Israel took a beating in the US midterms | Judith Levine

“You took a chance on the unlikeliest of candidates,” Abdul El-Sayed told a Detroit crowd on Wednesday, declaring victory in Michigan’s hard-fought, often ugly, Senate race. In what was predicted to be a squeaker, the Democrat beat his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, by a healthy seven points.

In some ways, El-Sayed was an unlikely candidate. At 34, in his first run for elected office, he set his sights almost cockily on a US Senate seat. He ran on what has become an uncontroversial affordability platform but also championed the socialist-adjacent Medicare for All.

But what was generally believed to qualify him as an unlikely candidate – and an even unlikelier winner – was his uncompromising criticism of Israel’s policies toward Palestine and Palestinians.

The assumption that El-Sayed’s Israel politics would doom his chances shaped the campaigns of his pro-Zionist Democratic primary rival, Haley Stevens, and the pro-Israel Rogers. It was certainly the wager that the rightwing American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, placed when it wasted nearly $30m – its biggest investment ever in a single race – trying to defeat El-Sayed.

We don’t know yet, but his strong criticism of Israel may have put El-Sayed, and other Democrats, over the top. And like the Republicans, Israel and its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, took a beating in the US midterms.

Six candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, a prominent antagonist to rightwing Zionism, won Congressional races in part by foregrounding their primary opponents’ links to Aipac and their own refusal to take its funds. They all were running in bright-blue districts where the winner of the Democratic primary is the winner of the general election.

In Colorado, Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old lawyer, handily beat primary rival Diana DeGette, the 15-term incumbent backed by a Super Pac with Aipac links. In a New York district comprising portions of upper Manhattan and the Bronx, Darializa Avila Chevalier took down the once invincible Adriano Espaillat, who also had help from a Super Pac with ties to the group. The publication City and State New York predicted that Chevalier, a graduate student leader in Columbia University’s anti-Gaza war encampments, would be “the most pro-Palestine member of Congress”.

Where there was no sunlight between the candidates on the Israel question, some candidates used artificial light. In Brooklyn’s “commie corridor”, the victory of former state assembly member and artist Claire Valdez over the principled progressive Antonio Reynoso was tainted by her unsubstantiated charges that a mysterious Pac supporting him was funded by Aipac. It was in fact funded by one of New York’s teachers’ unions.

The Times of Israel noted pointedly that Pennsylvania’s Chris Rabb had the endorsement of the “far-left online streamer Hasan Piker”, whose support plagued El-Sayed in Michigan. But Rabb’s support did not come only from the extremes. Along with the DSA, the Maryland representative Jaimie Raskin, a Jew, endorsed Rabb, as did the respectable, radical Jewish Voice for Peace.

Rabb won without pulling any political punches. Last week he posted on X: “The Nakba never ended,” referring to the 1948 expulsion of Palestinians to establish a Jewish state on their land. In Michigan, Donavan McKinney defiantly labeled the last section of his plank “Palestine”.

More nuanced Israel politics also were in play. In Ohio, both Democrat Sherrod Brown, the winner, and Republican John Husted got help from pro-Israel organizations, but with different politics. The liberal Zionist J Street, which backed Brown, is critical of Israeli government policies and supports a two-state solution. Aipac stood with Husted.

In Georgia, the Jewish Democratic senator Jon Ossoff mapped a position that must have nettled voters on both sides. Expressing a commitment to Israel’s security and also to valuing “the lives of innocent Palestinians”, he voted in the Senate for some US military aid to Israel while opposing certain weapons transfers. That said, the choice was probably uncomplicated for Georgia’s Jews. Mike Collins, the Republican whom Ossoff trounced 59% to 41%, has ties to promoters of white nationalism and antisemitism.

Brad Lander, a lifer in New York City left-Democratic politics, has maintained his Jewish and progressive bona fides by displaying sympathy for both Israeli Jews and Palestinians. But he is not a slave to any official progressive stance.

He launched his primary campaign by vowing he would not be “doing Aipac’s bidding” and challenging the incumbent Dan Goldman, an unwavering Zionist and recipient of Aipac funds, to do what he had refused to do: call the Gaza war genocide and support the Block the Bombs Act, which would limit arms sales to Israel. Still, Lander quit the DSA after 30 years of membership when it publicized a patently pro-Hamas rally the day after the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians on 7 October 2023. He picked up the endorsement of the Working Families party.

Their politics run from radical to liberal. But what all these winners have in common is their rejection of Israel’s wars and occupation and their support of Palestinian self-determination.

In many places, Israel probably had little effect on the elections. While its military continues to commit what the UN calls crimes against humanity in the occupied territories, Israel is off the front pages of US newspapers. Voters in poll after poll placed foreign policy way down their lists of concerns. Trump may be wrong that “people agree with what [he’s] doing in Iran”, but he might be right that it’s the consequent high gas prices that trouble them most.

In the president’s cold heart, Israel still has a place, and he believes the feeling is mutual. “I’m at 99% approval rating in Israel – can you believe it?” he mused on Fox & Friends. (Actually, no. Pew found his numbers were not even close.) Then Trump dreamed out loud: “If people get tired of me in the US, I’ll move to Israel and become prime minister.”

On the other hand, Bibi has not been terribly affectionate lately. Trump may want to punish him.

He’s certainly lost patience with the prime minister that country has now. Before election day, Trump said he’d cease sending $4bn annually in aid to Israel. While Maga’s ship is foundering, maybe its captain hopes to ride the ripple of the blue wave that’s cooling Americans’ sentiment toward Israel.

• Judith Levine is a frequent contributor to the Guardian. Her Substack is Today in Fascism