Opinion
After the 2026 election, American Jews should pay attention to a language I first heard growing up in the Soviet Union.
I have lived in the United States since 1980. I built my business here. I raised my family here. My children and grandchildren are Americans. America is my home.
In forty-six years, I cannot remember being more concerned about the political future of American Jews.
Something changed in the 2026 election. On Election Day itself, President Trump announced that the United States would end its roughly $4 billion in annual aid to Israel. The following day, after Republicans lost control of Congress, Vice President JD Vance was unusually direct:
“The reason we lost is the war.”
He said that among the reasons former Trump-Vance voters gave for switching sides were ending the Iran war, focusing on inflation, putting America first — and “change our relationship to Israel.”
That last phrase deserves more attention than it has received.
For most of my life in America, support for Israel was one of the relatively few foreign-policy positions that crossed party lines. Democrats and Republicans argued about Israeli governments, settlements, Palestinians and peace negotiations, but the fundamental relationship was rarely questioned.
That consensus is weakening from both directions.
On the progressive left, Israel is increasingly described through the vocabulary of colonialism, apartheid, occupation and genocide.
On the America First right, the language is different: Why should America pay for Israel? Why should Americans fight Iran? Why should Israel have a special relationship with the United States?
These movements begin in very different places. But they may eventually arrive at the same destination:
A weaker relationship between America and Israel.
And American Jews should stop pretending that this is merely another political disagreement.
What Kind of Jew Is Acceptable?
Politicians who attack Zionism frequently insist that they have nothing against Jews.
They respect Judaism. They have Jewish friends. They attend Seders. They oppose antisemitism.
Perhaps all of that is sincere. But I think we are asking the wrong question.
I am less interested in whether a politician personally likes Jews than in what kind of Jew his politics is prepared to accept.
The Jew who separates himself from Israel? The Jew who denounces Zionism? The Jew who says Judaism is merely a religion and that Jewish peoplehood carries no national rights?
What about me?
I am an American Jew who believes unapologetically that the Jewish people have the same right to national self-determination that other peoples demand for themselves.
Am I still the right kind of Jew?
This question is not theoretical to me. I grew up in the Soviet Union. The Soviet state officially condemned antisemitism. Yet “Zionist” became a politically useful word of suspicion and condemnation.
I know that vocabulary.
That is why something that happened in Philadelphia this month disturbed me so deeply. On November 8, activists organized a boycott targeting six Jewish-owned restaurants. Their flyer called them: “Zionist Establishments.” And declared:
“These Zionist Establishments must go! Not in our city!”
The organizers insisted they were targeting the businesses because of their owners’ support for Israel, not because they were Jewish.
I understand the distinction.
It does not reassure me.
Perhaps one of the most dangerous moments for a minority is not when society announces that it hates the minority.
It is when society decides that only a particular version of that minority is acceptable.
The harmless Jew.
The silent Jew.
The Jew embarrassed by Zionism.
But what happens to the Jew who refuses?
From Campus to Politics
We have already seen the warning signs on American campuses. A 2026 AJC-Hillel survey found that 42 percent of current and recent Jewish college students reported experiencing antisemitism during college.
Thirty-four percent said they had avoided displaying their Jewish identity because of fear of antisemitism. Thirty-eight percent had avoided expressing their views about Israel. One-quarter had felt excluded from a campus group or event because they were Jewish.
These students are not living on the margins of American society. They are attending institutions that produce tomorrow’s journalists, lawyers, professors, corporate executives and political leaders.
Today’s campus vocabulary becomes tomorrow’s establishment vocabulary. Perhaps 2026 showed us that process already underway.
History Doesn’t Announce the Ending
Whenever Jews invoke history, someone inevitably says: America is not Nazi Germany.
Correct. It isn’t. That is not my argument. The lesson of Germany is not that every warning sign leads to Auschwitz.
The lesson is that by the time everyone agrees the warning signs were real, it may be too late to act on them.
More than 100,000 German Jews served in Germany’s military during World War I. Roughly 12,000 died for Germany.
They were Germans. They were patriots. They were physicians, professors, businessmen, lawyers and scientists. Many could not imagine where their country was going.
Nobody standing in a voting booth before Hitler took power was being asked to vote for Auschwitz. Auschwitz did not yet exist.
That is precisely the point.
A slogan becomes acceptable. Then exclusion becomes acceptable. Then a boycott becomes acceptable. Then identifying businesses belonging to an unwanted group becomes acceptable.
At every stage, reasonable people say: You’re exaggerating. You’re overreacting.
That’s not what they mean. It won’t go any further.
History does not repeat itself by announcing the ending in advance.
There Is One Enormous Difference
When European Jews finally understood the danger, another terrible question confronted them: Where could they go?
In 1938, thirty-two countries gathered at Évian to discuss the refugee crisis.
There was sympathy. There were speeches. There was very little willingness to admit substantially more Jewish refugees.
The following year, the St. Louis sailed from Germany carrying more than 900 passengers, almost all Jewish refugees.
Cuba refused most of them. The United States did not admit them. Canada did not admit them. The ship returned to Europe.
For centuries Jews facing persecution repeatedly confronted the same question:
Where do we go?
Today there is an answer.
Israel.
That is why the attempt to make Zionism itself morally illegitimate concerns me far more than criticism of any Israeli government.
There is a difference between criticizing what Israel does and denying that Israel has a right to exist.
Netanyahu is temporary. Governments are temporary. Policies are temporary.
Zionism means something more fundamental.
It is the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination.
It means that the Jewish people will never again be entirely dependent on whether another country is willing to let us stay.
Or willing to let us in.
For centuries Jews were told: You don’t belong here. Go somewhere else.
Now that Jews finally have somewhere else, we are increasingly told:
You don’t belong there either.
Could Jews Eventually Leave America?
I hope what I am about to say proves completely wrong. But I believe it should be said.
If the present trajectory continues, I believe America will eventually experience a significant Jewish exodus.
Not tomorrow, not every Jew, and not because America has become Nazi Germany. It hasn’t.
People do not have to wait for catastrophe before deciding that a country has become too hostile for their children.
America was the country Jews came to when they were escaping antisemitism.
I came here in 1980 believing America had finally broken the historical cycle. I built my life here believing it.
Now I watch Jewish students learning when not to display their Jewish identity.
I watch Jewish-owned businesses labeled “Zionist establishments.” I watch hostility toward Israel becoming politically successful on parts of the left. And I watch skepticism toward America’s relationship with Israel growing on parts of the right.
So I find myself asking a question I never imagined asking when I arrived here:
Will my grandchildren feel as safe being openly Jewish and openly Zionist in America as I did?
I no longer know. I hope that 20 years from now they read this article and tell me: “Grandpa, you overreacted.” Nothing would make me happier.
But Jewish history has taught me that recognizing danger too early carries a smaller price than recognizing it too late.
Today we are repeatedly reassured: “We have nothing against Jews. Our problem is Zionists.”
I grew up in the Soviet Union. I have heard that distinction before.
And now I hear it in America.
Here we are.
By David Mavashev