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The DNC Approach to Israel Is Political Malpractice and Moral Failure
No matter how much the DNC leadership tries to shunt it aside, the burning issue of US policy toward Israel will not go away.
Mar 18, 2026
When the governing body of the Democratic Party convenes next month, it will face a challenge to its support for Israel. The Democratic National Committee has evaded the fact that large majorities of Democrats oppose continuing military aid to Israel and believe it has committed genocide in Gaza. The stage is set for jarring discord when the DNC’s 450 members gather in New Orleans.
An NBC poll released this week underscores the depth of the DNC’s political folly. The results were lopsided, by a 67-17 percent margin in favor of Palestinians, when the survey asked Democrats: “Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?”
The DNC leadership has stayed on a collision course with political realities about Israel. Last August, while a Gallup poll was showing that just 8 percent of Democrats approved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, DNC chair Ken Martin said at a meeting of delegates from across the country that “there’s a divide in our party on this issue.” He didn’t acknowledge that the crucial divide is actually between the party’s leadership and Democrats nationwide.
At that summer meeting, amid contention over US policies toward Israel, Martin withdrew his party-line resolution after it won and after a pro-Palestinian rights measure lost. He called for “shared dialogue” and “shared advocacy,” announcing that he would appoint a task force “comprised of stakeholders on all sides of this to continue to have the conversation.” Martin declared that “this crisis in Gaza is urgent” and an “emergency.”
But the “emergency” lost its urgency as soon as the DNC adjourned and the media spotlight disappeared. Six months passed before the first meeting of the task force, which by then had been downgraded to a “working group.”
The working group’s convener (selected by Martin) is James Zogby, a longtime advocate for Palestinian rights. Zogby had greeted Martin’s task-force announcement with praise, calling it “politically thoughtful” and a recognition of “the reality that the status quo has become unacceptable and untenable.”
But more than six months later, the status quo remains undisturbed as the DNC’s Middle East Working Group proceeds at a snail’s pace. And the composition of the eight-member panel makes it foreseeably incapable of reaching its purported goal to “help us sort out how our party deals with America’s policies in the Middle East.”
The working group is an oil-and-water mix of fully incompatible views on Palestinian rights and Israeli power. Some on the DNC panel want an embargo on US arms to Israel, while others firmly oppose any such step. One member of the working group, Andrew Lachman, has led fights inside the California Democratic Party to thwart actions or statements critical of Israel. He is currently the president of Democrats for Israel-California.
How the DNC’s appointed group is supposed to “sort out” a Democratic Party position on US policy in the Middle East is inexplicable. But the project does have an evident function. The Middle East Working Group has proven itself to be a stalling mechanism. And the pretenses behind it have become even more fanciful as the US-Israel military alliance persists with a war of aggression on Iran that has been setting the region on fire.
No matter how much the DNC leadership tries to shunt it aside, the burning issue of US policy toward Israel will not go away. This year, it has become key in one Democratic primary race after another, putting incumbent members of Congress on the defensive for their timeworn efforts to justify support for Israel or acceptance of funding from the AIPAC lobby. Yet the DNC stance is that the party establishment is wise to seal itself off from such unpleasantness.
The DNC’s refusal to make public its autopsy of the 2024 election is tangled up in dodging the autopsy’s reported conclusion that Kamala Harris’ rigid support for arming Israel was a significant factor in her defeat. Keeping the official autopsy under wraps, supposedly in order to improve the prospects of future election victories, actually makes such victories less likely by mystifying instead of clarifying electoral history.
Martin told Fox News viewers in late February that concentrating on the future would be better than trying to “relitigate” the 2024 election. But hiding the autopsy amounts to condescension, assuming that only a small elite party circle should be privy to the results of the party’s extensive (and expensive) research. Many Democratic activists and candidates would benefit from candor instead of stonewalling.
Weeks ago, the annual convention of the California Democratic Party responded to growing pressure from grassroots activists by adopting a platform that advocates for “an immediate end to the mass civilian casualties, destruction, displacement and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.” The platform says that “Palestinians in Gaza should be able to rebuild without displacement, with international humanitarian, economic and security assistance,” and it calls for “the immediate rebuilding of Gaza with the provision of humanitarian aid, restoration of funding for an UNRWA that serves the Palestinian people.”
But the Democratic National Committee, like the bulk of Democrats in Congress, lags far behind such grassroots outlooks. The top-down culture that prevails in the national party has stultified internal debate, rendering it scarce and pro forma. Despite Martin’s reform talk, whatever the DNC chair says goes. “I’ve been more and more disappointed with him,” a progressive DNC member told me days ago. “He says he loves internal debate and small-d democracy. I think it’s a talking point. I don’t know that he really wants that.”
After a little more than a year in the job, Martin has cleared the low bar set by his immediate predecessor, Jaime Harrison, who dutifully served President Biden for four years. But the DNC is still largely paralyzed with pressure from its old guard and insistence on being unaccountable to the party’s rank-and-file. The Democratic Party is in dire need of democracy.
On no issue is that more apparent than the DNC’s insistence on treating Israel as above serious reproach. The ruse of forming and then slow-walking the Middle East Working Group may have bought some time for the Democratic Party’s status quo of complicity with genocide in Gaza and US-Israeli war crimes elsewhere in the region. But party activists genuinely committed to human rights will not be fooled and will not be silent.
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'Let the Public See Where Democrats Really Stand': Full DNC Floor Vote Demanded on Gaza
"We are demanding a roll-call vote so that every DNC member is accountable for where they stand in this historic moment."
Aug 27, 2025
Those hoping that Democratic Party leaders have finally learned some lessons in the political thrashing they received in last year's elections are not yet done fighting for a resolution they argue would put the party back on the right side of moral history and also improve its prospects going forward against an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party led by President Donald Trump.
A day following a failed vote in the resolutions committee, members of the Democratic National Committee and grassroots groups demanding the DNC to take a stronger stand against US complicity with Israel's genocide in Gaza are not giving up—pushing now for a full floor vote to take place Wednesday on a resolution which calls for an immediate ceasefire, an arms embargo, and suspension of military aid to Israel.
"The DNC membership has the power to stand up and let the public see where Democrats really stand," said Allison Minnerly, the 26-year-old DNC member from Florida who introduced Resolution 18 before the resolutions committee, in a statement Tuesday night after the measure was rejected earlier in the day with a voice vote at the party's summer gathering in Minneapolis.
"A roll-call vote is the minimum standard of transparency in a democracy," said Minnerly in her statement, backed by allies within the DNC ranks as well as outside groups.
"A roll-call vote is the minimum standard of transparency in a democracy." —Allison Minnerly
Following the committee vote rejecting Resolution 18, chair of the College Democrats, Sunjay Muralitharan, bemoaned the defeat, including that no chance was offered for friendly amendments. "This move isn't just unjust, it's politically ineffective," he said. "Support for Israel's actions is in the single digits within our party's base. Deeply disappointed in this decision."
DNC chairman Ken Martin, who had introduced a competing resolution, Resolution 3, later took the unusual step of withdrawing his milqetoast proposal on Gaza after it passed the committee. In its place, he called for the creation of a task force to further discuss the issue.
"There's divide in our party on this issue," Martin said as he withdrew his resolution in favor of further discussion. "We have to find a path forward as a party, and we have to stay unified."
Minnerly and her coalition, however, say the issue is too important—and the conditions in Gaza, where a famine has been designated by the world's leading authority on such matters, too horrific—for the full membership of the Democratic Party leadership not to weigh in publicly and on the record.
As the daily massacres and starvation continue in Gaza, the coalition says there is no better moment for all DNC voting members to put themselves on the record.
"Resolution 18 represents the voices of not only young Democrats but all Democrats who believe that Palestinian lives matter too," said Zayed Kadir, chair of the High School Democrats. "It's time for the DNC to stand on principle and stop shying away from the conversation—the moment is now."
As such, in a statement released overnight, the coalition—which includes the American Muslim Democratic Caucus National, Roots Action, Florida Young Democrats, leaders of the High School and College Democrats, and many individual members—is calling for every member of the DNC to:
- Publicly pledge to support a roll-call vote on Resolution 18 from the floor;
- Reject voice votes that hide accountability;
- Stand with Democratic voters, the majority of whom oppose blank-check military aid toward an ongoing genocide.
The coalition began circulating a petition Tuesday night calling on members to tell "the DNC that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza needs urgent attention by sending a letter asking them to bring Resolution 18 back into the conversation and support it tomorrow (Wednesday)."
Aftab Siddiqui, representing the American Muslim Democratic Caucus National, suggested that taking up the resolution by the full DNC at the meeting would begin to show the party is learning from its past mistakes and start forging a new direction.
"Resolution 18 represents exactly the kind of principled politics that wins elections," Siddiqui said. "While Democrats lost ground in 2024 by wavering on core values, New York City's mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, proved that moral courage on Gaza builds winning coalitions. The DNC must learn this lesson."
Ahead of and during Wednesday's plenary session, the coalition said it will publish "a transparency scorecard" to track which DNC members commit to demanding the roll-call vote. Those who do not, the group said, will be noted as opposing transparency.
Polling has shown that Democratic voters strongly favor the demands outlined in Resolution 18, a fact the coalition says the DNC must acknowledge if it wants to represent the people it claims to represent truly.
Nadia Ahmad, a delegate from Florida, said Democrats "cannot claim to stand for justice and human rights while blocking a resolution that calls for an arms embargo and humanitarian aid to Gaza."
The fight before the DNC, she added, "is about whether our party has the moral courage to listen to its members and the American people. We are demanding a roll-call vote so that every DNC member is accountable for where they stand in this historic moment.”
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Will Democrats Finally Change Their Stance on Gaza?
Party leaders continue to show how out of step they are with the opinions of the overwhelming majority of their voters.
Aug 25, 2025
Even though the bottom has fallen out of Democrats’ support for Israel, some in the party still can’t bring themselves to recognize this reality.
While support for Israeli policies has been in decline for more than a decade, the war on Gaza has resulted in a dramatic sea change in opinion. In a recent Gallup poll, only 8% of Democrats said they approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza. When another recent poll conducted by Quinnipiac asked Americans whether their sympathies were more with Israelis or Palestinians, only 12% of Democrats said Israel while 60% said their sympathies were more with the Palestinians. And when The Economist magazine asked voters how they feel about a range of issues related to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, the results among those who say they are Democrats or lean toward Democrats were staggering:
- When asked whether Israel was justified in attacking Gaza in response to the threat from Hamas, only 13% said it was justified, with 67% saying it was not.
- When asked about military aid to Israel, 61% of voters who say they are Democrats or lean toward voting for Democrats responded that they either want to reduce or eliminate such aid, while only 25% said they favor either increasing or maintaining the current level of military aid to Israel.
- Sixty-eight percent (68%) said they agree that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, only 8% disagreed.
- Seventy-two percent (72%) said they agree it was right to call for a Palestinian state, with only 5% opposing.
(It’s important to note that with regard to each of the above questions, either majorities or strong pluralities of all respondents were in favor of cutting military aid to Israel, were opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza, supported recognition of Palestinian statehood, etc.)
This change in the opinion of Democrats toward Israel and its policies has translated into congressional action. Last month, 27 of the 47 Democrats in the US Senate voted to block sending US military equipment to Israel. And a companion bill in the House of Representatives calling for withholding US offensive weapons to Israel now has 35 Democratic co-sponsors. Additionally, a number of Democratic State Party conventions have passed similar resolutions as did the national Young Democrats of America.
Given these developments, it should not have been surprising that a newly elected member of the Democratic National Committee would introduce a “Gaza Resolution” calling on the national party to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, a suspension of military aid to Israel, and a call to members of Congress to recognize Palestine as a nation state. The resolution concludes by urging the party to:
“affirm its commitment to international law, human rights for all people, an immediate … delivery of … humanitarian-focused, life-saving food and medical care in Gaza, and the pursuit a just and lasting peace for all in the region.”
What’s also unsurprising is how pro-Israel groups and some Democratic leaders have responded. For example, the group calling itself the Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI)—which may need to change its name to the Democratic Minority for Israel—issued a strongly worded statement saying that they were:
"deeply troubled by the introduction of a flawed, irresponsible resolution at a Democratic National Committee meeting that will further sow division within our Party and do nothing to help bring an end to the Israel-Hamas war nor end the suffering on both sides.”
With polls showing that by margins of 10-to-1 or more Democrats support the positions taken in the Gaza Resolution, it is patently false to suggest that the resolution will “sow division.” In fact, it’s more accurate to say that defeating the resolution will create division. And when it comes to sowing division, it’s DMFI that in the last two elections teamed up with other pro-Israel PACs to spend tens of millions of dollars to defeat Democratic members of Congress whom they deemed as insufficiently pro-Israel.
It’s disappointing that party leaders, in an effort to defeat the Gaza Resolution, have introduced a resolution of their own as a “substitute.” While their alternative focuses heavily on humanitarian aid, most of its prescriptive language would have been seen as somewhat constructive and even positive five years ago. But in the face of Israel’s massive destruction of Palestinian homes, hospitals, universities, places of worship, and infrastructure in Gaza, the “substitute” is no substitute at all. It ignores Israel’s responsibility for (and the US culpability in) the ongoing genocide. And, of equal importance, it is out of step with the opinions of the overwhelming majority of Democratic voters.
It’s not clear how this will play out when the party meets this week to discuss and vote on resolutions. There is an effort being made to bring the two sides together. But the young Democratic supporters of the Gaza Resolution, while open to some modification of their effort, are determined that the issue of Gaza be debated. They are right to do so.
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