Leadership cannot mean discovering a boundary only after somebody has crossed it – First published on Substack
As I publish the letter below, I want to be unmistakably clear about what it is – and what it is not. This is not a weapon to be used against the Democratic Party, nor is it an invitation to turn Jewish anger, fear or dissatisfaction into an argument for abandoning it.
Yes, the letter reflects deep concern, anger, and the very real alienation many Jewish Democrats are experiencing. That said, I write it precisely because I am a loyal Democrat who cares profoundly about this party and what it represents. I believe Chair Ken Martin, the DNC and Democrats generally are who they say they are: People committed to inclusion, civil rights, LGBTQI+ equality, racial justice, immigrant communities, Muslims, Jews and every constituency that should find a political home here. My complaint is not that Democrats do not care about Jews.
My complaint is that leadership has too often failed to demonstrate that care with sufficient clarity, courage and immediacy when it matters most.
There will always be people within a large political coalition who scapegoat, impose ideological litmus tests, traffic in antisemitism, exploit for their own agendas, or demand that someone else surrender part of their identity as the price of belonging. They may sometimes be the loudest or most organized voices in the room. That does not make it acceptable.
That makes leadership more important, not less. Basic leadership means drawing lines before they are crossed; resisting the temptation to exchange principle for political expediency; and refusing to sacrifice justice, accuracy or inclusion because confronting a faction, an activist organization or even a bloc of voters may carry a political cost. Courage sometimes means being willing to lose a vote, even many votes, rather than allow the values integral to a coalition to become negotiable.
That is the spirit in which I sent this letter to Chair Martin, which I know he received today.
I am not asking Democrats to become less progressive – nor anything different. I am not asking for any special treatment. I am asking Democratic leadership to lead more decisively – boldly- according to the values that define our Party and those that we share. Poor leadership leaves vacuums, and vacuums are filled by the loudest voices, the best-organized factions and, eventually, bad actors acting in bad faith assume the lead. That weakens a party and can cause it, almost without noticing, to abandon the very principles that made people loyal to it in the first place.
My hope is that those who read this will make their voices heard, insist upon the leadership our loyalty has earned and our values demand, and fight for our place in this party rather than capitulate to those who would push us from it.
Here is the letter
Melanie Nathan
A Democrat
commissionermnathan@gmail.com
DNC CHAIR KEN MARTIN
Per E-Mail Delivery
August 20, 2026.
Dear Chair Martin,
I am writing to you not merely as an individual Jewish Democrat, but from a vantage point that I hope the Democratic National Committee will take seriously:
I am a co-founder and co-administrator of JWORI, formerly Jewish Women for Kamala Harris, a national community of more than 30,000 Jewish women. We span a wide spectrum of Jewish religious observance, geography, age, background, and intersecting identities. We are not ideologically monolithic. Many of us identify as Progressives and many as Progressive Zionists. What unites us politically is that we are Democrats, deeply alarmed by MAGA and committed to protecting democracy, civil rights, reproductive freedom, LGBTQI+ equality, immigrant communities and the other values we have long understood the Democratic Party to represent.
For decades, Jewish Americans, and Jewish women in particular, have been among the Democratic Party’s most dependable voters, donors, organizers, volunteers and advocates. We have marched, knocked on doors, raised money, made calls, hosted events, defended Democratic candidates around dinner tables and on social media, and stood with other communities when their civil rights were under attack. We have fought for Democratic victories even when we disagreed with individual candidates or policies because we believed in the larger coalition and the values holding it together.
In 2024, when democracy itself seemed to many of us to be on the ballot, Jewish women showed up overwhelmingly for VP. Kamala Harris. Our group partnered with a Jewish Democratic organization in a virtual event that raised significant campaign funding for the Kamala Harris campaign. According to the CNN/Edison exit poll, 88 percent of Jewish women voted for her, placing Jewish women among the most strongly Democratic constituencies in the country, alongside Black women. When a constituency that impactful and that loyal begins telling you it feels politically homeless, the appropriate response is not to question its loyalty. It is to ask what has happened to make that loyalty so difficult to sustain.
Since October 07, 2023, something profoundly startling is happening among Jewish Democrats, and I am not convinced the leadership of our party understands its depth or how to lead us through it.
If I attempted to catalogue every source of alienation Jewish Democrats are experiencing right now, this letter would become a thesis. There are political litmus tests surrounding Israel and Zionism; rhetoric that many Jews experience not merely as criticism of Israeli policy but as hostility toward Jewish collective identity; accusations and libels repeated with little concern for their accuracy; and increasing exclusion from progressive spaces many of us once led, and many regarded as our natural political home, including those as essential allies in the fight against MAGA.
The cumulative effect is enormous.
I hear from lifelong Democrats who say they have left or are considering leaving the party. Others say they will remain Democrats but will no longer contribute financially as they once did. Still others intend to vote Democratic selectively rather than reflexively. Michigan has become an especially troubling case study. Following Abdul El-Sayed’s extraordinarily narrow primary victory, Jewish Democrats, leaders and donors have publicly discussed voting for Republican Mike Rogers, leaving the Senate line blank, or withholding the support they would ordinarily give a Democratic nominee.
What is so significantly jarring is that Democrats who have spent their adult lives fighting Republicans are now seriously considering crossing party lines because they believe their own party no longer understands what threatens them.
When a Jewish voter hears a Democratic candidate refuse to condemn language such as “Globalize the Intifada,” that voter is not hearing an academic discussion about Palestinian liberation. That voter is hearing the invocation of a period remembered for suicide bombings, murdered civilians and attacks on Jews. Whatever a politician intends by refusing to condemn such language, Democratic leadership needs to understand what many Jewish voters experience is fear.
The same is true when political leaders associate comfortably with people who celebrated October 7, described it as legitimate “resistance,” or trafficked in rhetoric that Jews experience as celebrating or rationalizing violence against them.
Yes, antisemitism is rising across the political spectrum. We know perfectly well that the threat exists on the right, and nobody needs to explain MAGA’s extremists to Jewish Democrats who have spent years opposing them.
But that does not absolve our own party. Increasingly, Jewish Democrats feel that Democratic leaders speak solemnly about antisemitism in prepared statements while tolerating rhetoric and associations within our own coalition that would never be treated so casually if another minority community were the target.
Condemning antisemitism after the fact is not enough. Leadership means understanding the red lines, and establishing boundaries before the damage is done. We do not see that happening.
And that brings me to one word that has become emblematic of the problem:
“Genocide.”
People are absolutely entitled to believe that Israel has committed genocide. The Justices of the ICJ have ruled that the Palestinians have a “plausible right.” But they have not ruled that genocide is a plausible outcome in the case before it. They have made that clear. Scholars may argue it. Activists may allege it. Journalists may investigate it. Citizens may protest about it. Israelis themselves may debate it. None of that is my objection.
My objection is the conversion of an allegation of the gravest crime in international law into an established political fact before the tribunal charged with adjudicating the case has adjudicated it.
The International Court of Justice has not issued a final judgment finding that Israel committed genocide. The South Africa v. Israel case remains underway. Yet Democratic politicians increasingly state “Israel committed genocide“ or “the genocide in Gaza“ as though a legal judgment already exists.
That distinction matters enormously to me. As a former human rights lawyer, and the director of a global human rights organization, I have spent my professional life around law, human rights and the consequences of accusations of grave wrongdoing. Justice requires evidence, counter-evidence, legal standards, jurisdiction, procedure and adjudication. We would never permit a prosecutor’s allegation to become a murder conviction simply because enough respected people repeated it. Genocide should not receive a lesser standard of justice because the accused state is Israel. Belief is not judgment. Repetition is not proof. And political consensus is not adjudication.
And yet Rep. Ro Khanna, a prominent Democratic congressman with a significant national platform, has repeatedly described Israel’s conduct as genocide as an established fact. That is neither truthful and nor is it responsible.
A member of Congress carries authority. Words spoken on national television, at Democratic gatherings and through DNC platforms carry institutional weight. The public reasonably assumes that people wielding that authority understand the distinction between an accusation and an adjudicated legal conclusion. What if the ICJ rendered a not guilty verdict. And all the while Democratic members of Congress and a silent DNC had declared it fact! It ultimately reflects on the DNC!
Which brings me directly to your leadership.
I am informed about the live-streamed DNC meeting at which Rep. Khanna launched into accusations of genocide.* The reaction in the room – including members walking out – speaks volumes. It was a visceral illustration of exactly the exclusion, discomfort and growing sense of political homelessness I am describing.
What troubled me almost as much as what Rep. Khanna said was what Democratic leadership did not say. That moment reminded me of an extraordinary opportunity for courageous leadership such as when presidential candidate McCain stood up for presidential candidate Obama.
You are the Chair. There was an opportunity in that moment to say something both principled and remarkably simple:
Democrats may vigorously debate Israeli policy and the conduct of this war. They may condemn civilian suffering and demand accountability. But allegations of genocide remain before the International Court of Justice, and the Democratic Party does not present an un-adjudicated legal allegation as though a court has already rendered judgment.
That would not have censored Ro Khanna. It would not have silenced Palestinians. It would not have endorsed Netanyahu. It would simply have defended accuracy, due process and the rule of law.
You did not do it.
And I find myself asking a question I suspect many Jewish Democrats are asking in different forms:
Why?
Were you afraid of the political consequences of challenging him? Did you not have the tools or information necessary to respond in the moment? Did you believe the statement was acceptable? Or did you underestimate how profoundly such moments are being experienced by Jewish Democrats watching their own party?
I worry that Democrats have waited too long to alter the current paradigm. It may already be difficult to recover some of what has been lost before these midterms.
I am also concerned that extremist politics and ideological purity tests on Israel risk not only alienating Jewish Democrats, but costing the party moderates, independents, and others who otherwise share its domestic agenda.
We know what the Republican Party has become. That is precisely why it should alarm you that Democrats who understand that danger are nevertheless contemplating voting Republican.
The answer cannot simply be to tell frightened Jewish Democrats that Republicans are worse. I do not believe the answer is for the Democratic Party to abandon progressivism. Quite the opposite. There is an enormous opportunity here.
The DNC possesses organizing capacity, political talent, communications expertise and candidate-development machinery on a scale that activist organizations can only dream of.
Find and cultivate compelling young Democratic leaders who can speak passionately about economic justice, healthcare, reproductive freedom, racial justice, LGBTQI+ equality, climate, immigration, workers’ rights and human rights, without requiring them to adopt an anti-Israel worldview as the entrance fee to progressive politics. You can make that stand. Develop candidates with every ounce of the energy, charisma and conviction that attracts young people to DSA-backed candidates, but who understand that progressive politics should not include litmus tests designed for Jews.
And understand what is happening on campuses.
I recently wrote about the extraordinary sophistication of the political machinery influencing young students around Israel and Zionism. Students arrive on campus and encounter an already assembled vocabulary – genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, resistance, intifada – reinforced through organizations with agendas, demonstrations, social-media ecosystems and institutions that lend those ideas an appearance of settled moral authority.
My response is not to blame students. It is to recognize successful political organizing when I see it.
If movements hostile to Israel can build an apparatus capable of persuading, recruiting and organizing an entire generation, then the Democratic Party can certainly build an equally sophisticated apparatus for a genuinely inclusive progressivism, one capable of attracting young voters without requiring hostility toward Israel or alienating American Jews.
I am asking for a plan.
First, hear Jewish Democrats directly. Engage beyond the established institutional voices. Meet with grassroots Jewish Democrats, the women, organizers, donors, activists, students and longtime party loyalists who are telling you that something has changed. Hear what we are experiencing before more of us quietly withdraw our money, our labor, our enthusiasm, or ultimately our votes.
Second, prepare the party for the political season ahead. Do not wait for the next convention, DNC meeting, candidate forum or televised appearance to discover in real time that someone has crossed a line. Decide now what the Democratic Party regards as legitimate policy disagreement and what requires immediate challenge. Equip chairs, moderators, surrogates and party leaders with the facts and language to respond when political violence is romanticized, antisemitic tropes appear, Jews are subjected to ideological loyalty tests, or unresolved allegations are presented from Democratic platforms as established fact.
Third, develop a genuine strategy for political belonging. Recruit, cultivate and support progressive candidates who can energize young voters without making hostility to Israel, Zionism or Jewish collective identity – the price of admission. The Democratic Party should be capable of advancing Palestinian dignity and rights while simultaneously making unmistakably clear that Jewish dignity, safety and self-determination belong inside the same progressive framework.
Fourth, set standards and enforce them consistently. Leadership cannot mean discovering a boundary only after somebody has crossed it. The party needs to know in advance what it will defend, what it will challenge, and what it will not normalize simply because confronting it may be politically uncomfortable.
And finally, come to the grassroots before the grassroots give up on coming to you.
Please listen to us. Engage us. Build the plan. Prepare your leadership before the next transgression rather than apologizing after it. Develop candidates who can unite rather than fracture the coalition. And make unmistakably clear that Jewish Democrats do not have to surrender any essential part of ourselves in order to remain at home in the Democratic Party.
The writing is on the wall. The question is whether Democratic leadership will read it in time. I am asking you to lead before this becomes a postmortem.
Many thanks for your kind attention to this.
Sincerely,
Melanie Nathan
Co-Founder and Co-Administrator, JWORI
Formerly Jewish Women for Kamala Harris
cc. Dr. Carol Goldman , Co-Founder JWORI
I am linking three essays because they elaborate on what cannot possibly fit into this letter:
“Dear Democratic Party” — on what the Michigan Senate race and Abdul El-Sayed’s candidacy reveal about the growing alienation of Jewish Democrats. https://substack.com/@melnathan/p-210078836
Genocide: The word genocide was not incidental to the political vocabulary surrounding his candidacy. It carried enormous moral force, was easily repeated, readily amplified, and increasingly functioned as a politically expedient slogan.
https://substack.com/@melnathan/p-211333159
My back-to-school essay on Jewish Voice for Peace and campus organizing — not merely as a critique of one organization, but as a case study in how effectively political narratives are being constructed and delivered to young people. https://substack.com/@melnathan/p-211867855
*Meeting took place Aug 2026.
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