Democrats Aren’t Turning on Israel. They’re Rejecting the Occupation.

This isn’t about Netanyahu or PR - it’s about the reality on the ground.

Following the vote this week by 40 Democratic Senators to disapprove sales of bombs and bulldozers to Israel, I’ve been hearing a lot of anxiety across Jewish America – in chat groups, in the media, in communal conversations – asking a version of the same question: Has the Democratic Party turned anti-Israel?

The short answer is no.

Democrats refusing to sell bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank isn’t evidence of abandoning Israel or the Jewish people.

It’s evidence of something else: a party trying to reconcile its values with the reality of what an American ally is doing – with American support and American weapons - in Gaza and on the West Bank.

This isn’t about Israel’s legitimacy. It’s about its policies.

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And that leads to the next question I keep hearing: will this tension go away when Benjamin Netanyahu is no longer prime minister? Can things just go back to “normal”?

Again, no.

That hope – that everything can return to a more comfortable “before time” once Netanyahu is gone – was actually at the core of early Biden administration thinking when the Bennett-Lapid government took office in 2021. The assumption was simple: new leadership, more moderate tone, fewer problems.

So the strategy became: don’t push too hard. Don’t force big changes. Manage the conflict.

We now know where that mindset led.

For years, “managing the conflict” meant accepting a reality in which millions of Palestinians live without basic rights, under indefinite military control, with expanding settlements and periodic eruptions of violence. It wasn’t stable or just – it just looked containable for a while.

But here’s the problem: a system built on denying another people freedom and self-determination doesn’t produce security. It produces recurring violence – and it leads to growing opposition to Israel, including here in the United States.

Saying that doesn’t ignore the other reality: Israel faces real threats. It has enemies. It needs to be strong and able to defend itself. And the senators who cast these votes were clear about that as well – they want to stand with Israel and its people.

But they are no longer willing to provide a blank check for permanent occupation.

What’s changing – especially among Democrats, but also among Republicans – is a growing recognition that unconditional support for policies that entrench occupation and deny Palestinians basic rights is at odds with both American values and American interests.

And there’s another piece of this that often gets missed.

Those – like J Street – criticizing Israeli policy aren’t just reacting to what they oppose – they have a vision for what Israel’s future could be.

A future where Israel is fully integrated into the Middle East: secure, recognized and normalized not just with a handful of countries, but across the Arab and Muslim world. What we’ve called a “23-state solution” – Israel alongside a sovereign Palestinian state, with normalization across the region.

But that future isn’t compatible with permanent occupation.

You can’t have both. You can’t deepen normalization while indefinitely denying millions of Palestinians basic rights and a path to self-determination.

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And that reality won’t change with a new Israeli prime minister. Because the issue isn’t one leader - it’s a system that’s been in place for nearly six decades.

I’ve been struck by how many people still believe that once Netanyahu exits, things will reset – that tensions will ease and bipartisan consensus will return.

I think that’s a misread.

Netanyahu has made things worse. But he didn’t create the underlying reality.

The occupation and the inequality that come with it no longer align with the values of a growing share of the Democratic Party – or, frankly, of the American or Jewish public. And as long as that’s true, the political pressure in the United States to do something is only going to grow.

Meanwhile, Israel finds itself in a kind of strategic cul-de-sac – stuck in a pattern of recurring wars and ongoing control over another people, without a real political horizon.

More force – more raids, more demolitions, more military operations - hasn’t resolved the conflict.

It can’t.

You can’t bomb or bulldoze your way out of a political problem.

Only a political solution – one that ensures rights, freedom, security and self-determination for both Israelis and Palestinians – can do that. And only that kind of shift can put the U.S.-Israel relationship back on stable, sustainable footing in American politics.

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So what happened in the Senate this week isn’t Democrats turning on Israel.

It’s Democrats refusing to ignore the contradiction between supporting Israel and supporting a permanent occupation.

That tension has been building for years. Now it’s out in the open.

And it’s not going away with a change in leadership or better messaging.

Because this isn’t about Netanyahu.

It’s about the occupation – and the growing insistence in American politics that it has to end.

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