This Zionist Democrat Declares Independence from My Party
If you’ve never read an opinion piece by an author about to weep in anguish as he presses every keyboard button, welcome to your first experience. On this July 4th celebration of America’s independence, I just changed my party registration from Democrat to unaffiliated. In my U.S. state of residence, that means I’m now a registered independent.
I did so because the Democratic Party has passed the tipping point in becoming an anti-Israel party that coddles Antisemitism in the guise of anti-Zionism.
Over the years I’ve heard others who changed party affiliation, in either direction or who registered as independents, talk about how easy the decision was for them once the tipping point became clear. They said they didn’t leave the party, whichever it might have been. They framed their choice as the party’s having left them.
However true that might be in my case, that’s not my coping mechanism. I wish it were. You are witnessing a hurt soul in real time.
I’m 63. The Democratic Party has been one of my five identities my entire life. My being an American, a Jew, a Zionist, a Democrat and a member of the LGBTQ community have all brought me joy. They’ve been central to my senses of self and self-esteem.
Stop right there. I am in tears, just as I said I’d be. I am an open, vulnerable, no bull kind of guy.
Allow me to tell you about my lifelong commitment to the Democratic Party.
I have been an activist in the party since age 6, when I played hooky from first grade to stuff envelopes to our local Democratic headquarters in the 1968 Presidential campaign for Hubert Humphrey.
I also grew up as the passionate Zionist I am today. My favorite President during my childhood and since has been Democrat Harry Truman for recognizing the State of Israel. Alongside Humphrey, Henry “Scoop” Jackson was my favorite U.S. Senator because of his commitment to Israel and the Jewish people. The first rally I helped to organize was in 1974, when I was just 12, on behalf of the Jackson-Vanik Amendment that forced the Soviet Union to allow it Jews to emigrate, many of whom made Aliyah.
I was president of the College Democrats on campus, where I became known as Steven Democrat.
In full-fledged adulthood, I served as a delegate to three Democratic National Conventions. I served on the DNC’s Platform Committee in 2016, where I advocated for the plank, which passed, declaring Jerusalem the united and eternal capital of Israel. That could never happen in today’s Democratic Party.
The Democratic Party I loved that loved me back is no longer recognizable. I did everything not to change my affiliation as I did today. Believe me, when your identity has been so linked to a political party, even when the party begins to horrify you, you wait as long as possible before leaving. It’s no different from a struggling marriage.
My closest friends in politics, Zionist Democrats like me, all but begged me not to change my registration. Many agree with my assessment of the Democratic Party but felt I could still effectuate change from the inside.
Guess what? Party identification is more than about politics. It is also an anthropological choice that’s an expression of your values. It gives you a family you share with others who believe as you do.
As a gay man whose family had a hard time accepting me, I cannot bear the pain of another family rejecting me, this time because I support Israel.
I tried everything to stay in this family. I watched torturedly as a substantial number of Democratic U.S. Senators voted for resolutions not only opposing Israel, but also threatening Israel’s existence. But I had an excuse to remain a Democrat: The number of anti-Israel Democrats in the U.S. Senate, at least, were a minority. This past April, 15 of the 47 Democrats in the Senate voted for Bernie Sanders’ resolutions to end U.S. aid to Israel. I was angered by those 15, but hey, they were only 15.
The tipping points for me came over the last two weeks. In New Jersey, where I lived and worked for 20 years until 2023, including nearly 10 years the founder and leader of the LGBTQ civil rights organization Garden State Equality, the Assembly cancelled a promised vote on adopting a definition of Antisemitism because it included Antisemitism linked to anti-Zionism.,
Democratic voters in my native New York City nominated Zohran Mamdani, a young man who has spent his entire adulthood – from college until his race for mayor at age 33 – having been in engaged in the most virulent forms of Antisemitism. Though once nominated by the party Mamdani said “Globalize the Intifada” was not language he would use, Globalize the Intifada is the violent, anti-Jewish movement in which he trafficked either directly or indirectly.
Mamdani also refused to condemn Hamas’ attacks on Israel, including the murder of Israelis and the rape of Jewish women, until the end of the primary, when under pressure he finally used the term “hate crime.”
Let me make this clear: I am not opposed to Mamdani because of Islamophobia. I have been outspoken against Islamophobia for years. During President Trump’s first term, I was a leader in the fight against his ban of Muslim refugees.
As outraged as I am by Mamdani’s win, I am also outraged by the reaction of other Democrats – yes, Zionist Jewish Democrats – to his win. They now cite his promises not to be Antisemitic. They now cite his campaign platform to throw money at fighting Antisemitism.
Here’s what I have to say to those same Zionist Jewish Democrats: How can you be so gullible? When people show you who they are, believe them. Then again, gullibility may not be the problem. When did your party affiliation become more important than your principles?
That never was, and will never be, the case for me.
After Mamdani won the primary, I spoke to one New York Democrat who, like me, is Jewish and a Zionist. He told me he didn’t want to endorse Mamdani but felt he now had no choice. The future of the party in this November’s election and beyond, he said, was in the hands of the progressive anti-Israel activists responsible for Mamdani’s rise. Israel-supportive Democrats in New Jersey, the state with the second-highest Jewish population by percentage, told me something similar.
If that doesn’t sound like a tipping point, I don’t know what a tipping point would mean to you.
The hypocrisy in my party – scratch that, my former party, as I cry more – is unbearable. Other than his support for Israel, as well as his commitment to fighting Antisemitism that was absent in his first term, President Trump pursues policies that repulse me.
Yet I supported his decision to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz and Ifsahan.
Tell me, Democrats who have spent your entire lives protesting for No Nukes: Why would you oppose an operation to take our Iran’s nukes that were a danger to Israel and the world? Is it because they were pointed at the one Jewish state?
Will you now acknowledge that the operation, along with Israel’s Operation Rising Lion, did not lead to a wider war? Will you acknowledge that the loss of civilian lives on both sides was minimal? Of course you won’t. We’re talking about Israel.
I have heard Democrats tell me that President Trump is using Israel and Antisemitism to divide the Jews. If so, I have an easy answer: Don’t take the damn bait.
You have the choice. You can stand by us Jews when our lives are in more danger around the world, including in Israel and the United States, than at any time since the modern State of Israel’s founding in 1948. You can stop showcasing cherry-picked Jews who support your radicalism – like the anti-Zionist Jewish Voice for Peace – when polls show 80 to 90 percent of Jews consider Israel’s survival and well-being as a tenet of their beliefs.
To be sure, I care about the loss of all civilian lives. I care about the loss of Palestinian lives in Gaza. I am not the heartless warmonger some of you radicals claim mainstream Democrats are. I blame Hamas for hiding terrorists, hostages and munitions in civilian homes, schools and hospitals.
All this said, my registering as a Republican would be out of the question. I have voted for both Democrats and Republicans in recent elections and will continue to do so.
I cannot be a member of a Republican Party that refuses to condemn the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
I cannot be a member of a Republican Party that just passed its “big, beautiful bill” to strip 17 million Americans of healthcare.
I cannot be a member of a Republican Party that – however you feel about trans women competing in women’s sports – heaps gratuitous cruelty to these women by calling them “men.”
I cannot be a member of a Republican Party that has eviscerated laws I helped to write or pass, during my career as a senior staffer in the U.S. House and Senate and leader of two civil rights organizations, to advance the rights of women, people of color and LGBTQ people, and that reduced the threat of gun violence to all Americans.
I am still a liberal – a mainstream centrist liberal opposed to the Squad and the AOC-Mamdani radical left. I’m a John Fetterman-Richie Torres Democrat who, unlike them, couldn’t take it anymore. The last straw came in a CNN poll that showed Democrats sympathize with the Palestinians over Israel by a margin of 43 points, a shocking change from the 13 point margin for Israel within the party in 2017.
The issue is not sympathy for the Palestinians. The issue is sympathy for the radicalization that being pro-Palestinian today has become. “Free Palestine” means the death of the State of Israel.
I don’t know my having registered as an independent today represents a trial separation or a divorce from the Democratic Party. Odds are, I will re-register as a Democrat before the 2028 Democratic Presidential primaries to be able to vote in them.
Regardless, I will always oppose the Democratic Party’s radical anti-Jewish trend. I will always speak out against the party’s refusal to see the link between Antisemitism and anti-Zionism. How can you Israel-bashers in the Democratic Party deny the link when, as the ADL reports, Antisemitic incidents in the United States rose 200 percent since October 7, 2023?
Tell me, if you don’t believe Israel has the right to exist, where are Jews enduring brutal Antisemitism throughout the diaspora supposed to go: To the cemetery?
Dear God, I wish I didn’t have to make the choice I did today. Just as I thought I would, I have wept as I wrote every word herein.
At least for now I am no longer a Democrat, and a piece of me has died.
