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(April 1, 2024 / WSJ) Ever since President Harry S. Truman became the first world leader to recognize Israel in 1948, supporters of the Jewish state have considered the Democratic Party their political home. But the war in Gaza is laying bare a rift over Israel’s standing in modern American liberalism.
It says something that today liberalism’s most vocal champions of Israel are Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Mr. Fetterman is best known for wearing hoodies and shorts. Mr. Kennedy is a descendant of Democratic Party royalty.
Each is a man of the left, which has become increasingly hostile to Israel. Pressure from the left has led both President Biden and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to temper support for Israel with unprecedented public criticism of the country’s elected government and its war effort. The criticisms are striking because they come on the eve of an offensive in Rafah that Israel deems essential to root out the Hamas leadership and destroy its ability to inflict another attack like Oct. 7.
Messrs. Fetterman and Kennedy might have been expected to succumb to progressive pressure. But they didn’t. The question for a post-Joe Lieberman Democratic Party is whether the Fetterman-Kennedy resistance marks a restoration of support for Israel to its place in American liberalism—or a dying last gasp.
Following the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. Fetterman dismissed the near mystical faith among progressives that a ceasefire is the solution in Gaza. “We can talk about a ceasefire after Hamas is neutralized,” he tweeted. He’s also signaling that pressure on him to bend—demonstrations outside his office, an open letter from former campaign workers, the resignation of staffers—won’t work.
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