JRV1344

Tobin’s Right: U.S. Jews Being Pro-Israel/Anti-Bibi Won’t Help

#1344 October 18, 2026

We U.S. Jews are divided on whether Israel electing a new Prime Minister would alleviate mounting antisemitism in the U.S. By me our only course is to stand by our people’s homeland unequivocally, not least those of us who are Democrats.

Tobin’s Right: U.S. Jews Being Pro-Israel/Anti-Bibi Won’t Help

A reader forwarded to me this week a dire warning email he’d received from a fellow “very pro-Israel Democratic colleague”:

“‘What’s going on in the West Bank is an absolute disgrace. Israel should be ashamed of itself. And the young ultra-religious Jews should all be drafted.   If Netanyahu remains as PM after the election, the break with the U.S. Democratic Party will be complete and the rest of the U.S. (except for some Trump supporters and some but not all Jews in the U.S.) will be no friends to Israel.”  [emphasis added]

In the presence of sharply rising antisemitism even here, we American Jews are divided over whether Israelis replacing Bibi as PM would have an ameliorating effect. The sub-headline of a Times of Israel article Saturday (10/17/26), “America’s Politically Divided Jewish Community Braces for Israel’s Election,” put it this way:

“Some hope a change of government in Israel could help stem the tide of rising anti-Israel sentiment in the US, but most fear it would have very little effect on surging antisemitism”

Being Pro-Israel/Anti-Bibi Won’t Bring Back the Dems

The emailer warns that if Bibi remains as PM, “the break with the U.S. Democratic Party will be complete.”  But, alas, political events just this month show that this break already IS complete.  

In a JNS article Wednesday, 10/14/26, “The Democrats Have Abandoned Israel, Not Just Netanyahu,” Jonathan Tobin assessed that the Democratic Party has become so anti-Israel that its Jewish bigs professing “pro-Israel/Anti-Bibi” positions can’t bring it back.

Tobin characterized our Governor Josh Shapiro as having “balanced” in a debate “his strong even emotional backing for the Jewish state” with “a denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, he claimed, was making it impossible to maintain the U.S.-Israel alliance.” Tobin assessed it won’t work “in winning back the Democrats for the pro-Israel cause,” that “a stance such as Shapiro’s or even far more lukewarm affirmations of support was a kiss of death for candidates.”

This month In the House (Ynet):  A “Stop the Settlements Act,” introduced by six House Dems, including my own Congresswoman Madeleine Dean, carried “support from nearly 40 Democratic lawmakers, including figures associated with the party’s mainstream rather than only its progressive wing.”   Sponsor summary: The act “would stop would stop the construction of new settlements or expansion of existing Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank” through sanctions and bar import of settlement-made goods. “This would mirror and complement efforts announced or being implemented by countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Canada, the Netherlands, and Spain.”

In the Senate (Ynet): All Democrats [yes, you Schumer the Shomer] except Fetterman voted for a measure, which “would have required the State Department to submit a report within 30 days on the deaths of nine U.S. citizens in incidents involving Israeli settlers or security forces since 2022, as well as on the detention of Palestinian children.” 

Obama: A Jewish Insider article Thursday (10/15/26), “Obama Scrutinizes Israel’s Founding, Says Palestinians Want Their ‘Land Back,’” quotes him publicly saying in Northern Ireland this week:

“The fact is that the Jewish people for millennia were oppressed, discriminated against, killed. Europe was responsible for much of that. They understandably sought a refuge in a place where they had historic ties. That is undeniable,” Obama said, according to transcripts and recordings of his remarks. “What is also undeniable is that they took the land of people and they were expelled. And those people, understandably, said, ‘This is an injustice, and I want my land back.’” [emphasis added]

Not exactly. World Israel News on Friday, “Netanyahu Fires Back at Obama Over ‘Stolen Land’: ‘We’re Jews in Judea,” quoted Bibi’s instant response:

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fired back at former President Barack Obama on Friday after Obama accused Israel of taking Palestinian land, declaring: ‘Our land is not stolen land. This is our homeland.’

“‘We’re not the Dutch in Indonesia. We’re not the Belgians in the Congo. We’re Jews in Judea,’ Netanyahu said in a blistering video response.”

We must emphasize that we never left. British historian James Parkes put it this way (Whose Land? A History of the Peoples of Palestine, pp. 266):

“It was, perhaps, inevitable that Zionists should look back to the heroic period of the Maccabees and Bar Cochba, but their real title deeds were written by the less dramatic but equally heroic endurance of those who had maintained a Jewish presence in The Land all through the centuries, and in spite of every discouragement.”  [emphasis added]

Parkes (ibid) explained why omitting continuous presence hurts:

“The omission allowed the anti-Zionist, whether Jewish, Arab or European, to paint an entirely false picture of the wickedness of Jewry in trying to re-establish a two-thousand-year-old claim to the country, indifferent to everything that had happened in the intervening period.”

Today’s State of Israel is the land of Israel’s next native state after Roman-destroyed Jewish Judaea.  Every ruler in between was a foreign empire invader, and mostly non-Arab at that.  That’s the case we must make.

Palestinian Jews did not expel Arabs in 1948. We declared our homeland State and Arabs there joined in a UN partition-rejecting Arab invasion to destroy it. The 1948 war and its wake saw Israel-absorb more indigenous Middle Eastern Jews expelled from vast Arab and other Muslim lands than Arabs left tiny Israel. We must make publics in the West aware that this happened.

Putting “West Bank Settler Violence” in Perspective

The violence being perpetrated on Judea-Samaria Arabs by what Israel’s PM rightly calls “a handful of rioters” is small compared to Arabs’ Pay-for-Slay-incentivized attacks on Israelis. It’s miniscule compared to the 1200 horrific murders perpetrated by Hamas et al on Oct. 7, and our enemies’ supporters aren’t invoking collective punishment against “Palestinians,” and a far higher percentage of them back Hamas despite its atrocities than Israelis back violent Jews. All of us grassroots American Jews, not least registered Democrats in their own party, must unequivocally stand by our people’s homeland.