Stop Throat Clearing and Start Denouncing

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, June 24, 2026

 

American Jews need to stop with the apologizing.

 

After spending 500 words attacking AIPAC earlier this week, Rabbi Jill Jacobs wrote: “This is all a long way of saying that AIPAC has had an extremely negative impact on American politics, and on the lives of both Israelis and Palestinians for a very long time. They deserve to be criticized, exposed, and opposed. That said, this election cycle has brought a disturbing trend of progressive candidates and electeds depicting AIPAC as a bogeyman, and as THE evil influence in American politics.”

 

That said. Oh, by the way. Nevertheless.

 

“There are real, important critiques of AIPAC and of money in politics,” begins a tweet by Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, gingerly laying the groundwork for the mildest rebuke of left-wing anti-Semitism you will ever read: “Dehumanizing ‘monsters’ rhetoric or coffee shops arbitrarily banning a Jewish congressman reinforce the same divisive, dangerous, zero-sum dynamics the right has long pushed.”

 

Banning a Jew from a coffee shop is bad because it’s… politically divisive? Also, I can’t help but notice that no one is named in the tweet. Who used “dehumanizing ‘monsters’ rhetoric?” It was the mayor of New York City, progressive darling Zohran Mamdani. Seems worth mentioning.

 

The Twitter/X page of New York Jewish Agenda, a liberal political group, leads with the following statement: “We have been deeply critical of AIPAC’s policies and approach to politics. No matter those very deep differences, it’s vital that our leaders do not resort to rhetoric and attacks that only reinforce polarization and division. Especially at this moment of fear and rising antisemitism, flattening these urgent conversations with dehumanizing language is counterproductive to building a broad and vibrant movement for human dignity.”

 

Wonder who they’re talking about! The only one named in the tweet is AIPAC. Allow me to repeat myself: The only one named in a tweet about an anti-Semitic attack on AIPAC is AIPAC.

 

Perhaps it’s worth noting that Mamdani’s anti-Semitism coordinator was director of New York Jewish Agenda when the mayor hired her.

 

Some reporting also took this, shall we say, measured tone. “I can confidently say few journalists who report on Israel, the Jewish world or otherwise have covered AIPAC with as much scrutiny as yours truly,” begins Ben Samuels’s piece at Haaretz. His reporting has covered “how AIPAC fuels Israel’s hyperpoliticization in American politics and the long-standing role it plays in fomenting Israel as a wedge issue within the American Jewish community.”

 

AIPAC, Samuels says, was not always very happy with him: “In fact, some of the most contentious and difficult conversations of my career have been with senior AIPAC officials who have resented Haaretz’s framing of the organization’s allegiance to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, its embodiment of Big Money’s role in U.S. electoral politics, its push for policies antithetical to the Democratic Party’s base and its increasingly out-of-step demands at dictating the American-Jewish conversation surrounding Israeli policy — whether that be on the Gaza war, Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran, or Netanyahu’s efforts to gut Israel’s judiciary.”

 

Now I know what you’re thinking: When do we get to the be that as it may? Here it is: “All of this should be duly considered when I warn that criticism of AIPAC has far surpassed dangerous territory, where valid critiques have too often devolved into ad hominem dehumanization—all while American Jews’ acute concerns over antisemitism and communal safety are more pressing than at any other time in recent memory.”

 

Look: a bit of throat-clearing as a rhetorical device is something we all use. Sometimes, in fact, it’s the polite way to handle a difficult conversation. That said, be that as it may, nevertheless, one should seek to convey the level of one’s discomfort honestly when objecting to rhetoric or behavior in the political arena.

 

Example: After that coffee shop told Rep. Dan Goldman that they don’t serve his kind, Democratic congressman Josh Gottheimer, who is Jewish, posted a picture of Goldman’s office after it was vandalized a couple years ago by anti-Zionist lunatics. He put that picture side by side with a Berlin shop hit by anti-Semitic graffiti in 1933. “These are the same photo,” Gottheimer wrote, adding: “Enough is enough. Where do we draw the line?”

 

Clear and right to the point. In response, Jared Moskowitz—another Jewish Democrat in the House of Representatives—wrote: “This time we are gonna fight back.”

 

Moskowitz and Gottheimer have been, to their great credit, urging the pro-Israel Jewish community to go on the offensive. As Gottheimer said last month: “I am sick and tired of people apologizing, of making excuses. We should feel proud of the U.S.-Israel relationship, of the independence, of what it’s done for America, of the bipartisan nature, historically, of the relationship and thank God we have Israel to help us fight terror, to stand for freedom and to stand for democracy.”

 

Elected Jewish Democrats are up against a rising tide of anti-Semitism within their caucus. Those who are fighting back deserve the same unapologetic support from left-of-center and Democratic Party-associated Jewish groups and figures.