Liberal Zionism and the Collapse of the Old Consensus
Firday June 26, 2026 – י״א תַּמּוּז תשפ”ו
This was a week that clarified more than it resolved. This week did not create the fault lines running through American politics on Israel. It exposed them—simultaneously, on both sides of the aisle—and forced a question liberal Zionists have been wrestling with for years: What does it actually mean to be “pro-Israel” in 2026?
As the results of New York City’s Democratic primaries came in, I had the privilege of sending off 50 Reform Movement teens on their summer journey to Israel through the URJ’s Yallah! Israel program. Watching them check in at JFK, filled with anticipation for an experience that will surely be meaningful, challenging, and joyful, gave me hope. We look forward to welcoming them home and hearing how Israel shaped their understanding of themselves and the world.
That same week, however, American politics delivered a very different lesson.
Representative Dan Goldman, a Jewish congressman who tried to occupy what many would consider the political center, supporting Israel’s right to exist and defend itself while criticizing Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government, lost his primary decisively to Brad Lander. Lander, also Jewish and a Reform Movement alumnus, called Israel’s conduct in Gaza a “genocide” and campaigned explicitly against Goldman’s AIPAC-backed record.
At the same time, on the opposite end of the political spectrum, Vice President JD Vance offered one of the sharpest public criticisms of Israeli policy by a senior U.S. official in recent memory. Defending the administration’s Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, Vance argued that Israel “can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem” and warned against conflating criticism of an Israeli government with antisemitism.
Taken together, these developments were not really about left versus right. They reflected the same underlying question arriving from opposite directions: Is support for Israel a matter of unconditional loyalty, conditional partnership, or something else entirely? And who gets to decide where legitimate criticism ends and something darker begins?
What “Pro-Israel” No Longer Means
For decades, American politics relied on a convenient shorthand: being “pro-Israel” meant supporting whatever the Israeli government wanted, while being “anti-Israel” meant opposing it.
That framework is collapsing.
Goldman attempted to inhabit its increasingly narrow middle ground. He was openly supportive of Israel while also critical of Netanyahu. Yet his efforts to draw distinctions mattered little. For many voters, the label “pro-Israel” itself had become suspect.
Vance challenged the same framework from the opposite direction. He is hardly anti-Israel. Yet he explicitly rejected the notion that supporting Israel requires endorsing every decision made by its current government. In doing so, he drew a distinction between supporting Israel and supporting a particular Israeli coalition.
What both episodes reveal is that “pro-Israel” is no longer a stable political category—if it ever truly was.
What is emerging instead resembles an argument liberal Zionists have made for decades: support for Israel and criticism of an Israeli government are not contradictory. In fact, for those who care deeply about Israel’s future as a Jewish and democratic state, they are often inseparable.
That position is increasingly under attack from both sides.
On parts of the left, any support for Israel can be treated as morally disqualifying. On parts of the right, criticism of Israeli policy is often portrayed as abandonment or betrayal. Yet these accusations cannot both be true. They are mirror images of the same impulse: demanding ideological purity.
For most American Jews, being pro-Israel has never meant supporting every government Israel elects. It has meant supporting the continued existence and flourishing of a Jewish democratic state. That commitment has always included debate, disagreement, and at times profound disappointment.
This week made that harder to articulate—but no less necessary.
The Antisemitism Question
The question “Is the far left antisemitic?” is often asked as though it admits a simple yes-or-no answer.
It does not.
A more useful question is whether certain rhetoric, actions, and organizing frameworks cross the line from criticism of Israeli policy into something that functions as antisemitism, regardless of the intentions behind them.
Consider the recent controversy involving Poetica Coffee in Park Slope. The shop announced it would have denied service to Congressman Goldman because of his support for Israel, while invoking his ties to AIPAC as justification.
That is not a policy critique.
It is the application of a boycott logic to an individual based on their political and communal identity. It treats a Jewish elected official’s connection to Israel as uniquely disqualifying in a way that few other ethnic or religious communities experience.
At the same time, Lander’s criticism of the war, his support for restrictions on military aid, and even his use of the term “genocide” are not inherently antisemitic. They are controversial, arguable, and, for many, deeply frustrating political positions. But disagreement over Israeli policy—even sharp disagreement—is not evidence of antisemitism.
The danger lies not primarily in policy arguments but in rhetoric that erases Jewish collective identity and self-determination.
The slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” illustrates the problem. Many who use it intend to express support for Palestinian rights and dignity. Yet the slogan also carries a history and political meaning that many Jews experience as a denial of Jewish national self-determination.
Intent and impact are not always the same thing.
A movement that cannot distinguish between criticism of a war and rejection of Jewish sovereignty has a real problem. Good intentions alone cannot resolve that tension.
The Mirror Image on the Right
The same analytical framework should apply to the political right.
There are voices within the populist right that have learned to package old suspicions about Jewish influence and dual loyalty in the language of “America First” nationalism. Concerns about “Israeli interests” can quickly become insinuations about hidden Jewish power.
When Vance argues that American and Israeli interests are not always identical, he is making a legitimate point. Sovereign nations frequently share interests without sharing all interests.
But he is making that argument within a political ecosystem where similar language has often been used to advance far less legitimate claims.
Liberal Zionists have long criticized the left when scrutiny of Israel becomes disproportionate to scrutiny of other actors. The same standard should apply on the right.
Iran remains the primary destabilizing force in the region. When criticism becomes overwhelmingly focused on Israel while minimizing the threats posed by its adversaries, it deserves scrutiny regardless of which ideological camp it originates from.
The challenge, then, is consistency. Criticism of Israeli policy is not antisemitic. Neither is acknowledging that American and Israeli interests may sometimes diverge. But criticism becomes suspect when Israel is held to fundamentally different standards or when longstanding tropes about Jewish influence reappear under new branding.
What This Means for Liberal Zionists
The deeper issue beneath this week’s events is what they reveal about the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship and the place of liberal democratic values within it.
Three trends are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
- Bipartisan support for Israel is eroding from both directions. On the progressive left, association with pro-Israel organizations can increasingly become a political liability. On the populist right, support for Israel is becoming more transactional and less rooted in shared values.
2. Support for Israel as a liberal democratic project is shrinking. Increasingly, both critics and supporters evaluate Israel primarily through the lens of utility, power, or military conduct rather than through the broader question of what kind of society Israel aspires to be.
For Reform Zionists, that shift is deeply concerning. Israel’s value cannot be separated from its identity as both Jewish and democratic. The two are intertwined.
3. The political space occupied by liberal Zionists is becoming narrower. Those committed simultaneously to Israel’s security, democracy, Jewish character, and moral accountability find themselves squeezed from both sides.
Goldman attempted to occupy that space politically and lost. Many Jewish institutions have tried to occupy it rhetorically and increasingly find themselves speaking to smaller audiences.
Yet there is also a reason for cautious optimism.
The contradictions on display this week suggest that the simplistic binary of “pro-Israel” versus “anti-Israel” is failing. Reality is proving more complicated than either side’s slogans.
The liberal Zionist argument—that one can love Israel while criticizing its government, and that accountability is an expression of commitment rather than betrayal—was never likely to triumph through ideological victory. Its strength lies in its ability to describe reality more accurately than competing absolutes.
Both maximalist camps spent this week exposing their own limitations. The anti-Israel camp struggles to explain why Jewish self-determination should be uniquely suspect. The unconditional-support camp struggles to explain why loyalty requires silence.
Neither position is sustainable.
As I think about those 50 teenagers now traveling across Israel—from north to south, east to west—I am reminded that the future conversation about Israel will belong to their generation. Their experiences will shape their understanding of Zionism, democracy, Jewish peoplehood, and the relationship between love and critique.
The hope is not that they return with easy answers.
It is that they return understanding that the most important questions rarely have answers.
And that holding complexity is not a weakness. It may be the only path forward.
Shabbat Shalom!