Christmas. 9, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Rahm Emanuel’s speech Wednesday at Tel Aviv University is exactly the kind of message Israelis — and U.S. supporters of Israel<\/a> — need to hear.<\/p>\n

Immanuel—a”https:\/\/www.ms.now\/chris-jansing-reports\/watch\/rahm-emanuel-teases-2028-run-attempts-to-pull-democrats-to-the-center-240384069706″>likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender whose father was born in Jerusalem and fought as a member of the Irgun (an underground paramilitary faction) during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence — has been a staunch supporter of Israel through a distinguished political career that includes stints as a senior adviser, chief of staff and ambassador in, respectively, the Clinton, Obama and Biden administrations. He is about the furthest you can get from the anti-Israel activist left ascendant<\/a> in the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

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He said what should be obvious to everyone: that the era of the U.S. government’s tacit rubber stamp on Israeli aid and policy is over.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
But unlike many “pro-Israel” U.S. figures that are really just pro-Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right, land-grabbing, atrocity-committing government<\/a>Emanuel is trying to stake out both a moral and strategic position: that a true friend doesn’t have to agree with everything you say and do. Rather, a loyal ally tries to dissuade you from making terrible, irreversible mistakes — like annexing the West Bank to placate racist, religious fanatics<\/a> dreaming of a “Greater Israel” with no Palestinians on the land at all.<\/p>\n
In his speech<\/a>Emanuel empathized with Israelis’ cynicism about peace efforts, given the fact that past Israeli governments offered sovereignty for security deals that were rejected three times in the 1990s and 2000s by what Emanuel characterized as “corrupt” Palestinian leadership. He also said he understands why Israelis felt isolated and besieged after Hamas sparked a war<\/a> with its rapes, murders and kidnappings of civilians and military personnel on Oct. 7, 2023<\/a> — atrocities that were celebrated as righteous resistance by many left-wing advocates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
But Emanuel also made it clear that Netanyahu’s government prosecuted its war of vengeance in indefensible ways, “leaving the world to conclude that Israelis not only want to kill Palestinians but they are completely indifferent to their death, to their destruction, and completely indifferent to their suffering.” Citing Israel’s plummeting approval ratings — especially among young people — in the U.S. and Europe, Emanuel warned his audience, “You’re less safe today, not more, and the problem isn’t the lack of military strength but something more fundamental,” which is isolation from the rest of the world in diplomacy, science, economics and the arts, among other things. He also said what should be obvious to everyone: that the long era of the U.S. government’s tacit rubber stamp on Israeli aid and policy is over.<\/p>\n
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Emanuel aptly noted that Israelis who want to annex the West Bank to create a “Greater Israel” are ideological cousins of the anti-Israel activists who chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Neither side leaves any room for the other, which can only result in bloodshed.<\/p>\n
The one novel idea Emanuel put forth was a “23 state solution” — one in which the Palestinians are finally granted sovereignty, and the 21 Arab states recognize Israel’s legitimacy. This might be as fantastical in reality as reviving the seemingly-dead “two state solution<\/a>,” but credit to Emanuel for thinking outside the box in a way that calls for all the players in the region to stake a claim in a possible future peace process.<\/p>\n
Emanuel’s speech comes at a time when the Democratic Party faces a reckoning on Israel\/Palestine, with leftist candidates breaking the firewall that once held near-universal support for U.S. aid to Israel. It also comes at a moment when a lot of anti-Zionist activism has given itself tacit permission to engage in rank antisemitism<\/a> — a growing, disquieting problem mainstream Democrats and liberals have yet to adequately address.<\/p>\n
Take the recent harassment of California state Sen. Scott Wiener, who was accosted and essentially chased away from San Francisco’s Trans March<\/a> by pro-Palestinian activists who accused him of having “Zionist handlers.” Wiener, who is Jewish, has been a vocal critic of the Netanyahu government and described its war in Gaza as genocide. But because he has said the state of Israel has the right to exist and defend itself as any other nation in the world would, Weiner was smeared as “genocidal” and menaced into retreat.<\/p>\n
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Emanuel aptly noted that Israelis who want to annex the West Bank to create a “Greater Israel” are ideological cousins to the anti-Israel activists who chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n
Some of Israel’s supporters like to indulge in the 19th century Zionist fantasy that Palestine was “a land without a people for a people without a land.” In fact, Israel’s 1948 War of Independence was, as many wars are, replete with war crimes<\/a> committed on both sides<\/a> and concluded with the forced displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs (known as the Nakba, “catastrophe” in Arabic). These circumstances of Israel’s birth are considered by many pro-Palestinian advocates to be Israel’s original, unforgivable sin.<\/p>\n
And yet, another Middle East nation-state was born around the same time, also out of the ashes of the crumbling British Empire, in a devastating war where civilians were deliberately slaughtered, millions were displaced in ethnic cleansing campaigns and a new state favoring one religious group over others was created. That nation is Pakistan. While the conduct of Israel and Pakistan’s governments cannot be directly conflated, no U.S. politician risks being chased out of a Pride march for saying Pakistan has the right to exist<\/a>.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of U.S. Jews — 88% according to a Jewish Federations of North America<\/a> survey released in February 2026 — say “Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish, Democratic state.” (That same poll found only 37% identified as “Zionist,” which speaks to both the toxicity surrounding the label and a misunderstanding of its meaning<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
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Much of the anti-Zionist activist left appears to be uninterested in addressing the reality that if supporting Israel’s right to exist marks a person as “genocidal” and worthy of total ostracization, then nearly 9 in 10 U.S. Jews fit that label — making accusations of antisemitism difficult to dismiss.<\/p>\n
This is why Emanuel’s speech, flawed though it may be, is important. Here is a proud Zionist, a potential future U.S. president, telling Israelis that if he has anything to say about it, sanctions are coming for Israeli settlers who attack Palestinians and steal or destroy their property, as well as for the politicians who back those crimes and the companies facilitating and profiting from such illegal land grabs.<\/p>\n
The broad strokes of Emanuel’s speech may provide the groundwork of a viable path forward for Democrats who support Israel’s continued existence — beseeching Israelis to hold their own government accountable for its myriad alleged war crimes in Gaza, its active ethnic cleansing campaign in the West Bank and the genocidal threats issued by senior ministers of Netanyahu’s cabinet<\/a>. To reject this advice from a friend would be a conscious choice to turn Israel into a pariah state and betray its own stated values.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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Christmas. 9, 2026, 6:00 AM EDT Rahm Emanuel’s speech Wednesday at Tel Aviv University is exactly the kind of message Israelis — and U.S. supporters of Israel — need to hear. Immanuel—a”https:\/\/www.ms.now\/chris-jansing-reports\/watch\/rahm-emanuel-teases-2028-run-attempts-to-pull-democrats-to-the-center-240384069706″>likely 2028 Democratic presidential contender whose father was born in Jerusalem and fought as a member of the Irgun (an underground paramilitary faction) during […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-trump"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25592","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25592"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25592\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25592"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25592"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25592"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}