The 2026 midterm elections in the United States brought a slew of victories for candidates who made their hostility toward the Jewish state a prominent part of their campaigns.
In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed defeated Republican Mike Rogers in a closely contested Senate race, after repeatedly accusing Israel of genocide and making withdrawal of aid to the Jewish state a central part of his platform.
Other candidates who promoted similar positions against Israel also won seats in the House of Representatives, including Chris Rabb in Pennsylvania, Donavan McKinney in Michigan, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York – all members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Their victories mark a significant expansion of congressional representation backed by an anti-Zionist organization that rejects the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, a position long considered anathema to U.S. politicians. Several successful candidates also faced controversies involving their weak responses to antisemitism or violence against Jews, yet those controversies did not prevent them from winning office.
In Pennsylvania, Chris Rabb made the false genocide accusation a central issue in his congressional campaign, challenging voters to ask which candidate “publicly disavows AIPAC” and was willing to acknowledge “an ongoing genocide” financed by American taxpayers. During a televised debate, he declared, “We have to acknowledge our complicity in an ongoing genocide in Gaza.”
In Michigan, Donavan McKinney made the same accusation part of his official campaign platform, declaring that “Israel needs to immediately end the genocide” and pledging to end American military aid and weapons shipments to Israel. In an April interview, he explained that he could not justify spending billions on weapons for Israel while Detroit residents struggled to obtain health care, public transportation and clean water.
In Colorado, newly elected Congresswoman Melat Kiros made her anti-Zionism and the genocide canard part of her campaign, stating that she would make sure U.S. tax dollars “are not complicit in this atrocity.” She declined to describe the 2025 firebombing of a Jewish gathering supporting Israeli hostages in Boulder as antisemitic, characterizing it instead as an anti-Zionist attack that “could have also turned into antisemitism,” although the attacker later admitted that he targeted his victims because of their Jewish religion or Israeli national origin.
In New York, Darializa Avila Chevalier’s campaign platform demanded an end to what it called “the genocide and occupation in Palestine,” along with the termination of all funding to Israel. In a September op-ed, the candidate accused Netanyahu of orchestrating genocide and explained her arrest outside the United Nations while protesting his visit.
Fellow New Yorker Claire Valdez’s platform charged that Presidents Biden and Trump had financed “genocide in Palestine.” In a September interview, Valdez confirmed that Palestine had been an important campaign issue, declaring, “Nearly three years of genocide is hard to reconcile.”
In Maine, Democrat Troy Jackson defeated five-term Republican Senator Susan Collins after repeatedly accusing Israel of genocide and pledging to oppose American military aid to Israel. During a September interview, Jackson called it “unfortunate” that some Jewish Mainers refused to describe Israel’s actions as genocide because of their Jewish identity and the Holocaust. He subsequently apologized for generalizing about Jewish voters, while maintaining his false accusation of genocide.
And in New Jersey, a state with one of the largest Jewish populations in the U.S., the genocide accusation became an official ballot designation. Independent candidate for Congress Seamus O’Toole ran under the slogan “STOP ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE,” which appeared as his party designation on the state’s official ballot list. He lost his bid for election.
Equally disturbing was the employment of familiar antisemitic tropes about Jewish financial control, divided loyalties and responsibility for the nation’s economic hardships during the campaigns.
In Michigan, an advertisement for Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, produced by Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC, blamed Israel for economic hardships in the U.S. It depicted a couple shopping for groceries, with the woman telling her husband they could not afford eggs because “we have to set that $7 aside for killing Palestinians.” She went on to suggest that U.S. taxpayers were probably also paying for Israel’s universal health care. (In fact, the average price across the U.S. of a dozen eggs was closer to $2.00, down from previous years and Israel’s universal healthcare system is funded by Israeli taxpayers, but truth and accuracy never seems to matter in the greater goal of demonizing Jews, or in this case, the Jewish state.) The ad pitted Israel’s alleged interests against those of ordinary Americans, portraying the former as enriching itself at the expense of struggling American families. It cast Republican Mike Rogers as betraying his constituents to serve Israel, while presenting El-Sayed as the true patriot fighting for Americans.
The message revived familiar Nazi-era propaganda tropes, blaming Jews for the nation’s economic woes and accusing politicians of divided loyalties. Uygur reinforced both accusations in an X post promoting his PAC’s advertisement. He declared, “We have to suffer here at home, so Israel can get all its wars. That’s why they buy politicians like Mike Rogers.” And he accused Rogers of promising to serve Israel “unconditionally” rather than his American constituents. When Jewish leaders and Democratic politicians condemned the ad as antisemitic, Uygur angrily dismissed their criticism. When challenged about the antisemitic ad, El-Sayed denied responsibility and ultimately claimed not to agree with its contents yet steadfastly refused to condemn it as explicitly antisemitic or criticize those responsible for spreading it, turning his ire instead on reporters whom he claimed “love to play the condemn game.”
What was once rejected as antisemitic propaganda was now repackaged as an electoral tool, with hostility against the Jewish state turned into a litmus test of patriotism and political integrity.
The normalization of such rhetoric was also evident in the growing political influence of Hasan Piker, the popular socialist livestreamer who campaigned for El-Sayed and some of the newly elected members of Congress. Piker has declared that Hamas is “1,000 times better” than Israel, referred to Orthodox Jews as “inbred” and compared the heavily Jewish Detroit suburb of West Bloomfield to a Ku Klux Klan neighborhood. He has also suggested that American Jewish institutions are inviting violence against Jews by promoting identification with Israel, a claim condemned as antisemitic by Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. His hostility extends to the United States itself. In 2019, Piker infamously declared that “America deserved 9/11,” a remark he later walked back. And in a September 2026 interview with Axios, he asserted that the United States had committed more terrorism than al-Qaeda, “pound for pound,” and argued that American actions had caused enormous suffering around the world.
Piker’s participation in the Michigan Senate campaign became particularly controversial when Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens, whom El-Sayed had defeated in the primary, endorsed Republican Mike Rogers two days before the election. Citing El-Sayed’s association with Piker, Stevens declared, “We can’t stand with hate. We can’t stand with Hasan Piker.” Piker responded by branding Stevens an “Israel first snake” who is “weirdly obsessed with Israel and has been paid handsomely for this strange obsession…” The familiar accusation of Jewish financial influence and divided loyalties resurfaced, this time directed against a Democrat for publicly challenging antisemitism.
Piker also played a prominent role in campaigning for several other Democratic candidates. He appeared alongside Chris Rabb at campaign events in Philadelphia, drawing hundreds of supporters and more than 20,000 online viewers. Rabb later angrily rejected calls from fellow Democrats to distance themselves from Piker, dismissing the pressure with “F*ck that noise.” He supported Melat Kiros in Colorado and campaigned for Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York. Tellingly, the Democratic Socialists of America chose him to host its livestream of election night and chat with DSA-backed candidates.
From the opposite end of the political spectrum came an equally significant development.
In Texas, Republican candidate Bo French employed an explicit antisemitic libel against his Jewish Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal. A campaign fundraising appeal depicted Rosenthal smiling at the Bolshevik execution of Russia’s Romanov royal family, accusing him of sharing the revolutionaries’ hostility to Christianity. The attack revived the Nazi-era conspiracy theory of Judeo-Bolshevism, which portrayed Jews as communist subversives bent on destroying Western civilization. French lost the November election to Rosenthal.
In his November 4 postmortem on the Republican defeats, Vice President JD Vance blamed the Republican losses on the war with Iran and singled out America’s relationship with Israel as one of the primary sources of voter dissatisfaction. He suggested that what voters want is to end the war, put America first, and change the U.S. relationship with Israel. Coming from the vice president of the United States, from a party that had been staunchly pro-Israel, his suggestion that support for the Jewish state was a liability while distancing America from Israel would be a political advantage was particularly concerning.
There is a disturbing historical precedent for antisemitic accusations crossing political and ideological boundaries. In Germany following World War I, Jews were blamed for the nation’s economic collapse, portrayed simultaneously as predatory capitalists and Bolshevik revolutionaries working to overthrow capitalism. These contradictory accusations allowed movements on opposite ends of the political spectrum to unite in scapegoating Jews.
There is also a precedent in American politics. In September 1941, Charles Lindbergh, the leading spokesman for the original America First Committee, publicly accused Jews of helping push the United States toward war and invoked familiar conspiracy theories about Jewish influence over the press and government.
What the 2026 midterms have revealed is the disturbing shift in American politics. Accusing opponents of putting Israel before America has now become a way of claiming the mantle of patriotism, familiar antisemitic libels have gained legitimacy and support for Israel is increasingly viewed as a political liability across party lines.
