Di Leo: Three Years After October 7, Democrats Have Abandoned Israel

By John F. Di Leo, Opinion Contributor

We are a nation at war.

Not by our choice, of course; but then, it only takes one country to declare a war. The jihadist Twelvers who run Iran declared war on the United States, and on Israel, and in fact on pretty much the entire world, 47 years ago, and they’ve been at war with the world ever since.

Israel has borne the brunt of it, most of the time, since they are geographically so much closer, and when it came time for us to fully join the fight last year, Israel and the United States became true wartime allies again, collaborating in the noble effort of destroying Iran’s military capabilities while keeping civilian casualties to an absolute minimum.

There are many kinds of allies. There are allies by virtue of being in a historic but largely obsolete commonwealth, like the British Empire is today. There are allies by virtue of geography, next door neighbors forced to work together to defend themselves against a common enemy. There are even unhappy allies by virtue of sharing the same enemy, despite being opposed in every other way, as in the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II, created solely because we both found ourselves at war with Germany and Japan.

Our alliance with Israel is like none of these.

Israel is a true friend, not just because we share a common enemy, but because we share common values, common roots, common worldviews, and in many ways, even common histories.

Just as the United States was founded primarily by religious Christians seeking a new and safe homeland, free of persecution by their former governments, modern Israel was largely founded by religious Jews similarly seeking a new and safe homeland, following centuries of persecution elsewhere. (The analogy isn’t perfect, since Israel was originally the home of the Jews, millenia ago, and there has been a continuous Jewish presence there forever, even when the population was sparse, but that difference doesn’t diminish the similarities).

The United States is a republic, a nation of constitutional self-government dedicated to liberty, the ultimate role model nation for the philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment, bringing Western Civilization to the Western Hemisphere. And Israel is similarly the role model of self-government in the Middle East, the only functioning republic dedicated to human liberty and Western values in the region.

And Israel was founded in part by settlers from the United States; some of their heads of state and other senior politicians studied or worked here before rising to high office there.

The two nations are united both culturally and economically, sharing Judeo-Christian values and traditions. We were among the first nations to recognize Israel upon its founding in 1948; even our very first free trade agreement, in 1984, was with Israel.

The country is indeed a true friend.

So on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas militants poured through a hundred separate entry points to attack, torture, and murder innocent, unsuspecting Israelis, we Americans joined the Israelis in mourning their losses and in in demanding a response.

In the worst attack on Jewish civilians since World War II, these demons of Gaza stormed defenseless partiers at a music festival, weak old farmers in kibbutzes, unarmed families in their homes. Hamas hunted down children, burned babies in kitchen ovens, mutilated their victims’ corpses, and drove back into Gaza to celebrate these acts of barbarism, parading dead bodies through cheering Gaza crowds.

For a few days, it actually seemed like the vast majority of the American population understood what had happened, rightly connected the horror with the devilish philosophy that spawned it, and would move forward with clarity, both politically and culturally.

The terrorists of Hamas, after all, had shown their true selves for all to see. It was finally clear that the warnings of the Right had not been exaggerated; the enemy had in fact not changed in fourteen hundred years, and it was time to acknowledge the fact.

But the hard Left, now becoming known as the Red-Green Alliance (the atheist socialists in union with the islamofascists) was furious at the sight of normal people supporting the Israelis in mourning their dead and in praying for the hundreds who the monsters had taken captive.

And so, the hard Left mobilized.

During the weeks immediately following the atrocities of October 7, tent cities and traffic jams sprang up in downtowns and college campuses across America, filled with people in keffiyehs, waving the imaginary palestinian flag and chanting “Death to America,” and similar slogans.

Even the most jaded among us never dreamed that they would have the audacity to use a holocaust like October 7, 2023 to try to turn American public opinion against the innocent victims in Israel, much less that they could get away with using it to make the bloodthirsty terrorists of Gaza seem sympathetic to the gullible. But sure enough, they tried, and in many cases, they succeeded.

Even as recently as just a few years ago, most Democrats still gave lip service to being general supporters of Israel, and to opposing terrorism in all its forms. Even while the Democrats supported “islamic cultural centers” and permitted the building of radical mosques all over the country, even when Democrats were pouring tax dollars into terror-supporting organizations through USAID and the UN’s myriad NGOs, they still at least claimed out loud that they weren’t supporting the terrorists themselves.

No longer.

Since October 7, 2023, the Democrats have turned into a blatant anti-semitic party, an enemy of Israel and a supporter of our mutual enemies. More and more, the Democrats shamelessly argue a case on behalf of the Twelvers of Iran, the mass murderers of Gaza, and the so-called “palestinian” groups who have been launching rockets into Israel, setting off pipe bombs in public squares and pizzerias, and loading children with backpack bombs into buses and trains for generations.

As we approach our own elections in the coming weeks, we see Democrats running for county boards and state legislatures, even for the United States

House and Senate, openly supporting the butchers of October 7 and calling for an end to America’s traditional support of our friend and ally Israel.

The last three years have been a revelation to those who pay attention to current events and to the political structure of our nation. The growth of anti-semitism and anti-Israel policy in American politics is terrifying, not only because it’s the wrong policy, but because of what it says about us, as a people.

America has always tried to be “the good guy,” supporting the side of right and civilization around the world. We haven’t always succeeded, but we’ve tried, and we’ve certainly never supported monstrous mass murderers against a friendly, civilized, (small R) republican ally before.

We have less than a month to go, in which we get to make a choice of our own.

Democrats have candidates like Melat Kiros of Colorado, Rashida Tlaib and Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and hundreds more like them on the ballot this November.

Rather than being just a part of the Democrat coalition, this anti-Israel, pro-terrorist wing is calling the shots in the modern Democrat party. They are among the few dependable sources of financial support for their party, and even the less radical Democrats of old have happily ceded authority to them in exchange for the almighty dollar and the electoral victories that their numbers (of both legal and illegal immigrants) can promise.

Today’s decent Democrats are therefore in a difficult position. Their gut tells them that voting for more old-fashioned Democrats might protect their party from the power of their islamist wing, but their brains tell them otherwise: that in fact, since more moderate Democrats buckle under to the commands of the islamists, electing a moderate Democrat today is no different from electing a pro-terror islamist, because their voting records in office will be indistinguishable from each other. The radicals lead; the moderates just follow.

The Democratic party isn’t under assault any longer; it’s already been taken over.

Today, a vote for any Democrat is a vote for Hamas, for Hezbollah, for the Houthis, for the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Most of them will never admit it, but when you look at their voting records in office, the record is undeniable.

So much has changed in three years.

The atrocities of October 7 happened half a world away from us; the horror and sadness took time to sink in.

But that day was also commandeered by our mutual enemies, and our politics have irrevocably changed as a result. The enemies are out in the open now; we see them gaining power, and on election day, we have the chance to take that power away from them.

American politics are no longer what they once were. It’s not just about whether we favor a slight tax hike or a slight tax cut, or whether we favor a new cabinet department or going a certain direction on the Supreme Court.

Today, our elections are about whether we still side with innocent victims or if we want to support their oppressors… whether we still stand for Western Civilization and Judeo-Christian values or if we want to enable sharia law and the rape culture and violence that it brings… whether we still support sister countries like Israel, with fair elections and parliamentary governance, or if we support terrorism and islamic theocracies.

We pray for the souls of the victims of that tragic fall day in 2023, and for the friends and families who mourn them.

And we also pray for our own wisdom, here in the USA, as we seek the guidance of Divine Providence in making the right choices in the midterm elections that are fast upon us.

Copyright 2026 John F. Di Leo