’s leaders directly.
“Nonnegotiable describes itself as an invitation rather than an ultimatum,” Rabbi Alana Alpert, of Detroit-area Congregation T’chiyah, wrote privately to the campaign’s organizers in an Oct. 8 letter. “It has had the opposite effect, driving a wedge between the campaign and Jewish interests.”
In her previously unpublicized letter, which she recently shared with JTA, Alpert compared Nonnegotiable to Uncommitted, the 2024 activist campaign in Michigan that sought to pressure then-President Joe Biden on Gaza by withholding primary votes for him. The Uncommitted movement later refused to endorse replacement nominee Kamala Harris. Trump went on to win Michigan, and the general election.
The two campaigns used “similar language,” Alpert wrote. She told her fellow rabbis that they were now “dealing with the choices, coalitions, and consequences of an actual general election with far-reaching implications.”
Rabbi Nate DeGroot, who heads the progressive Shalom Center and serves two Michigan synagogues, laid out 10 alternative “nonnegotiables” of his own that he argues “Michigan Jews care just as much about.”
In an essay shared with JTA in advance of its publication, DeGroot’s own nonnegotiables include “fierce condemnation of Christian nationalism”; support for abortion rights and trans rights; and a “commitment to beating swords into plowshares,” a phrase originating in the bible that DeGroot said should also apply to opposing the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.
Rogers would fail to meet those criteria, DeGroot wrote. Both he and Alpert are supporters of Michigan Jews for Democracy, an ad-hoc group organizing for El-Sayed.
One argument Nonnegotiable’s critics have made is that the movement has had the net effect of benefitting Rogers, who has made an aggressive play for the Jewish vote while employing campaign language about the Muslim Brotherhood that many have argued embraces Islamophobic tropes.
Organizers have expressly denied that their cause is partisan, though some of the big names who signed the Nonnegotiable letter have since cast their ballots for Rogers.
At a recent Republican Jewish Coalition event staged for Rogers, some speakers directly referenced El-Sayed’s refusal to engage with Nonnegotiable as part of the reason not to vote for him.
“When rabbis and Jewish leaders within El-Sayed’s own party came to him with five basic, nonnegotiable commitments, fundamental principles of Jewish safety, identity, and self-determination, they asked him to affirm these commitments clearly and unequivocally,” Lauren Slutsky, a parent of a Temple Israel preschooler, told the crowd. “Weeks later, we’re still waiting.”
She argued, “If a candidate cannot clearly say that Jewish safety, including the safety of Zionist Jews, is nonnegotiable, why should our community or anyone in our community give him our vote?”
Accusations flying
Nonnegotiable’s organizers have denied that their group is affiliated with any Jewish cause but their own. Zioness, which bills itself as a progressive Zionist group, is boosting them.
Yet some Jews see in the movement an echo of more hardline pro-Israel sentiment.
J Street, the national liberal Zionist lobby, seized on a video accidentally posted to Nonnegotiable’s Instagram account that showed the account holder texting with David Victor, a former president of AIPAC and a Michigan resident. The pro-Israel lobbying giant has spent millions against El-Sayed in both the primary and the general election.
The gaffe, J Street vice president of political and digital strategy Tali DeGroot told JTA, was potential evidence that Nonnegotiable’s organizers were coordinating with AIPAC-aligned figures.
“Our fear from the start with Nonnegotiable is that it plays directly into the hands of Republicans who are cynically using the issue of antisemitism for their own political gain,” DeGroot, who has no relation to Nate DeGroot, told JTA. The texting, she insisted, “just validates that fear even more.”
J Street has not formally endorsed El-Sayed, but the lobby is generally supportive of his campaign and is spending against other AIPAC-aligned candidates this midterm cycle. Neither AIPAC nor Victor responded to JTA requests for comment.
Nonnegotiable organizers, however, dispute this account and have expressly denied any involvement from AIPAC in the group.
“If I had been aware of any of the establishment forces being involved in this, or if there was a whiff of partisanship, I would not have gotten involved,” Matt Zerwekh, an initial signer of the letter who leads Temple Emanu-El in the Detroit suburb of Oak Park, told JTA.
Some have even vocally opposed the powerhouse lobby. One of Nonnegotiable’s co-founders, Rabbi Josh Whinston of Ann Arbor’s Temple Beth Emeth, published an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press on Friday condemning AIPAC for quoting him in anti-El-Sayed mailers distributed to Jewish households.
On Sunday afternoon, hours after Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers, Nonnegotiable gathered again on Zoom with guests including Zionist pundit Hen Mazzig and Michigan U.S. Rep. Hillary Scholten.
At the exact same moment as the call, pro-Israel congressional candidate Jeremy Moss was joining a cohort of Democrats castigating Stevens for her endorsement. Nonnegotiable leaders saw it differently: Starr praised Stevens for her “bravery.”
Others, such as Scholten, didn’t raise the subject at all. The congresswoman instead praised the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Iron Dome defensive system. “I’m so proud to stand as a friend and ally of our Jewish community right now,” she told those on the call.
The real purpose of the call, though, was for Nonnegotiable to suggest that Jews could write in a candidate instead of voting for either nominee.
Their top write-in pick: Emma Lazarus, the 19th-century Jewish poet best known for having her work engraved on the Statue of Liberty.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post These Michigan rabbis couldn’t get El-Sayed’s attention. Now they’re going national. appeared first on The Forward.
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Ohio Senate race between Israel supporters becomes proxy battle for AIPAC versus J Street
(JTA) — A tight race in Ohio may play a pivotal role in determining which party controls the U.S. Senate, with the two campaigns serving as a proxy battleground for two Israel lobbying groups with different ideologies.
While Republican Sen. Jon Husted is technically the incumbent, in the eyes of many voters, so is Democrat Sherrod Brown. Husted was appointed by Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine to fill the seat vacated by JD Vance when he became vice president in January 2025. He is now running to fulfill the remaining two years of that term. Brown, meanwhile, served three terms in the Senate before losing Ohio’s other Senate seat to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024.
In the background of this close race are two pro-Israel lobbying forces: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby supporting Husted, and the liberal J Street, a frequent critic of the Israeli government that backs Brown.
For this general election cycle, Husted has earned more than $544,000 in individual contributions earmarked for him through AIPAC, according to FEC filings. During the May special primary election, he amassed more than $306,000 in such contributions.
Husted received a direct $5,000 contribution from AIPAC’s political action committee in April, according to both FEC filings and a federal lobby disclosure. Another $5,000 in February was earmarked through AIPAC, meaning that the lobby forwarded a third party’s contribution to the campaign. Husted also received a $5,000 donation from the Republican Jewish Coalition PAC.
Asked why Husted received AIPAC’s backing, Deryn Sousa, a spokesperson for the organization, wrote that “Husted is endorsed because of his support of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
During his short time in the Senate, Husted has voted against measures to block arms sales to Israel and joined efforts to combat antisemitism.
In April, he voted against advancing two resolutions proposed by Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, seeking to restrict sales of certain military equipment – including 1,000-pound bombs and bulldozers – to Israel. That same month, he joined the Senate Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism, and a year before, he questioned university leaders about the safety of Jewish students on campus.
Brown has likewise been a staunch supporter of Israel and Jewish Americans, voting against advancing a previous resolution to restrict arms sales, proposed by Sanders in 2024.
In 2018, Brown sponsored the United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act, which would have authorized military assistance for Israel through fiscal year 2028. He also spoke out on behalf of Jewish students amid campus protests in 2024 and warned of the dangers of antisemitism after a 13-year-old was charged with allegedly planning a mass shooting at an Ohio synagogue in 2023.
Brown has been “one of the biggest recipients of J Street bundled funds for this cycle,” according to Jordan Steinberg, a spokesperson for the group. Describing Brown as “a long-time J Street champion,” Steinberg told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Democrat has received more than $800,000 from supporters of J Street in this race.
The biggest chunk of the funds, Steinberg continued, came via JStreetPAC, which operates as a conduit for individual donors who make contributions to candidates on J Street’s website. These contributions are then reported to the FEC as donations from individuals. The group also has a super PAC, J Street Action Fund, but Steinberg said that most donations come from individuals who contribute through the traditional PAC.
J Street in September announced that it would be stepping up lobbying efforts, investing $3 million to defeat certain Republican candidates backed by AIPAC.
“He is one of the top three recipients of our bundled dollars, and we couldn’t be more invested organizationally in his victory in November,” Steinberg added. “Brown has been a longtime champion of pro-peace, pro-democracy values, and we’re proud to stand with him this cycle.”
Other differences in financing have separated the two rivals, with each campaign accusing the other of linkages to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Brown has run ads slamming Husted for taking more than $116,000 from Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, a financial client of Epstein, with the most recent $3,500 gift occurring in July 2025, according to the Federal Election Commission.
A campaign spokesperson for Husted, Tom Evans, told JTA in a statement that “the Wexners have given to dozens of candidates from both sides of the aisle – including Sherrod Brown.” Evans noted that Husted’s campaign donated all available funds, totaling $34,000, to an anti-human trafficking charity, adding that the senator voted to release the Epstein files.
While Husted did support such legislation passed in November 2025, he supported tabling an amendment requiring disclosure of Epstein file documents to the public in September 2025.
Following Brown’s attack ads, Husted fired back with allegations that his opponent took contributions from people whose names appeared in the Epstein files. Those people included Wexner’s wife Abigail, former Harvard president and U.S. Treasury secretary Larry Summers and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. FEC records show, however, that Brown never took money from Wexner himself.
The Husted campaign has accused Brown of taking more than $150,000 from a dozen people listed in the Epstein files. Evans deemed the Democrat’s ads “hypocritical,” slamming him for sitting on the files while serving in Washington for 32 years.
The Brown campaign did not respond to JTA’s request for comment.
Apart from the clashes over contributions to each campaign, the Ohio Senate race has also included a controversy over a Husted campaign hire. The former staffer, Stephen Woytek, once used a photo of SS soldiers as his Facebook profile picture and added a playlist celebrating Rhodesia, a former white-minority-ruled state often used as a symbol by white nationalists, The Washington Post reported in September. Woytek at the time told the Post that he rejects “the racist and antisemitic ideology the SS and Nazi Germany represented,” adding that although he participates in historical reenactments for educational purposes, he should have “exercised better judgment.”
After the Post contacted the campaign about the posts, Husted reportedly dismissed Woytek.
Following the Post’s report, Ohio Democratic Party leadership said that Jewish and Black community leaders joined hands in condemning the senator “for hiring a Nazi enthusiast as a member of his senior campaign team.”
“Jewish Americans and our allies need to take action to combat the rise of antisemitism and hatred and defend our values,” Adam Rosen, Ohio chapter leader of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said in a statement.
Rosen accused Husted of showing “poor judgment” in hiring Woytek, raising doubts as to whether Jewish Ohioans should trust his judgment “when he can’t choose people for positions of power who aren’t Nazis.”
Evans, Husted’s campaign spokesperson, cited Woytek’s service in the U.S. Army and described him as a student of military history who “routinely reenacts historical battles.”
“While he denies negative intent, his social media activity displays a complete lack of judgement and disregard for its impact on others,” Evans added. He stressed that Husted “demands better of those who represent him,’ noting that the senator “made the immediate decision to part ways.”
Addressing this incident, Josh Kramer, president and CEO at Ohio Jewish Communities, emphasized that “Ohio Jewish Communities has a long history of working constructively with both sides of the local aisle, and we’re fortunate to have relationships with both Senator Husted and former Senator Sherrod Brown.”
“The controversy surrounding the former member of Senator Husted’s campaign is troubling,” Kramer added, noting, however, that “Husted acted to remove the individual once the matter was brought to his attention.”
Overall, Kramer said he believes that “Ohio has demonstrated itself to be a more moderate state, or less open to extremism, than other states.”
Looking at the election from a broader perspective, Ohio Jewish Communities’ Kramer said he was grateful that Ohio’s Jewish community has long worked with both Democrats and Republicans. While he recognized a rising tendency to link antisemitism to partisan politics, Kramer said that this race is “an opportunity for candidates to demonstrate their commitment to the safety and well-being of Ohioans, including the state’s Jewish population.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Haley Stevens shocks Democrats by endorsing Republican Mike Rogers. Her move could sway Jewish voters in Michigan.
Rep. Haley Stevens, a Michigan Democrat who lost a heated Senate primary to progressive Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed, endorsed his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, on Sunday in a stunning break with her party just two days before Election Day. The move could shake up one of the country’s most closely watched Senate races.
The endorsement came after a weekend of growing tension between Stevens and El-Sayed, whose fierce criticism of Israel and association with online personalities accused of antisemitism alienated some Jewish Democrats. If elected, El-Sayed would become the first Muslim in the U.S. Senate.
Stevens, a staunch supporter of Israel who received significant backing from AIPAC during the primary, had been snubbed by El-Sayed amid efforts to unite Democrats ahead of Tuesday’s election. Just last week, she told CNN she would vote for El-Sayed and was scheduled to join him at a unity rally Sunday.
But a feud escalated over the weekend after El-Sayed refused to condemn the content of an ad from a PAC supporting his campaign that blamed U.S. aid to Israel for rising grocery prices. El-Sayed, in return, accused Stevens of “relitigating a primary that ended three months ago” and again mentioned the support she received from AIPAC.
“Our Democratic nominee for Senate said I was no longer welcome in his campaign and that I should stay away,” Stevens said in a video posted on X after attending church services in Detroit with Rogers.
Speaking to the media alongside Rogers, Steven also referenced Hasan Piker, a popular left-wing pundit who has been accused of antisemitism and has campaigned alongside El-Sayed. “I don’t belong in Abdul’s campaign,” she said. “I do not stand with Hasan Piker, who gets trafficked on our college campuses.”
The surprise endorsement could influence Jewish Democrats who have struggled with whether to support El-Sayed despite their concerns about his rhetoric on Israel and antisemitism. After the March attack on Michigan’s Temple Israel, El-Sayed said, “Hurt people hurt people,” referring to the attacker having lost family in an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon. He later apologized for the comment.
Some Jewish Democrats had considered leaving the Senate race on the ballot blank, similar to what the pro-Palestinian “uncommitted” movement did in the 2024 presidential election to protest the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel in the war against Hamas in Gaza.
Jewish voters make up just 1.4% of the electorate in the state. However, in a race so close, they could make the difference. The latest YouGov poll of likely voters in Michigan has El-Sayed up by 4 points.
Trump carried the swing state in 2024 by about 80,000 votes. In the Senate race that same year, Democrat Elissa Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes. Even before Sunday’s development, the Republican Jewish Coalition had spent $2 million to target approximately 50,000 Jewish voters, primarily in Oakland County, who backed Stevens in the primary.
The divisions have also become personal for Stevens, who is considering converting to Judaism. Her Jewish fiancé, Jason Turkish, attended a RJC forum last week and said he would vote for Rogers.
AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, sent direct mailers to 130,000 identified Jewish voters in the swing state. It also sponsored get-out-the-vote phone calls.
Democrats try to limit the damage
The development marks one of the biggest public splits among Democrats over Israel this election cycle, as the party is fighting to win control of the Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official, called Stevens’ endorsement of Rogers “a despicable betrayal.”
Schumer stood by his endorsement of El-Sayed. In a statement Sunday, he accused Republicans of “racist, Islamophobic, and over-the-top false attacks” against the Democratic nominee. He did not directly address the Stevens endorsement. Stevens, who said she is “still a very proud Democrat,” said she wants to see Schumer become Senate Majority Leader.
The endorsement also sparked a firestorm within Stevens’ own office, with her chief of staff and other aides resigning in protest. Stevens did not seek reelection to the House after running for Senate, and her term ends in December.
Republicans seized on the divide.
“Wow, this is BIG!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Her following is huge, and the level of respect from the People of Michigan, especially our African American and Jewish populations, is virtually unparalleled. Haley said what few people are willing to say.”
Some Jewish Democrats also heavily criticized Stevens on Sunday, saying she was hurting the party and the country. “Anyone who makes an election this important about themselves, and not Michiganders and our democracy, should think hard about whether they are serving the greater good,” Slotkin, who is Jewish and who has hit the campaign trail with El-Sayed, wrote on X.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America, an organizing body for Jewish interests in the Democratic Party, had pointedly not endorsed El-Sayed during the campaign. Yet following Stevens’ announcement, its CEO Halie Soifer wrote, “A vote for any Republican in 2026 is a vote for Donald Trump.”
Nonnegotiable Michigan, a coalition of Michigan rabbis and Jewish Democrats, scheduled an online forum for Sunday afternoon to discuss their choices — whether to support the Republicans or leave the ballot blank — after El-Sayed ignored its repeated requests to engage. “Now, with voting underway and Election Day approaching, the question is no longer only what El-Sayed will do — but what Jewish voters will do,” the group said in a statement released before the Stevens endorsement.
Piker, on social media, called Stevens “a self interested striver who’s weirdly obsessed with Israel and has been paid handsomely for this strange obsession.” El-Sayed has distanced himself multiple times from Piker since they campaigned together in the primary, including this week after Piker compared a heavily Jewish Michigan suburb to “a KKK neighborhood.”
A shift in the Jewish vote on Tuesday could help decide the Senate race. It could also offer an early test of whether divisions over Israel will cost Democrats Jewish support beyond this election and heading into the 2028 presidential race.
JTA contributed to this report.
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