by Jonathan S. Tobin
The career of the retiring Manhattan congressman demonstrates the way partisan Democrats have abandoned support of Israel for leftist applause.
There was a time when Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) could be counted on as a stalwart defender of the Jewish state. I know this because I heard him speak at a street-corner, pro-Israel demonstration across from the United Nations in the late 1980s. Those were during the dark days of the First Intifada, when it was becoming clear that fashionable liberal political opinion started turning on Israel as it coped with violent Palestinian demonstrations within and around its borders. Even though The New York Times editorial page and other outlets popular in his Manhattan constituency were denouncing Jerusalem’s efforts to cope with the situation, Nadler turned up to express his solidarity.
That was a long time ago. But as the 78-year-old announced this week that he won’t run for a 17th term in Congress, it is difficult to square the sentiments I heard from him that day with the political figure he eventually became.
That was made obvious in July when, rather than showing up to support the Jewish state, he joined a protest against Israel’s just war of self-defense, outside the Israeli consulate in New York City, organized by the viciously anti-Israel group T’ruah.
Nadler is best known to most Americans because of his four years as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023 and for stage-managing two separate impeachments of President Donald Trump. His truculent attitude during his time in the spotlight seemed to embody the hyper-partisan spirit of the moment for both liberals and conservatives. A knee-jerk opposition to Trump and the Republicans on every conceivable issue played well among Democrats, especially at home on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. He’s even garnering applause from liberal pundits for his retirement announcement because of his recognition that his party’s tradition, in which geriatrics hold onto power at the expense of younger people, and, as with the example of President Joe Biden, past the point where they are competent, is something that needs to end.
Cowardice at a moment of peril
His relinquishing of a safe, deep-blue House seat where the GOP barely exists has set off a feeding frenzy among Democratic politicians and celebrities, including Chelsea Clinton, eager to succeed him. But the graceful manner in which he is exiting office may be the best thing that can be said about the end of his career. While he may have been willing to stand up for Israel three and a half decades ago, at the moment of greatest peril for American Jewry and the Jewish state, he has deserted their cause.
In the two years since the Hamas-led Palestinian attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, Nadler has provided a troubling example of how prominent liberal Democrats have chosen to side with the Jewish state’s foes.
He showed that his priority was staying in sync with the leftist base of his party and not in defending Jews during the unprecedented surge in antisemitism post-Oct. 7. He defended prominent Jew-haters like Mahmoud Khalil, organizer of the pro-Hamas mobs at Columbia University, in his own district. He opposed administration efforts to force Columbia and other universities to end their toleration and encouragement of antisemitism on their campuses. And, even as he declared himself to still be a supporter of Israel, he joined those who were mainstreaming Hamas propaganda about the current war, as well as echoing the blood libels about the Jewish state and its government being guilty of mass slaughter and war crimes, even supporting an arms embargo on it.
On top of that, this summer Nadler endorsed New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, a Democratic Socialist and virulent antisemite, after he won the Democratic mayoral primary in June. While many of his neighbors in what some wags call the “People’s Republic of the Upper West Side” fear for their futures in the world’s greatest Jewish city, Nadler was smoothing the path to victory for a man who thinks there’s nothing wrong with chants advocating for Jewish genocide and the destruction of Israel (“From the river to the sea”) and terrorism against Jews (“Globalize the intifada”).
Why did Nadler go down this path?
Unlike many of his colleagues in the current Democratic caucus, Nadler had tried, as The New York Times noted, “to stake out space for a politics that was both pro-Israel and progressive.” While that may have worked in an earlier era when talk of a bipartisan pro-Israel consensus was more descriptive than aspirational, Nadler’s career arc demonstrates that the two categories are no longer compatible. In fact, they are now mutually exclusive.
The shift on the left
Nadler and others blame this on Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, the leader of the Jewish state and its government are not exempt from criticism; however, what’s happened within the Democratic Party has very little to do with the actions of either. The so-called explanation for their alienation is their becoming disillusioned with Israeli policies. But the truth is that they are following the lead of progressives who have always been against Israel’s existence. That is the product of the left’s embrace of the toxic myths of critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that branded Israel and Jews as “white oppressors,” who are always in the wrong and must therefore be brought down.
As we saw in the days, weeks and months since Oct. 7, the rationale of those opposed to Israel’s just war to eradicate Hamas had more to do with a belief that Israel must simply accept the continued presence on its southern border of an Islamist terrorist entity pledged to repeat those unspeakable atrocities. Their criticisms of efforts by the Jewish state to root out these genocidal murderers were untethered to any actual evidence of war crimes, let alone “genocide,” based on repetitions of the lies told by Hamas operatives and their enablers.
Even worse, this stand involved a willingness to rationalize and excuse the way the pro-Hamas movement in the United States was engaged in acts of blatant antisemitic intimidation and violence. At a time when more and more Jews felt themselves under attack, even in institutions like Columbia, where they felt most at home, some Democrats, such as Nadler and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), claimed to be their defenders. But rather than helping to stem the tide of hate, they were still primarily focused on attacking Trump, even as he was doing more to combat antisemitism than they had ever done.
Perhaps not even a great man could have reversed the trend. But an independent thinker might have stubbornly sought to oppose the way his party’s base had succumbed to the far left in a way that would have been unthinkable back when Nadler was speaking in Israel’s defense on New York street corners.
The arc of a career politician
For all of his obvious skill in holding onto office, no one has ever accused Nadler of independent thinking, let alone greatness.
Nadler is a classic example of a career politician. First elected to the New York State Assembly in 1976 at age 29, he spent the next decade and a half in a dogged pursuit of higher office, losing races for Manhattan Borough President and New York City Controller before finally winning a House seat in 1992. Since then, he has never faced serious opposition, though it was clear that he might be vulnerable to a younger, even more leftist primary challenger in 2026.
His story, though, is more than that of a typical political hack. His journey from being a stalwart pro-Israel liberal to his current stance, in which he cowardly follows the political fashion of the day, even if it means mimicking pro-Hamas talking points, provides insight into a similar path being pursued by many American Jews.
If many liberals are now distancing themselves from Israel, it is not so much a result of their horror at the spectacle of Israel being forced to fight a war against a foe determined to sacrifice its own population on the altar of their perverted cause. Rather, it is a product of the way partisanship has overwhelmed all other concerns for them and so many other Americans.
When being pro-Israel was seen as compatible with being a Democrat or even a natural position for someone in the party to take, there was no cost in doing so. But once the voices on the intersectional left became the loudest on that side of the aisle, politicians like Nadler began to back away from their former stances.
That was accelerated once Trump came down the escalator and into American lives in 2015. So great is the antagonism to the 45th/47th president that it became impossible for liberal Democrats to make common cause with him, even when he did things that they had long advocated for, such as moving the U.S. embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Nadler was a longtime supporter of the move; nevertheless, when Trump finally did it, he joined with the Israel-haters of J Street to oppose it.
Even worse, Nadler switched positions on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s widely accepted working definition of antisemitism. Initially, a sponsor of the Antisemitism Awareness Act enshrining it into American law, he eventually opposed it. His disingenuous protestations notwithstanding, he did only so because Trump had embraced it, and to make it safe for fellow Democrats like Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), as well as Mamdani, to avoid being properly labeled as the Jew-haters they are.
Trump’s rise has set off a general realignment in American politics where working-class voters of all races are leaving the Democrats for the GOP, with credentialed elites moving in the opposite direction. The overwhelming majority of Jews have been a dependable voting bloc for Democrats for the last century. Such partisan loyalty fits neatly into the current political framework since they are among those elements of the population most likely to be college-educated and therefore leaning left.
A Jewish dilemma
But the events of the last two years have also created a dilemma for American Jews. Some longtime Democrats now recognize that, as much as they have differences with Trump and most Republicans, on the one issue that is most directly connected to their safety and that of their fellow Jews here and in Israel, they are outside of their party’s new consensus.
That presents them with a difficult choice in which they must decide which is their priority: staying loyal to the Democrats and prioritizing their hatred for Trump, or holding their noses and stepping away from a party that is more and more on the side of those seeking Israel’s destruction and enabling antisemitism in the United States.
Those who choose the latter exemplify the moral collapse of a brand of American liberalism that is incapable of defending its values against illiberal and antisemitic progressives who are willing to consign Jews to the status of an unprotected and despised “oppressor” minority.
We know what choice Jerry Nadler made as he put his finger up to the wind in recent years. He abandoned a principled pro-Israel position to pursue the favor of a party base that swallowed the big lie about the Palestinian war to destroy the only Jewish state on the planet being the moral equivalent of the struggle for civil rights in America. While a significant number of Jewish liberals are beginning to understand that their political home is rejecting them, many others, like Nadler, have chosen their party over the fight against antisemitism.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek
and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American
political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle
East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think
Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin
Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and
YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor
and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger.
He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other
writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and
foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia
University.
Source: https://www.jns.org/jerry-nadler-and-the-moral-collapse-of-american-jewish-liberals/
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