Military support for Israel has long been a default position among mainstream Democrats and Republicans. The war in Gaza, which began with Hamas’ horrific October 2023 attack, changed all that. Israel’s killing of more than 75,000 Palestinians, as well as its role in the Iran war, has led to a steep drop in popularity among Democratic voters — and increasingly among lawmakers as well. And the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, once seen as an untouchable force, has swiftly become anathema to much of the party, with major figures like Gavin Newsom swearing off donations.

This has presented an opening for J Street, a liberal Zionist lobbying group founded in 2008. For years, J Street operated as a lonely voice in the shadow of AIPAC. But it has gained influence as its core ideas increasingly align with the center of the Democratic Party and is now poised to play a major role in shaping the party’s future posture toward Israel. I spoke with the organization’s founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, about where AIPAC went wrong, why he doesn’t promote a two-state solution anymore, and how he’s thinking about 2028.

Last week, 40 Democratic senators voted against selling arms to Israel. That marks a huge uptick in opposition among the party since a similar vote in 2024. Do you view this as a major turning point?Absolutely. It is a very important change for the Democratic Party and for the U.S. relationship with Israel. It’s extraordinarily important that we’ve reached the end of the era of a blank check to Israel. Israel, more and more, is going to be treated like a normal country and a normal ally and is going to be held responsible for its behavior, policy choice, and actions. That’s healthy for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and this was a very significant step in that direction.

J Street recently reversed its position on arms sales to Israel, which you wrote about in a long post on Substack. Why now, after two and a half years of war and chaos?I want to be clear that we’re not saying to end arms sales to Israel. What we’re saying is that the U.S. sells a great deal of arms — to one might say far too many countries — and it should to Israel as it does to other countries. The question is, “Who pays?” The U.S. should sell what it sells to others and Israel should pay. That’s what we are saying.

And the reason that now is a moment to start thinking about this is that we are coming to the end of a ten-year agreement between the United States and Israel concerning the provision of nearly $4 billion a year in taxpayer subsidies to the government of Israel. During the course of this war, one of the issues that has made the critiques of what Israel is doing resonate so deeply in the U.S. is that the U.S. paid for a lot of the arms that Israel is using. That needs to stop, and we’re coming to the point of thinking about what the relationship is going to be after the memorandum of understanding ends. And we believe it’s time to rapidly and responsibly phase out financial taxpayer subsidies.

I know it is hard to measure your own influence, but do you think Democrats have been paying attention to J Street’s views on this issue?I definitely think that more and more, J Street is expressing the mainstream view of both the Democratic Party and the American Jewish community. We’ve just recently done some polling that shows that 70 percent of American Jews don’t think there should be unconditional support for Israel in terms of finances and arms sales anymore. The era of that kind of unconditioned blank-check support is over. And I think J Street speaks for the majority of Democrats and the majority of American Jews in saying we care about the state and the people of Israel. We object to the policies and actions of this government, and it’s time to put some limits and conditions on the way in which our arms are being used.

Have you as an organization ever felt this much alignment with mainstream American Jewish opinion on Israel? Or has that happened mostly as a result of the war? The organization turned 18 this week. The reason we launched it in 2008 was that already back then we felt that organizations that were purporting to speak for the majority of American Jews no longer represented the views of the majority of American Jews. We believed the things we were saying were representative of what I call the 50-yard line of the........

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