To My Fellow American Jews

The two main components of Jewish American identity—its liberalism and its Zionism—are now in conflict with each other.

Every one of us will forever remember where we were on October 7 when we learned that Hamas had infiltrated Israel and began a campaign of mass kidnapping, mass rape, and mass murder. By the time the marauding terrorists had finished, 1,000 Israeli civilians were dead. Scores of women and men had been raped. 250 grandmothers, babies, toddlers, men, and women had been taken hostage.

Most of us will also remember the certainty with which we expected our friends, colleagues, political allies on the Left to stand by us, given that many American Jews spent their whole lives advocating for Left-wing causes, marching and speaking out on behalf of other minorities, and raising money for Democrats.

And we will forever remember the shock and horror when we realized that no one was coming. Not only were they not coming out in support of the Israeli victims of Hamas’s savagery, but they were marching for the other side.

I often hear from a new kind of Jew—they call themselves October 8 Jews. They are Jews for whom their Jewish identity was more background than foreground for most of their lives. They were bagel and lox Jews who were pro-Israel but didn’t put much thought into it. After October 7, their Jewish identity surged within them. They became Jews who were part of history. And that intensification coalesced around their Zionism—their commitment to the existence of the Jewish state on our ancestral homeland.

And yet, at the same time that their Zionism was intensifying, it was becoming a liability on the Left—a slur, a verboten ideology that the Left freely calls racist. They began accusing Zionists of supporting genocide in a disgusting appropriation of the word to smear Israel’s defensive war against Gaza with the crime of the Nazis. If you spent any time at all on the campus encampments that sprouted up since October 7, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t believe that Zionists were barely human, and were worthy of the vilest treatment. But it wasn’t just on college campus. This view has become mainstream in the progressive movement, which now wears rejecting money from pro-Israel American Jews as a badge of honor.

Anti-Zionism has become as central a component of the Left as climate activism; indeed, celebrity climate activist Greta Thunberg herself now does more for the Palestinian cause than the climate, appearing everywhere ensconced in a keffiyeh. The majority of Democrats now sympathize more with the Palestinians than with Israel in a shocking reversal that took place over less than a decade.

This development is especially startling for American Jews given that they are have overwhelmingly been Democrats for 100 years. Jews don’t just vote for Democrats by a wide margin. American Jews have been famously at the forefront of every liberal cause in America. They were overrepresented in the Civil Rights Movement, as public-school teachers, in the Labor movement, and as champions of civil liberties. Nearly 60 percent of American Jews view pursuing social justice as one of the most central components of their Judaism. If you ask them why they are Democrats, many will say it’s because they are Jews.

And yet, what has been their political home has become infested with anti-Zionism and outright antisemitism. Under the guise of being anti-Israel, the Left has become a no-go zone for Jews unless they are willing to denounce their own people—Zionists at home and Jews abroad. (Sadly, some have taken them up on this bargain.)

The stark reality in America at the end of the first quarter of the 21^st century is that most Jews are Democrats, yet the Left has turned on the Jews.

The two main components of Jewish American identity—its liberalism and its Zionism—are now in conflict with each other.

How did this happen?

It’s not just anti-Zionist vibes. The violence has come home.

On March 12, 2026, a Muslim man drove a truck full of explosives into a synagogue in Michigan with the intent of blowing up 140 Jewish American preschoolers in the name of the Palestinian cause. His homicidal anti-Jewish racism was explained away by Leftists at the New York Times and NPR.

On May 21, 2025, a man named Elias Rodruigez murdered two innocents because he thought they were Jews. “Free, free Palestine!” He chanted while the police arrested him in the exact tune and cadence bellowed on college campuses every day. “I did it for Gaza.”

A recent Columbia grad named Jonathan Epstein was at the event at the Jewish Museum and watched as the shooter was arrested. He was interviewed by CNN the next day. “You said you looked the shooter in the eyes. Can you give us any sense of what you saw in him?” He was asked by a host on CNN, Sara Sidner.

“What I saw in his eyes? I mean, I went to Columbia for grad school. I saw the same thing in his eyes as I saw in the eyes of all the protestors at Columbia,” Epstein said. “Nothing different between him and them.”

“But they did not create this horrific shooting,” Sidner intervened.

“They gave the permission. They called for this. They called for Intifada Revolution, which is the same thing he yelled last night . . . At Columbia University, they call for Intifada constantly. So, what’s the difference?”

How did we get here? And where do we go from here?

This is the subject of my new book The Jews and the Left. It explores the history of American Jews and the Left. It’s a tale of love and betrayal. And it explains why liberalism became so central to Jewish American identity, and why the Left turned on us.

If you are a Jew struggling with this very question, I hope you will consider picking up a copy. It’s a love song to America that I wrote with the hope that our real history—which begins 300 years before we think it does—will help create a new Jew to overcome our recent disappointments.

God bless and protect you.

Love,

Batya