Democrats are badly divided on Israel, and GOP isn’t making it easier

House Democrats are scrambling to overcome the deep divisions on Israel policy that have splintered the caucus and strained relations between even chummy veteran lawmakers. 

Republicans aren’t making it easy. 

In the last week alone, GOP leaders have staged hearings on antisemitism, pushed pro-Israel votes to the floor and hosted media events on Capitol Hill with the families of victims taken hostage during the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, all of which have only highlighted the Democratic discord when it comes to U.S. support for Israel.

The accumulation of factors has exploded internal tensions between Democratic lawmakers and created an enormous challenge for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and his leadership team to locate ways to turn down the heat.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who has more than three decades of experience on Capitol Hill, said he’s never seen the internal animus this bad — a dynamic he attributes to both the atrocities committed by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the ferocity of Israel’s military response. 

“We haven’t really seen the level of devastation that’s occurring right now. We’ve always had disputes; we’ve always had killings. But I’ve never seen it, in my tenure here, this bad,” Thompson said. 

“At this rate, I think a solution would be difficult, just given people going to each corner,” he added. “And that manifests itself in each one of the votes that come up” in the House.

U.S. policy toward the Middle East has long divided Democrats, but those disputes have become only more pronounced in recent years with the arrival of an outspoken group of liberal lawmakers — many of them women, most of them minorities — who have been fiercely critical of the Israeli government, particularly when it comes to the treatment of Palestinians.

With that diversity has come new experiences, new perspectives — and new clashes when the topic of Israel comes up in Congress. 

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a member of the liberal “squad” who ousted a prominent pro-Israel Democrat, Eliot Engel, in a 2020 primary, acknowledged that even some of his constituents aren’t quite comfortable with that shift. 

“I’m going through it in my district. You know, they had Eliot Engel for 30 years, and right next door they had Nita Lowey for 30 years,” Bowman said, referring to another Jewish Democrat who previously represented New York. “And so now they’ve got Jamaal Bowman. So it’s like, ‘We’re not used to this. We’re used to whatever Congress is putting forward — whatever Dems put forward on Israel: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’ And now you have this guy saying, ‘Wait a minute.’ And you say, ‘Why?’ And it’s because it needs to be more inclusive; it needs to be more holistic.”

The tensions underlying the sensitive debate have only grown hotter since the October Hamas attack, which left more than 1,200 people dead and triggered retaliatory strikes by Israel in Gaza that have killed many thousands more. 

As the hostilities continue, pro-Israel lawmakers are gunning for more funding to bolster Israel’s military operations, citing its right to protect itself from Hamas terrorists.

Pro-Palestinian voices are calling for an immediate cease-fire, citing the thousands of civilian casualties — many of them children — that have resulted from Israeli strikes.

Many Democrats, particularly those in urban districts with diverse populations, say they’re getting an earful from constituents representing both camps.

“Tensions are high, emotions are really raw, and we’re trying to find space to have necessary conversations,” said Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), who represents a highly diverse Queens district. “Everyone wants to get to a place where there is peace.” 

Hoping to promote such a peace, a trio of Jewish Democrats — Reps. Jerry Nadler (N.Y.), Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Dan Goldman (N.Y.) — urged their colleagues to vote “present” last week on a GOP resolution denouncing antisemitism around the globe. Among other critiques, the Democrats noted that not all anti-Zionists are antisemites, as the resolution declared. But their plea was also a tacit effort to defuse Democratic hostilities on an issue that divides the party — effectively promoting unity in votes of neutrality — while denying Republicans an opportunity to paint all Democrats as anti-Israel.

“It is beneath the dignity of Congress and it is an affront to Jews everywhere to treat rising antisemitism as an opportunity to create partisan division with conceptual confusion,” the three Democrats said jointly before the vote. 

Their gambit was only partially successful. While 92 Democrats voted “present” on the resolution, another 95 joined Republicans in supporting it, and 13 broke with party leaders to oppose it. 

GOP leaders — intentionally or not — have exacerbated those divisions across the aisle by taking every opportunity to put the Israel-Hamas war in the spotlight. 

Aside from the antisemitism resolution, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) last week also conducted a press conference featuring Jewish students who have faced new hostilities on college campuses. The House Foreign Affairs Committee, led by Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), hosted a bipartisan media briefing with families of some of the Hamas hostages. And the House Education Committee staged an antisemitism hearing with university presidents, which sparked a national backlash when the witnesses declined to say explicitly that they would expel students who called for the genocide of Jews. 

“This is the easiest question to answer ‘yes,’” said a stunned Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), who led the questioning. 

The Israel-Hamas war has been a rallying cry for Republicans, who have been virtually united in their defense of Israel in recent weeks. 

House Republicans have already passed legislation providing $14.3 billion in military aid for Israel. That bill also included sharp cuts in IRS funding, making it dead on arrival in the Democratic-led Senate. But it has provided GOP leaders with another talking point as Congress races to adopt a broader package of emergency aid for Ukraine and Israel, which is being held up by entrenched disagreements over unrelated funding for U.S. border security. 

The GOP’s unified front has veiled the party’s controversies when it comes to antisemitism — which include former President Trump’s association with white nationalists — while allowing Republicans to shift attention to the Democratic divisions, some of which have been highly public.  

Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, stirred a firestorm of controversy last week when she condemned the “horrific” sexual violence committed by Hamas against Israeli women, but in the same breath called for those crimes to be “balanced” against the civilian deaths resulting from Israeli airstrikes. 

“Morally, I think we cannot say that one war crime deserves another,” she said in an interview with CNN. 

The remarks sparked a backlash from more moderate Democrats, who have already criticized liberals for demanding that Israel aid be conditioned on tougher civilian protections. 

“Conditioning aid to Israel would help Hamas in their goal of completely annihilating Israel and the Jewish people,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) wrote recently on X, formerly known as Twitter. 

Pro-Palestine liberals have responded with impassioned frustrations, arguing that blind support for Israel — no strings attached — leaves no room for criticism of an Israeli government that’s shifted to the right in recent years, especially when it comes to the expansion of settlements deemed to be illegal under international law. Some have accused Congress of abetting genocide. 

“How can we say, ‘You need to bomb fewer civilians,’ and then sell them the literal bombs that are being used to bomb civilians?” Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), one of the three Muslims in Congress, asked last week. 

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Congress’s only Palestinian American, is leading the liberal charge in calling for an immediate cease-fire, warning that some progressive voters are ready to abandon President Biden and the Democrats at the polls next year if they don’t get on board. 

“President Biden: I say this over and over again because I hope you hear me. You must listen to the voices of the majority of Americans — and the majority of Democrats, who worked their butt off to get you elected,” Tlaib said. “You have to represent all of us, Mr. President, not just some.”

Jeffries, for his part, has sought to ease the tensions with closed-door conversations, though he’s also acknowledged the challenge in finding agreement on such a radioactive issue. 

“We … will continue to have ongoing discussions about making sure that, in an environment where there are outside forces with deeply held positions and a lot of turmoil and angst playing itself out in different parts of the country, that as members of Congress, we have a responsibility to lean into civility,” he said last week. 

As those discussions evolve, some Democrats are already worried that a resolution remains a long way away.

“Leadership has respected individual member’s positions,” said Thompson. “It’s not a: ‘You’re wrong, I’m right,’ kind of discussion. It’s just that there are differences of opinion. 

“And unfortunately it looks like those differences will continue.”