The Left is imploding because of its anti-Israel obsession.

From antisemitic politicians to grocery-store boycotts, the Left's fixation on the Jewish state is driving away voters, dividing its coalition, and turning "activism" into self-sabotage.

Image generated using AI for illustration purposes only

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This is a guest essay by Bob Goldberg, who writes the newsletter, “The New Zionist Times.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Do Left-wing parties and their supporters really believe they can win back voters by blaming Israel for Palestinian terrorism and violence, treating Jewish self-defense as the real obstacle to peace, and then asking for applause because they oppose concentration and castration camps for Zionists?

They might think they’ve cleared the moral bar of not openly proposing camps for Jews. But if your “mainstream” position is that Israel is always guilty, Palestinian society and leaders are never responsible, and Jewish survival becomes suspicious the moment it is militarily effective, then people like Maureen Galindo are not an aberration. They are just a part of the platform.

Democrats say Galindo — a Texas congressional candidate who drew sharp condemnation for proposing the conversion of an ICE detention center into a prison for “billionaire American Zionists” and a “castration processing center for pedophiles,” alleging many Zionists belong to that group — was propped up by a Republican-funded political action committee (PAC), which may be true.

But blaming Republicans for Galindo is like blaming the bartender because you got drunk and started yelling at the waiter. Yes, someone may have helped create the circumstances, but the words still came out of your mouth.

Galindo’s great innovation was not “anti-Zionism.” The Democratic Party, like many Left-wing movements across the West, already has plenty of that. Her innovation was saying it with the subtlety of a hostage video. Concentration camps? Castration camps? For Zionists? At some point, you are not “criticizing Israeli policy.” You are auditioning for the role of the person everyone pretends not to know at Thanksgiving.

And yet Democrats still cannot seem to understand why this stuff does not play well outside the “activist” bubble. They keep confusing likes from people featuring watermelon emojis in their bios with actual voters. They think if something gets applause in Brooklyn, it must be a national movement.

That is not politics. That is cosplay with a voter file.

Which brings us to New York City’s famed supermarket Park Slope Food Coop, whose members decided to vote for the boycott of Israeli products last week, just days before Zohran Mamdani became the first New York City mayor to skip the annual Israel Parade since 1964.

Park Slope Food Coop is that holy shrine of “progressive” self-congratulation where people apparently believe Middle East peace begins by removing Israeli snacks from aisle three — because nothing says “I understand geopolitics” like standing between the oat milk and the organic lentils and declaring war on the Israeli snack Bamba.

This is the sort of place where boycotting chickpeas is treated like storming the Bastille. It is not “resistance.” It is a grocery-store tantrum with a membership committee.

And what exactly is the plan? Ban Israeli products, make Jewish members feel unwelcome, invite a discrimination lawsuit, lose customers, and then look around in confusion, wondering why the utopia smells like expired kombucha? But at least everyone gets to feel morally pure while paying fourteen dollars for kale that tastes like something scraped off a lawnmower.

This is the genius of modern boutique radicalism: Take a conflict you barely understand, reduce it to a consumer choice, punish the Jews, and call it “justice.”

The Park Slope crowd may seem ridiculous, but they are not some fringe curiosity. They are the lifestyle wing of a broader political disease. The same mentality shows up in mainstream Left-wing candidates like U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, who seems to believe that hostility toward Israel is not just morally sophisticated but politically brilliant.

Here is the theory: Punish the only democracy in the Middle East, demand nothing serious from the Palestinians, call it “peace,” and then act shocked when Jewish voters stop answering your emails.

Van Hollen wants the United States to cut military sales to Israel, including Iron Dome upgrades, while restoring funding to the United Nations agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and the Palestinian Authority, recognizing a Palestinian state, and cutting off funds that could help confront the Islamic Republic of Iran.

And what does he demand from the Palestinian Authority in return? Nothing. Not reform, not accountability, not an end to its pay-to-slay-Jews official policy, not an end to incitement in schools and media, not the dismantling of terrorist infrastructure, not even a passive-aggressive note that says: “Hey, guys, maybe stop naming streets after people who murder Jews.”

Instead, the Palestinian Authority gets treated like a misunderstood nonprofit, while Israel gets treated like the problem child for defending itself from people who keep announcing, in multiple languages, that they would like it erased. This is not diplomacy. It is foreign policy written by people who think Hamas can be defeated with a ceasefire resolution and a really moving Instagram carousel.

The same people who think banning Bamba is a blow against colonialism also believe that if America weakens Israel enough, the Palestinian Authority will magically become moderate, responsible, democratic, peaceful, feminist, carbon-neutral, and probably gluten-free. This is like telling a robbery victim to turn off the alarm, unlock the door, leave cookies on the counter, and hope the burglars discover empathy.

We have already run this experiment.

Israel left Gaza in 2005. The world said, “Now we will see what the Palestinians build.” And we did. They did not build a Singapore in the Middle East. They built a terror fortress and elected Hamas.

But sure, let’s try it again. Weaken Israel, strengthen the Palestinian Authority, fund UNRWA, recognize a Palestinian state, ask for nothing in return, and then pretend to be surprised when the result is not Switzerland with falafel.

Left-wing politicians and their supporters keep telling themselves this is the road to a “two-state solution.” But Israel has offered the Palestinians a state before — in 2000, in 2008, and in earlier negotiations — and the answer was always a Palestinian resounding no. Not “yes, with modifications.” Not “let’s discuss borders.” A simple, plain no.

Because the central issue has never simply been whether there should be a Palestinian state next to Israel. The issue has always been whether there should be a Jewish state at all. That is the part everyone keeps trying to avoid, because once you admit it, the whole “just pressure Israel more” theory starts to look less like moral courage and more like malpractice.

So leftists can stop pretending Maureen Galindo is some Republican-created freak accident. Strip away her grotesque rhetoric about camps, and the policy core looks awfully familiar. Did Republicans see a chance to cause trouble in a Democratic primary? Of course. That is what political operatives do. This is not exactly a Dan Brown mystery.

But Republican PACs did not make Galindo say what she said. They did not slap a Nazi tattoo on Graham Platner (a candidate for the Democratic Party in this year’s U.S. Senate election in Maine). They did not hypnotize the North Carolina Democratic Party into nearly passing a resolution accusing Israel of genocide.

They do not explain Adam Hamawy, run for a New Jersey House of Representatives seat in the upcoming Democratic Party primary, serving as a defense witness for the Blind Sheik, who was involved in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, or his volunteer work with a charity later identified by the U.S. and UN as part of al-Qaeda’s support network. They also do not explain his claim that Iron Dome “insulates Israel from the consequences of its genocidal policies,” which is a very elegant way of saying that Jews surviving rockets is somehow the real problem.

They do not explain Democratic Michigan U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed saying he “struggles with the idea of a Jewish state,” while apparently having no similar existential crisis over the many countries that explicitly define themselves through Islam.

When the Jewish state exists, suddenly everyone becomes a graduate seminar in nationalism. When dozens of other countries organize themselves around religion, ethnicity, monarchy, tribe, or revolutionary ideology, somehow the moral migraines disappear. The problem, apparently, is not nationalism. It is Jewish nationalism.

For all the speeches about how accusing Israel of “genocide” will restore the Democratic Party’s credibility with voters and energize the coalition, the Park Slope Food Coop is offering a useful lesson in reality: Treat pro-Israel Jews as disposable, and some of them leave.

Members are resigning. Jewish members say they feel targeted. An internal survey found many respondents considering resignation, refunds, or extended leave. Even Park Slope’s own leadership has warned of a potential sales hit of roughly $400,000 a month. Who could have predicted that turning grocery shopping into an “anti-Zionist” struggle session might be bad for business?

The Park Slope Food Coop, like politicians such as Zohran Mamdani, insists that boycotting Bamba (or opposing New York City’s annual Israel Parade) is merely a critique of “the current Israeli government.” Please, spare us. This is the same dodge every time.

It is always “just Netanyahu,” “just the occupation,” “just the war,” “just the settlements,” “just this government.” And yet somehow the target keeps expanding until it includes Israeli food, Israeli artists, Israeli academics, Israeli athletes, Israeli flags, Israeli parades, Israeli Jews, and then eventually Jews who refuse to apologize for our indigenous homeland and self-sovereignty in it.

At that point, it is not a policy critique. It is a political laundering operation. The language says “human rights.” The practice says “make Jewish public life conditional.”

The same thing that is happening in the snack aisle can happen to the Democratic Party.

If Jewish Zionists decide that support for Israel is a make-or-break issue, Democrats will discover very quickly that these voters are not passive ornaments in the coalition. They are paying attention. They vote. They donate. They organize. And they know the difference between criticism of Israeli policy and the kind of obsessive hostility that somehow always ends with Jews being told to sit down, shut up, and accept their moral reeducation.

The exact same collapse will happen to the Democratic Party, especially if Jewish Zionists make support for Israel a make-or-break issue. Pro-Israel and Jewish Zionist voters are not checked out; we are paying close attention. Our support for Israel is intense, personal, and politically consequential. Kamala Harris tried to tiptoe around this issue and significantly underperformed Joe Biden’s 2020 Jewish vote totals in critical swing states.

The snack aisle is a warning. If the Left continue to ignore it, it will be at their own peril.

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