Pro-Israel Democrats Urged To “Hold The Line” Amid Shifting Progressive Narrative

NEW YORK – A few years ago, supporting Israel was widely understood as consistent with progressive values: democracy, minority rights, women’s equality, LGBTQ equality, and freedom of religion. Nothing about those values has changed.

What has changed is the narrative.

An organized ideological effort has emerged to redefine words like progressive, liberation, and justice so that Jewish self-determination is excluded by definition. That is not moral evolution. It is linguistic capture.

If we retreat from words like progressive, liberal, or woke because someone has tried to redefine them to exclude Israel, we concede the premise. And once we concede the premise, the redefining never stops.

The answer is not retreat.
The answer is clarity, shining a light on what is really happening and exposing the propaganda machinery operating behind the scenes.

You can support civil rights and support Israel.
You can oppose racism and support Israel.
You can defend minority protections and support Israel.

Supporting Israel and supporting Palestinian human rights are not contradictions. A Zionist can believe in both. I believe, and want to believe, that most Zionists do exactly that.

Palestinians deserve dignity, opportunity, and human rights. Israelis deserve security, recognition of their state, and freedom from terrorism. Holding those two truths simultaneously is not hypocrisy. It is the only path toward a durable peace.

My family’s connection to these values goes back generations. My great-grandfather, Nathan Mayersohn, arrived on America’s shores in 1892 after fleeing the pogroms in Russia. Like many Jewish immigrants of that era, he believed deeply in the promise of a country built on religious freedom, democratic institutions, and the separation of church and state, themes he wrote about in op-eds published in major newspapers of the time.

That civic tradition continued in my own family. My mother, Nathalie Mallett, granddaughter of Nathan Mayersohn, was a public school teacher and teachers union contract negotiator in New Jersey, part of the labor and public education traditions that have long been central to the Democratic coalition.

My great uncle, Oscar Meyerson, Nathan’s son and a second grandfather to me growing up, belonged to the generation shaped by the Roosevelt years. A World War I combat veteran who served in the trenches, he later practiced law in New York and was deeply engaged in Democratic politics during that era. For his generation, the Democratic Party represented something larger than politics. It represented a belief in democracy, pluralism, and minority protections.

Jewish Americans have been part of that tradition for generations. From the New Deal era onward, Jewish voters, activists, scholars, and public servants helped shape the coalition that defined modern liberal politics. Jewish leaders were active in labor organizing, civil rights advocacy, and the defense of church-state separation. Jewish support for the civil rights movement was not accidental. It reflected the lessons of Jewish history: that democracy, pluralism, and minority protections are the strongest safeguards any society can offer.

That history matters today.

The Democratic Party did not simply welcome Jewish Americans. Together, we helped build the moral and political framework that defines it.

Yet today, a loud activist fringe increasingly claims that support for Israel is incompatible with progressive values. Social media amplifies these voices until it can appear as though the Democratic Party itself has fundamentally changed.

That impression is misleading.

The Democratic coalition remains broad and diverse: Black voters, Hispanic voters, Asian Americans, union members, suburban moderates, young voters, older voters, LGBTQ Americans, and Jewish Americans who have long found a political home in the party.

Pro-Israel Democrats are not a shrinking minority.

They are the mainstream.

What sometimes appears to be a sweeping ideological shift is often the result of amplification. A relatively small but highly organized, Iranian-backed, and well-funded activist ecosystem can dominate through networks in higher education, online discourse, and campus activism. Repetition then creates the illusion of consensus.

But slogans do not change reality.

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, backed and armed by Iran, are not merely nationalist movements. Their ideology is rooted in Islamist theocracy rather than pluralistic democracy. Their charters and leadership statements call for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of Islamic rule governed by Sharia law, part of a broader ideological project tied to Iran’s vision of expanding Islamist power across the region and then the world.

That vision stands in direct conflict with the constitutional principles that define the American political tradition: separation of church and state, minority protections, and individual liberty.

It is not progressive politics.

It is theocratic politics.

Progressives should not feel forced to choose between supporting Israel and supporting human rights. The values that guide progressive politics, pluralism, individual rights, equality before the law, and secular democratic governance are precisely the values that make Israel’s existence meaningful.

Those values also demand compassion for Palestinian civilians and a genuine commitment to improving their lives.

Peace will ultimately require leadership, compromise, and recognition of both peoples’ legitimate aspirations. But peace cannot be built on narratives that erase one side’s legitimacy.

The Democratic Party has long been a home for Americans who believe in civil rights, democratic institutions, and the protection of minorities. Jewish Americans have been part of that coalition for generations.

Those commitments should not be abandoned because a faction has attempted to redefine the language of justice.

Which brings us to the most important point.

The answer is not to leave the Democratic Party.

If those who believe in democracy, pluralism, and Israel’s right to exist walk away, we hand a victory to the very forces that have distorted the conversation. Vacuums in politics never remain empty. If pro-Israel Democrats retreat, others will gladly fill the space and claim to speak for the party.

And we stay because abandoning the field would guarantee the very outcome we fear.

We stay because the Democratic Party is still a broad coalition built on democratic values. We stay because the loudest voices on social media do not represent the millions of Democrats who still believe in pluralism, civil rights, and Israel’s legitimacy as a democratic state.

The task instead is to hold the line, to speak clearly, and to remind our own party what it has always stood for.

When enough Democrats do that, the illusion collapses.

The fringe stops defining the mainstream.

Progressive values and support for Israel are not contradictions.

They are responsibilities.

And those of us who believe in both should not walk away.

We stay.