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How Michigan’s Senate race is testing pro-Israel Jews’ loyalty to the Democratic Party
(JTA) — Joel Tauber has been through many an election in his 92 years. And, with the exception of “one out of 100 times,” he’s always backed a Democrat — something even more important in the current midterm cycle, he believes.
“Winning the Senate and the House is the beginning of a way back to our democracy,” Tauber, a founding chair of Jewish Federations of North America who has hosted former President Bill Clinton and other Democratic leaders, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It’s really, really important to me.”
But Tauber is a Michigan resident, and the state’s upcoming U.S. Senate primary is making him deeply uneasy. Like many a Jew in the mitten state, he is pulling for pro-Israel centrist U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens to win on Aug. 4.
Should her opponent, former county health official and staunch Israel critic Abdul El-Sayed, prevail instead, Tauber would take a step he’s said he’s never done before: leave the Senate ballot blank.
“I’d sit it out,” he said, of the general election. Of El-Sayed, he said, “There’s no way that I could vote for him.”
Some Jewish Democratic leaders in the state are prepared to go even further. Several prominent Metro Detroit Jews who have traditionally fundraised for Democrats are also planning fundraisers for the presumptive GOP nominee, former U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, as a “hedge.” Others are planning to help him if El-Sayed wins the Democratic nomination, one Jew who is close to the Stevens campaign told JTA.
Others affirmed the idea that the Jewish Democratic donor class, feeling abandoned by the party, would back Rogers.
“There are leaders in our Jewish community who are longtime, lifelong Democrats and Democratic fundraisers, who are very concerned with where their party’s going,” said Dennis Bernard, national chair of government relations for the nonpartisan JFNA and a metro Detroit resident. “And if this is the case, they’ve made it clear, both financially and with their vote, that they would support Mike Rogers in the event El-Sayed wins the primary.”
Detroit-area Jewish Democrats have asked Bernard, over golf outings, for introductions to Rogers, he said.
The reason: They see El-Sayed — who has questioned whether Israel should be a Jewish state and suggested that Democrats who support Israel only do so because of financial motives — as portending an existential threat to the national Jewish community. If he wins in a purple state, one in which pro-Israel Jews have for years butted heads U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the pro-Palestinian Democrat, some fear more candidates with similar views will follow, and lead to an unsafe environment for Jews in Michigan and beyond. They worry that increasingly hostile discourse creates an environment in which antisemitic harassment becomes more acceptable and Jewish political activism is considered suspect.
“This is a truly once-in-a-lifetime moment where you have to become a single-issue voter,” Bernard said. “And that issue is antisemitism, our Judaism and Israel. This is where you put party third: our people first, our country second.”
Left-wing congressional primary wins in New York, Colorado and other states have stoked anxiety over the Senate race here, as Michigan — also home to a large Arab/Muslim population — is morphing into a litmus test for the relationship between pro-Israel Jews and the Democratic Party. For the majority of American Jews who back liberal policies, a decades-long bond is being tested like never before.
A similar dynamic played out on a smaller scale after Zohran Mamdani, a vocal anti-Zionist, secured the Democratic nomination in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election. Then, several prominent Jewish donors backed a rival bid by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent while maintaining Democratic ties. Despite recent polling showing that 44% of American Jews hold a favorable opinion of the mayor — a higher favorability score than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — pro-Israel voters still regard his pro-Palestinian rhetoric as disquieting.
The backlash against Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza and growing calls to shun the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC are further straining Jewish-Democratic bonds — and, for some of the most influential of Michigan’s estimated 129,000 Jews, are on the verge of breaking them.
Another Jewish leader told JTA there was also an effort underway to convince pro-Israel Republicans to vote for Stevens in the state’s open primary, even if they decide to later vote for Rogers in the general.
“Anyone who cares about the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship, Democrat or Republican, needs to vote for Haley Stevens in the Democratic primary,” they said, requesting anonymity because they did not want to be seen as speaking for the community. The Republican Party is currently engaged in its own tug-of-war over Israel and antisemitism, with Vice President JD Vance recently criticizing Israel while entertaining conspiracy theories about its ties to Jeffrey Epstein on a popular podcast.
When contacted by JTA, Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America (which is phone-banking for Stevens) and a native of East Lansing, Michigan, declined to comment directly on the possibility of the state’s Jewish Democrats backing Rogers over El-Sayed.
“Our focus is ensuring Haley Stevens wins the primary election,” Soifer said in a statement, also saying that El-Sayed’s “views are not aligned with the vast majority of Jewish Americans.”
At Michigan’s Democratic convention earlier this year in Detroit, Stevens was booed by the rank and file while state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who was then also running for the seat, alleged that an attendee directed an antisemitic remark at her Jewish husband. At the same convention a lawyer for pro-Palestinian encampment participants, who himself had a history of social media posts supporting Hezbollah and retweeting antisemitic conspiracy theories from far-right podcaster Candace Owens, ousted a pro-Israel Jewish incumbent for the party’s nomination for University of Michigan board of regents, a statewide elected position.
The convention was an inflection point for many top Jewish Democratic supporters. Many of these Jewish leaders declined to comment to JTA. Others said much of the enthusiasm for the broader party goals among the staunchly pro-Israel Jews of the Detroit suburbs has been drained.
“I’m feeling kind of confused, and it must be how my Republican friends felt once the Tea Party took over,” said Neil Gorosh, a retired commercial mortgage banker in West Bloomfield and past president of a local Jewish senior living community.
Gorosh ran for office once: a local parks-and-recreation position in 1988. A Democrat during the George H.W. Bush-led GOP wave, he lost. Since then, he said, he has always backed Democrats while developing an elections calculus: He leads with local issues on local races, but Israel on contests of national import.
Accusing the Democrats of “completely rejecting Israel,” he added, “I’m rudderless right now.”
“If it came down to Mike Rogers and El-Sayed, I will vote for Mike Rogers,” Gorosh said. “I wouldn’t write a check, but I would vote for him, and I would tell my like-minded friends to do the same, and the reasons why.”
Michelle “Decky” Alexander, the Michigan Jewish Democratic caucus chair, was one of a very few Jewish leaders who told JTA on the record she would back El-Sayed over Rogers. She insists that there are many others.
“This is what I’ve heard from Jews, even in Detroit: The Supreme Court is too critical to not support a Democrat,” she said.
Alexander recently had an hours-long sitdown with El-Sayed, she said, and believes “he absolutely would be open to dialogue.” In his rallies, the candidate has welcomed Jews and stated, “AIPAC and Israel are not the same as Judaism and the Jewish people.”
For now, though, the focus is purely on Stevens, who is not herself Jewish but represents a large slab of Oakland County — affluent, heavily Jewish Detroit suburbs that have trended liberal over the last few election cycles after formerly electing Republicans. While the Stevens campaign has not responded to interview requests for JTA, she recently told The New York Times that Israel is not a central issue for her and added, “I am not a Netanyahu apologist.”
The congresswoman’s Jewish backers are hoping to drive a strong enough voter turnout to neuter both El-Sayed and the national progressive insurgent movement he represents. (The Democratic Socialists of America are behind many of the emerging candidates, though El-Sayed himself is not a member of the group and has distanced himself from the socialist label.)
Stevens’ supporters point to a growing number of encouraging signs, including endorsements from party leaders such as retiring Sen. Gary Peters, whose seat she hopes to fill. Chuck Schumer, the Jewish Senate majority leader, has also endorsed her. A recent poll commissioned by the Detroit News shows her ahead by seven points, though social media in recent days has been flooded with so many unflattering memes of Stevens on the campaign trail that El-Sayed himself denounced his supporters’ behavior.
Another Detroit News poll this week shows that most likely Democratic voters have a negative view of AIPAC, which according to an AdImpact analysis of the most recent filings has spent more than $28 million for Stevens to date. AIPAC’s support of Stevens is one of El-Sayed’s biggest attack lines. The candidate recently claimed that the group has spent more than $50 million against him, though a campaign representative told JTA that figure includes $20 million from new super PACs that have not disclosed their funding sources and have no immediately apparent links to AIPAC.
The Jewish Stevens supporters who spoke to JTA, some of whom are or have been AIPAC supporters themselves, argue that AIPAC has been unfairly demonized compared to other lobbying groups.
They also shrug off Stevens’ recent critiques of Netanyahu during a debate, at which she said the Israeli prime minister “is a danger to Jews in America and around the world.” Many of her backers chalked up the language to a new political reality for Democrats that rewards criticism of Israel, rather than a shift in her own thinking.
“It’s the needle Democrats have to thread to have any credibility path at all,” Gorosh said. Referring to Israel’s own upcoming elections, he added, “I think he’ll [Netanyahu] be gone after October, but he’ll be gone eventually. Then what do you criticize?”
El-Sayed also has Jewish supporters, most notably former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin, a progressive member of a powerful Michigan political family who lost his House seat to Stevens after AIPAC spent heavily for her in 2022. There is also a Jews For Abdul affinity group.
Speaking to JTA, Levin dismissed concerns about Jewish Democrats rejecting El-Sayed in the general. He said the conversation was being dominated by hardline pro-Israel donors in the community who have pushed similar red lines for decades, rather than being a new shift from the Jewish mainstream.
“I do not take a backseat to any of these so-called ‘lifelong Democrats’ about self-determination for the Jewish people in the holy land, about fighting antisemitism at home and abroad,” he said. “I just have a different view of how we accomplish these things, and they do not have a monopoly in the Jewish community.”
Levin also defended El-Sayed’s record on Jewish issues, saying, “He is a strong advocate for Jewish safety here, in our community.”
For Jews who have long seen themselves as committed Democrats, the prospect of leaving the party is a tough sit. Tauber, for his part, says he still can’t bring himself to vote for any Republican “who is so controlled by Trump, who’s a man of immorality, no values.” (Rogers’ campaign touts his Trump endorsement, and the candidate has also backed Trump’s unfounded claims about election fraud in the state as well as supported the president’s holding up of an international bridge in Michigan. The candidate has also acknowledged antisemitism on the right.)
The Rogers campaign did not respond to a JTA request for comment.
The nationwide importance of this race and the Jewish vote was evident when New York state Republicans recently made an explicit appeal for Jewish Democrats, stating in a digital ad campaign that Jews were leaving the party “in droves” “from Maine to Michigan.” Before he dropped out last week as the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine over sexual assault allegations he has denied, Graham Platner put anti-Israel criticism near the center of his platform.
Some Jews who spoke to JTA comfort themselves by insisting that the House, at least, seems likely to flip, providing a check on Trump even if the Senate remains led by Republicans.
Shimon Levy, an Israeli-American entrepreneur who has lived in the Detroit area since 2014, said he was unconcerned about the prospect of Republicans keeping the Senate.
“F— that,” Levy told JTA. Levy has drifted between the parties over the years, he said, but “I stand and I lead with my Jewish identity. Safety and security of the Jewish community is my first and foremost goal.”
That wouldn’t be possible with El-Sayed on the ticket, he insisted: “El-Sayed has done nothing but put Jews at risk and in danger, and through his words has been so poisonous and has ostracized and villainized, single-handedly, the Jews of Southeast Michigan.”
He added, “If today, as a Jew, you’re still like, ‘Democratic all the way, Democratic down the ticket,’ you need to rethink your survivalist instinct.”
Recently Levy, who describes himself as a reluctant political activist, hosted a candidate meet-and-greet fundraiser that brought in more than $70,000 for Stevens. Attendees were not just Jewish, and not just Democrats. Republicans, too, showed up: “People who are concerned about common-sense politics, who would vote for Haley in a heartbeat.”
The question of how Jewish safety is linked to Israel discourse isn’t abstract in Michigan. West Bloomfield’s Temple Israel was the site of an attack this spring by a Michigan resident whose family members were killed when Israel targeted a Hezbollah outpost in Lebanon. The incident became a factor in the Senate campaign after El-Sayed said of the attacker, “Hurt people hurt people,” which critics felt minimized the crime and equated the attacker with his intended victims.
In late June, the temple itself — the largest Reform congregation in the country — sent an email to congregants stating, “This year, antisemitism is on the ballot.” Without naming candidates, the unsigned message concluded, “The Talmud reminds us that our leaders are chosen by us — silence is not a choice we can make right now.”
Mailers funded by AIPAC’s United Democracy Project and sent to some voters in Michigan, and circulated online, attacked El-Sayed for his friendship with left-wing streamer Hasan Piker and for his statement after the Temple Israel attack.
The mailers accused El-Sayed of having “rationalized a terrorist attack on a Michigan synagogue filled with Jewish children.” (The synagogue preschool was open at the time of the attack.) El-Sayed had condemned the attack, but the mailers accused him of equivocating.
This was not a total break with all Democrats, many emphasized. Jewish pro-Israel state Sen. Jeremy Moss, who is running for Stevens’ congressional seat, and gubernatorial candidate Jocelyn Benson, along with others, continue to receive high marks from the Jewish donor class.
Across Michigan, particularly in the Detroit area, there are (literal) signs of strain. Last month the Oakland County roads commission ordered the removal of Adopt-a-Road signs, located a few miles from Temple Israel, that had been sponsored by a group called “Voices for Palestinians” after temple members voiced objections. A Fourth of July parade in Huntington Woods, another heavily Jewish suburb in the county, was briefly disrupted by a protest after parade organizers had put in place rules forbidding pro-Palestinian signs from being displayed.
In early July the state Anti-Defamation League chapter, together with Temple Israel, hosted a bipartisan delegation of Michigan lawmakers on the site of the attack, and advocated for increased synagogue security funding. Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a Jewish Democrat, as well as Rep. Shri Thanedar, a Democrat who has tacked from the left to the center on Israel since his election and is now facing a primary challenger endorsed by El-Sayed, were among those in attendance.
Rabbis at the temple gave voice to the uneasiness of the political moment for Jewish liberals.
Rabbi Paul Yedwab, who called the state Democratic convention “a shonda,” or shame, in a recent sermon, said during the same sermon, “The glib answer would be to say, I guess you become a Republican. But that is not as easy as it seems for a liberal Jew.” He went on to criticize the Trump administration’s legal assault on the Southern Poverty Law Center, a monitor of far-right extremism.
Yedwab concluded, “From here on in, it will be incumbent upon us as Americans and as Jews to evaluate each proposal, each issue, each platform, and, indeed, each candidate according to our own independent set of values.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post How Michigan’s Senate race is testing pro-Israel Jews’ loyalty to the Democratic Party appeared first on The Forward.
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Ossoff vs. Collins: The choices facing Jewish voters in the Georgia Senate race
(JTA) — Georgia Jews will choose between a Democratic politician who wants to limit arms sales to Israel and a Republican with ties to white nationalists when they head to vote Tuesday in a Senate race that will help determine which party controls the chamber.
The race pits incumbent Jewish Sen. Jon Ossoff – widely expected to be a 2028 presidential contender – against GOP Rep. Mike Collins. The Republican challenger has received a good deal of media attention, as well as attacks by his opponent, over family members’ and former employees’ far-right political views. Ossoff, meanwhile, sparked outrage among some in the Jewish community when he became one of the earliest Senate Democrats to vote to halt certain arms sales to Israel.
Collins’ son-in-law, David Alan Scheer II, has invoked the Jewish Bolsheviks conspiracy theory propagated by Nazi Germany that blamed Jews for atrocities committed by the Soviet Union. He has also complained about Holocaust education and media on the subject.
“They don’t tell us the history of Germany before World War II,” Scheer said in a YouTube video last year, titled “I’m NOT a Judeo Christian.”
He continued, “All we’re told is Germany bad, Hitler evil, don’t ask questions. Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust. Here’s 50 movies every year about the Holocaust and why it’s so bad.”
In the same video, Scheer also said that “Jewish executives run the entire mainstream media complex” as well as “homosexual propaganda, they run all of the fraudulent banking systems and insurance scams. They are behind this orchestrated downfall of what was once the most prosperous nation in the world.” Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that Scheer apparently lives in a house built on property owned by Collins.
The Collins campaign did not return the Jewish Telegraphic Agency’s request for comment. But elsewhere Collins has addressed Scheer’s statements by saying, “I don’t believe or support those views.”
Scheer did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, a former Collins staffer had posted Nazi imagery and an image of what appeared to be himself in KKK robes, The Washington Post reported in August. Collins replaced another staffer — his chief of staff Kip Talley — in 2024 after Slate reported that he was in a group chat with streamer Nick Fuentes, widely accused of being one of the internet’s foremost antisemites, and white supremacist Richard Spencer. Slate reported that the chat was dedicated to trying to help Charles Johnson, who has been accused of promoting Holocaust denial and was in jail at the time.
In a statement, Talley told Slate that he acted “solely in my personal capacity after hearing concerns that an acquaintance I have known for years was being mistreated in custody and denied basic medical care.”
The Georgia congressman also appeared at last year’s New York Young Republican Club gala, which drew controversy as it hosted white nationalists and a number of officials from Germany’s far-right AfD party. Fuentes said that he received an invitation that was later rescinded, and Jewish New York City Council member Inna Vernikov backed out of the event and suggested the decision was connected to antisemitism on the right.
Collins has responded to questions about his connections to these white nationalist elements by saying he condemns “all forms of antisemitism” and hate, and citing his support for Israel.
J Street, the liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group, homed in on Collins’ far-right connections in a 15-second ad released last week that ended with the message, “Mike Collins: Dangerously extreme for Georgia.”
The attack ad was the first released in J Street’s $3 million campaign this year to take down six Republican candidates who are backed by the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC. In a piece for the Atlanta Jewish Times, Collins wrote earlier this month that he supports Israel “because my faith tells me to and because it is the right policy for America.”
Ossoff, meanwhile, has long targeted Collins over his white nationalist ties, calling him a “notorious bigot, antisemite and extremist” in June. Ossoff told Collins during a debate that he “hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office.”
The quip drew some pushback. “Jon Ossoff, my advice to him is, if you start calling your political opponents Nazis, maybe it’s time to shut up,” said The Atlantic’s center-right staff writer David Brooks, during a PBS NewsHour conversation about personal attacks in this year’s U.S. Senate races. “That’s just not what we do here in this country.”
Meanwhile, Collins’ Jewish supporters have said that Ossoff’s status as a Democrat — a party that increasingly includes strident anti-Zionist voices — is more damning than the headlines around Collins.
“At a time of rising antisemitism, at a time when Jewish Americans need friends, Mike Collins has been a friend to the Jewish community,” Sam Markstein, spokesperson for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JTA. He said that Collins was “a friend to the Jewish community in the aftermath of Oct. 7” and pointed to his voting record on Israel.
Eric Levine, an RJC board member, said he has not been involved in this particular race but that extremes “must be condemned” on both sides.
“It is never a good thing to have ties to antisemitic/far-right figures,” he told JTA in a text. “I will also say, it is never a good thing to have ties to antisemitic/far left figures like Hasan Piker, [New York Mayor] Zohran Mamdani, [Michigan Senate candidate] Abdul el-Sayed and much of the DSA/Democratic caucus.”
Piker, an anti-Israel streamer who has campaigned with some left-wing Democratic candidates, has drawn heat for remarks about American Jews’ connection to Israel. Earlier this year, he named Ossoff positively as a “dark horse” contender for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. Ossoff later distanced himself from Piker and has said he will not run for president in 2028. Ossoff endorsed El-Sayed after he won the Democratic nomination in Michigan.
Ossoff has also come under fire for his decision to vote to block certain arms sales to Israel during the height of the Gaza war in November 2024, a position that he has generally stuck to since then.
In July 2025 he voted to block a sale of rifles to Israel, citing mass starvation in Gaza caused by “the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government,” but voted against a resolution that would block an air-to-ground munitions sale.
Ossoff wrote at that time that the U.S. “must continue to support the Israeli people, who face the persistent threat of rocket and missile attack and have been subjected to intense aerial bombardment from Iran, Lebanon, and Yemen.”
Though Ossoff called his commitment to Israel’s security “ironclad” in a Senate floor speech ahead of the arm sales vote, some Jewish voters and organizations said it rang hollow.
Michael Morris, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, penned an open letter this August blasting Ossoff for “lying to me and your constituents” about his support for Israel.
Ossoff’s first vote against weapons in November 2024 spurred another critical letter from several Georgia Jewish organizations including synagogues, Jewish schools, the local Anti-Defamation League chapter and other groups. His vote also drew the attention of AIPAC, which released 30-second ads attacking U.S. senators — including Ossoff — who had voted to block weapons sales.
Asked about Collins’ far-right ties, Morris told JTA he did not believe they were disqualifying.
“Most of the complaints about him are about his son-in-law who is a virulent antisemite,” Morris said in a text. “But his son-in-law does not get to vote, and as a father of 4 girls I can tell you that we do not get ANY say in who our girls marry, so from that standpoint, I am not concerned.”
Morris also said that neither President Donald Trump nor President Joe Biden condemned the most extreme among their voters, and opined that when it comes to Collins’ own extreme backers, he “can maintain their support without taking in their position.”
A number of readers disagreed with Morris’ sharp criticism of Ossoff, however, and wrote letters to the editor expressing their disapproval, as well as their concern about Collins.
“Mike Collins has peddled antisemitism. He has surrounded himself with bigotry while refusing to denounce white supremacy,” wrote a reader named Richard Mitchell, who said he is from Atlanta. “These values do not represent Georgians and are fundamental to why I will not be supporting Collins this election.”
Halier Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, which has endorsed Ossoff, wrote in a statement to JTA that her organization recognizes Ossoff’s “steadfast support for Israel’s security and future as a Jewish and democratic state.”
“Georgia voters should remember that a vote for Mike Collins is a vote for Donald Trump, and Collins is one of the most extreme candidates on the ballot,” she wrote.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Ossoff vs. Collins: The choices facing Jewish voters in the Georgia Senate race appeared first on The Forward.
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Arab parties have rarely been full partners in governing Israel. It’s time to let them into the tent of Abraham.
Like a goal-line pileup in football, with half the players signaling a touchdown and the other half celebrating a defensive stop, everyone is claiming victory in Israel’s election. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points to Likud’s status as Israel’s largest party. His opponents point to the loss of his governing majority. Did Netanyahu win? Did the opposition win? Those of us watching from the stands are waiting for the referee’s signal, unsure of what exactly is going on in the field.
The arithmetic is straightforward. In Israel’s 120-seat Knesset, a governing coalition needs 61 seats. Netanyahu’s bloc won 53. The principal Jewish-led opposition parties won 48. Israel’s Arab parties won an unprecedented 19 seats, nearly doubling their previous representation. Neither major bloc can govern alone. The election is over, but the overtime game of coalition politicking has just begun.
There are several paths forward. Netanyahu and his opponents could form a national unity government. Alternatively, either bloc could seek cooperation with Arab parties. The difficulty is that political leaders have drawn red lines against both possibilities.
Herein lies one of the most uncomfortable paradoxes of Israeli democracy: Arab citizens have exercised their democratic rights in extraordinary numbers, yet the very parties whose votes could break the political deadlock are those whom much of Israel’s political establishment refuses to consider as governing partners.
Arab parties have rarely been full partners in Israeli governing coalitions. During Israel’s early decades, Arab lists affiliated with the ruling party participated but enjoyed little autonomy. In the 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin relied on Arab parties from outside his coalition. In 2021, Mansour Abbas and his Islamist Ra’am party became the first independent Arab party to join an Israeli government. Ironically, Netanyahu himself had explored cooperation with Abbas earlier that year.
Since Oct. 7, political boundaries have hardened. The attack, the hostages, the war, the continuing grief and fear have shattered trust. Many Israeli Jews now regard cooperation with non-Zionist parties with profound suspicion. These anxieties cannot be dismissed; there remains a trauma through which much of Israeli society sees its present and future.
The predicament has been called a “dilemma from hell.” Either politicians find a way to cross red lines or Israel risks another election, another round of recriminations, another deepening of its internal divisions.
At the heart of this political dilemma lies a question as old as the Jewish people itself: Can the Jewish family make room for those who do not share its Jewish identity? Can we affirm our own destiny without excluding another?
The biblical precedent
This is not the first time the Jewish people have confronted the question of whether there is room in the Jewish family for those who do not share its identity. The question goes back to the very first Jewish family. In the biblical account, Abraham and Sarah are blessed with Isaac, their long-awaited son. But Isaac is not Abraham’s firstborn. Years earlier, Sarah had given her Egyptian maidservant Hagar to Abraham, and Hagar had borne Ishmael. When Isaac arrives, Sarah perceives Ishmael as a threat. Biblical commentators debate her motivations: Was Ishmael behaving dangerously? Was Sarah concerned about inheritance? Whatever her concerns may have been, Sarah’s demand is unequivocal: “Cast out that woman and her son.” Despite Abraham’s distress, Hagar and Ishmael are sent into the wilderness.
The first Jewish family could not find a way to live together.
Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions have long associated Ishmael with the ancestry of Arab peoples. It raises the question. What if Isaac’s covenantal destiny had not required Ishmael’s expulsion? What if Abraham’s tent had been large enough for Isaac to remain Isaac, Ishmael to remain Ishmael, and both to know they belonged?
We cannot rewrite Genesis. But given the crossroads Israel faces today, we can ask whether its tragedy must remain ours.
Three considerations make this moment worthy of serious political imagination.
First, consider Israel’s internal political health. Imagine what cooperation across entrenched political divisions might communicate to Israeli society. Coalition politics have always required compromise: Religious parties negotiate military-service exemptions and yeshiva funding. Why should negotiations with Arab parties be categorically unthinkable?
Not all Arab parties are alike, and their differences matter. Mansour Abbas condemned the atrocities of Oct. 7 and has acknowledged Israel’s Jewish character. Surely the “Start-Up Nation” can devise an agreement that safeguards Israel’s security and Jewish character while giving Arab representatives substantive governance over the issues affecting their communities.
Second, consider Israel’s international standing. Israel faces mounting criticism and accusations of discrimination and apartheid. Arab participation in government would not resolve the Palestinian question or erase existing inequalities. But imagine the Jewish state’s democratic promise expressed not only through Arab citizens voting, or the oft-cited presence of Arab pharmacists, but through Arab representatives sharing responsibility at the highest levels of government. What happens in Israel does not stay in Israel. Those of us who defend Israel in the public square understand the significance such an arrangement could carry.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, consider Israel’s Arab citizens. Their communities face violent crime, inadequate policing, infrastructure deficiencies, housing shortages and educational disparities. Effective representation matters. As the saying goes, nobody brings a rental car to the car wash. People invest in institutions in which they have a stake. Giving Arab representatives governing responsibility would strengthen the sense that Israel belongs to all its citizens.
An Israeli friend offered a simple observation this week: “If everyone keeps their pre-election promises, we’re going to have another election.” His comment reminded me of hatarat nedarim, the Jewish legal institution for annulling certain vows. Judaism takes promises seriously. Yet Jewish law also recognizes, as reflected in the tradition of hatarat nedarim and the familiar words of Kol Nidre, that commitments made without full knowledge of future circumstances may, under prescribed conditions and for the greater good, be reconsidered. What good could be greater than the future welfare of the Jewish state?
Jews love invoking Abba Eban’s famous observation that the Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity. I can’t help but wonder if this is a moment that future generations will turn that observation back on us.
Perhaps what appears to be a dilemma could become an opportunity to break political deadlock and reconsider entrenched patterns of exclusion – a moment calling for political imagination across the spectrum.
It is the great “what if” of our people, from the first Jewish family to the present day. What if Abraham had found a way to keep Ishmael in the fold? Israel’s leaders now have a chance to recognize possibilities that have longed seemed out of reach; its citizens have a chance to give those leaders the political room to act, and together the opportunity to summon the courage and collective imagination to build a Jewish and democratic state capacious enough for all who seek a place within the tent of Abraham.
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American Jews have fought BDS for 20 years. Israel’s election just handed them the winning move.
For decades, the American Jewish community has battled the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel. Now, in the aftermath of the election there, it has the opportunity to deal it the biggest blow yet. All it has to do is send one clear message to the Israeli opposition leaders: Join with the Arab parties.
Many Israelis, such as The Democrats party leader Yair Golan, are making the same argument. Arab Israelis voted in historic numbers in this week’s national election, winning a total of 19 seats with all votes counted. Together Zionist and Arab parties would, with 67 seats, become the country’s ruling coalition and bring an end to the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot pledged not to bring Arab parties into his coalition, and doing so would be no easy task. But if pressure builds at home and abroad — and if he gets cover and encouragement from Jewish leaders around the world — he might find a way. It’s a big ask of Eisenkot and more conservative opposition members, but it’s the right ask.
Breaking that one promise would enable Eisenkot to keep many more. He could pass his top legislative priorities, including an independent inquiry into Oct. 7, a crackdown on Jewish terrorism in the West Bank and a restoration of democratic norms.
Those are the immediate — and sufficient — Israeli reasons. There is a more basic one: a democracy shouldn’t treat the votes of 20% of its citizens as treyf. And from abroad, there’s an added benefit, one that could have a long-term impact on Israel’s well-being: Undermining the BDS movement.
For a generation, the movement to boycott, divest and sanction the Jewish state has called on governments, businesses and institutions to pull their investments from Israel, cancel Israeli academics and performers, and ban the import of Israeli goods.
It hasn’t succeeded — yet. Israeli international exports surged to $169 billion in 2025, the highest ever, and more than 35 states have passed anti-BDS laws. But BDS has been notching some major wins: In June, United Auto Workers delegates voted — barely — to divest from Israel bonds, the first major union to do so. Internationally, at least 50 universities, institutions and academic groups ended cooperative programs with Israeli universities, and there have been more than 1,000 cases of academic boycotts, cancellation of student exchange programs and research grants.
Some of that is in direct response to the Gaza War, but the BDS movement has built the infrastructure that turned outrage over the war into concrete actions.
The BDS movement has also normalized, or tried to normalize, the idea that entities that do business with Israel are complicit in apartheid, that Israel is a sham democracy and that Zionism is racism. BDS supplies the vocabulary of anti-Israel diatribes on social media.
Now Israel’s election provides a historic opportunity to prove BDS wrong, to take the steam out of a movement that shows no sign of slowing. Bringing together Jews and Arabs in a ruling coalition would be the single greatest blow to BDS.
For decades, American Jewish leaders and organizations have lobbied government officials, organized counter-petitions and worked to stem the BDS tide.
That job can now either get much easier, or immeasurably more difficult. A Jewish-Arab ruling coalition that acts on the issues of crime and under-investment plaguing Israel’s Arab communities would belie BDS advocates’ claim that a Jewish state and democracy are mutually exclusive.
That same Jewish-Arab partnership would have to work toward resolving Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza disaster — but those enormous tasks will be much easier with a strong majority and in a country not facing constant international pressure.
And if those 19 Arab seats amount to nothing? If the Jewish parties do all within their power to disempower Arab citizens who turned out in historic numbers?
Try arguing against the BDSers then. Try defending Israel as “the only democracy in the Middle East” when 20% of its citizens were just shut out of national representation.
Of course, there are other good reasons to bring the Arab parties into the government. One of them is written into Israel’s Declaration of Independence, which promises Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel, “full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.”
For decades many Arab Israelis didn’t believe that sentence because they didn’t experience it. They stayed home, many because they refused to participate in a system that they believed would never truly serve them. This time, enraged by the Gaza War, fearful of violence in their own community and disgusted by the overt racism of Netanyahu’s Kahanist cabinet ministers, they chose to vote.
“I also wanted to show that Palestinians can participate when we choose to, and that our exclusion cannot be blamed on our refusal to enter the political arena,” wrote the journalist Nagham Zbeedat in Haaretz.
Seeing Arab Israelis dance in celebration when the election results were announced is a testament to the power of democracy and the hope it brings.
I know that what gives hope to American Jews like me instills fear in many Israelis. Palestinians from Gaza came over a border and slaughtered their loved ones.
But Palestinian citizens of Israel did not join the terror — something Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar counted on them doing. Arab Israelis were killed alongside their Israeli Jewish neighbors. And in many cases, they rescued Jews under attack.
American Jewish institutions need to step up and fight as hard for including Israeli Arabs in a new government as they do against boycotting Israel. Because fighting for democracy and fighting against BDS — it’s the same fight.
The post American Jews have fought BDS for 20 years. Israel’s election just handed them the winning move. appeared first on The Forward.
