This week, Rahm Emanuel – Obama’s White House chief of staff and widely considered a 2028 candidate – went to Tel Aviv to deliver a strong message to the Israeli public: If Israel wants to keep America as an ally, it needs to change.
“Undoubtedly, the union is at a crossroads. It cannot stand or live as it was,” he said. “To maintain the strength of our relationship, we need a big change and a new direction.”
The problem, for Emanuel, is that Israel under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has become a “modern-day Sparta” — a military, expansionist nation that sees no alternative to crushing the Palestinians under its feet. Such a country does not deserve the “unconditional support” Emanuel believes it has received from the United States, which is the geographical equivalent of giving vodka to a drunkard.
“Unconditional aid has enabled you to deny food and medical aid to innocent Palestinians in Gaza, leaving the world to conclude that Israelis not only want to kill Palestinians, but are completely indifferent to their death, destruction, and suffering,” he wrote.
Instead, he said, the United States needs to push Israel to become a better version of itself. This means imposing sanctions on Israeli political and business leaders who facilitate terrorism against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, ending US military aid to Israel, and launching a new peace negotiation system with the Palestinians that is being built with the support of other Arab countries.
No one thinks this speech will change US policy. Rahm Emanuel is not talking about President Donald Trump. Instead, the speech should be understood in the context of the internal politics of democracy.
While both Barack Obama and Joe Biden clashed with Netanyahu at different points, both tried to keep their disagreements private and their public moves to punish Israel’s misbehavior quiet. Even if most administrations wanted a Palestinian state and opposed settlements in the West Bank, imposing sanctions on Israeli leaders and cutting off military aid were completely off the table — something only a leftist like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) would dare to suggest.
Emanuel is not Sanders. In his memory The World As It IsObama adviser Ben Rhodes recalls Emanuel repeatedly mocking his concern for the Palestinians in internal governance discussions – giving Rhodes the nickname “Hamas” and accusing the adviser of making it “impossible for my son to have his bar mitzvah in Israel.”
That a Jewish Democrat like Emanuel is now comfortable with sidelined rhetoric and policies is a sign that the old consensus in support of Israel is dead and indeed dead among Democrats. What comes in 2028 and beyond will be very different – and much more difficult for Israel – than what came before it.
“I think (Rahm’s position) is becoming a base for Democratic primary candidates,” Ilan Goldenberg, chief policy officer at the liberal lobby J Street, said. “You can’t go to the right of this.”
Israel’s new center is the old left
For almost all of 2026, Rahm Emanuel has been positioning himself to capture the main road in the Democratic primary.
In interview after interview, he has claimed that the party has been unduly influenced by left-wing activists who are concerned with unpopular issues, defunding the police, and ending capitalism. Instead, he says, the party should refocus on “middle-class values” and “pocket issues” — meaning deprioritizing social issues, strict border enforcement, and the expansion of the welfare state.
In the past, this type of centrist candidate would almost always take Israel’s lock-in position: unconditional military support and diplomatic support. Democratic presidents, speakers of the House, and many Senate leaders were regular attendees at AIPAC’s annual meeting – signaling their commitment to the pro-Israel lobby.
This old method reflected public opinion. Most Americans broadly support the US-Israel alliance, and have for decades. The basic impulse of the right wing – that politics should be about winning over the average voter – passed in favor of Israel, making Obama and Biden keep their anger with Netanyahu and clash with him on policy as privately as possible while in power.
But the outcome of the war in Gaza has changed everything. In February, Gallup’s annual poll found that more Americans sympathized with the Palestinians the first time in the history of the vote. Brand new Pew survey found that 62 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the Israeli government. This new hostility to the United States is heavily driven by Democrats, with only 16 percent of Democrats expressing a favorable view of the Israeli government in the Pew data.
This has been in the making for years. Netanyahu’s involvement in US politics – including his 2015 efforts to destroy Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran – it has long been reducing Israel’s population. But it was the war in Gaza that finally pushed Democratic voters to turn out, and a July AP poll found that. most of the democrats they now believe Israel committed genocide during the conflict.
Today, anger at Israel is a strong polling issue. Left-wing candidates, including Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Graham Platner in Maine, have used the issue to burnish their anti-establishment identities and rocket to the top of a hotly contested primary. The main Democratic candidates are using the word genocide describe what happened in Gaza. AIPAC is often accused of being the enemy, if not more direct evil.
This is where Emanuel’s speech comes from. As a radical, he has decided that what used to be the position of the left among Democrats – that America should use its power to try to push Israel to change and become better – is the centerpiece. It is the latest sign that the old pro-Israel consensus within the party is dying, and something new is emerging to take its place.
The New Democratic Debate on Israel
So if the Democratic debate on Israel has fundamentally changed — if the old consensus is dead — what does the future look like?
Goldenberg is a good guide here. J Street, his organization, for a long time occupied the land Emanuel is now trying to claim. Indeed, J Street hosts Emanuel on their podcast in Marchand his speech is very clearly influenced by their thoughts. His proposal to revive the peace process – a “23-state solution” in which Israel works with Arab governments to bring about a Palestinian state as part of a regional settlement – is being taken for granted. from J Street literature.
Not surprisingly, Goldenberg loved the speech, telling me he agreed with “80-90 percent” of what Emanuel said. His criticism was less about his policy vision and more about specifics: Emanuel offered a view of the peace talks of the 90s and 2000s that placed almost all the blame for their failure on the Palestinian side, which Goldberg thought was unfairly one-sided. This reflected, in his words, an “Israeli” worldview that took the perspective and needs of the Palestinian side less seriously than he would have liked.
But the fact that the disagreement between Emanuel and Goldenberg is so narrow shows how far the Democratic center has moved. When they were founded in 2008, the views of J Street represented left wing of the Democratic coalition. Now, one of the innermost members of the party is raising his arguments.
Matt Duss is perhaps the leading left-wing policymaker on Israel-Palestine, having advised Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the topic. He tells me that he found real things to like in Emanuel’s speech — in particular, that it marked a decisive break with the pro-Israel lockstep of the past.
But he was more accomplished in his discussion of the history of the conflict than Goldenberg. “To call this a standard presentation of history would be giving it too much credit,” Duss wrote in the Nation. In general, he thinks, the speech did not go far enough, describing it as a “historical landmark,” but “we should have passed the past and we should quickly leave the rearview mirror.”
This is the future of the Democratic party’s conversation about Israel. Arguments are over whether the US should put pressure on Israel to change; The questions now are what kind of pressure, how much should be used, and what the end goal of the said pressure should be.
Emanuel’s view will not be the only one. Just as J Street has moved from the left to the center of the party, growing discontent with Israel has also brought competing factions and ideas into the conversation that were largely invisible in the halls of power until recently, such as the rise of DSA-backed candidates.
One can imagine the spectrum of opinion here. The J Street side wants to preserve Israel’s presence and its strong relationship with the United States, on the condition that Israel end its occupation of Palestinian land. There is a more leftist position, that the United States is no longer interested in being an ally of a country like Israel. And there is the left-wing position, where US policy should be fully focused on a two-state solution that erases Israel’s identity as a Jewish state.
The boundaries between these positions are not always clear in policy terms, and can blur the edges. It is difficult to know exactly what the balance of forces will be in the 2028 election, let alone beyond it. Much will depend on Israel’s own elections, scheduled for this fall, which Netanyahu’s lightning rod may finally lose power.
But the force behind this change is more than one prime minister. Through its occupation of the West Bank, the unnecessary violence in Gaza, and the direct intervention of supporters on behalf of Republican priorities, the Israeli leadership has essentially severed its relationship with the Democratic party. That is not something that can be fixed without a fundamental change in Israeli policy – which does not seem very likely in the short term.
So, there’s every reason to believe that Emanuel’s speech is, as Duss put it, a “symbol” — another unique coordination to reorient the Democratic party.
“If you lose Rahm Emanuel,” Goldenberg said, “you’re kind of toast.”
