Democratic Voters Say They Want Change, But the Party Just Elevated More Hawks

Despite growing dissatisfaction among Democratic voters with the U.S.’s ongoing military support for Israel, the House Democratic leadership has picked two foreign policy hawks — Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) and Wesley Bell (D-Missouri) — to join the House Foreign Affairs Committee (HFAC), while also promoting an even worse hawk, Jared Moskowitz (D-Florida), to become a ranking member of the Middle East and North Africa subcommittee.

Moskowitz is among the most right-wing Democrats in the House regarding Israel. He opposes any conditions on U.S. military aid to the Netanyahu government and was one of only a dozen Democrats who voted for a 2023 Republican supplemental aid package to Israel during the height of the Gaza genocide. He has conflated criticism of Israeli war crimes with antisemitism and he authored an amendment to ban the use of State Department funds to cite official Gaza casualty figures. He opposes Palestinian statehood except on terms agreed to by Israel, despite the fact that Israel’s current government opposes any kind of Palestinian state. And he was among the small minority of Democrats to vote against the War Powers Resolution targeting U.S. support for Israel’s war on Lebanon and supported sanctioning members of the International Criminal Court for investigating war crimes by Israel or any other U.S. ally.

The HFAC’s ranking member and likely next chair Greg Meeks (D-NY) — similarly a hardline supporter of Israel and of autocratic U.S. allies — unsurprisingly praised the new likeminded appointees and expressed positivity about how they will soon “guide the committee as it addresses urgent challenges in national security and diplomacy.”

Moskowitz’s appointment in particular should be of concern to supporters of human rights and international law: It puts him in the position to chair the subcommittee in the likely event that Democrats gain a majority in the House of Representatives after the November elections.

As chair, Moskowitz would have significant influence over the Middle East policy promoted by the Democratic Party, becoming the party’s de facto spokesperson on the House side and allowing him to shape legislation and oversight involving Israel and the Middle East as a whole. Committee and subcommittee chairs have considerable power in determining who gets to testify, thereby enabling Moskowitz to refuse a fair hearing to human rights advocates and others opposed to U.S. support for the Israeli government and Arab dictatorships.

Upon his appointment, Moskowitz — as a sign of his backing of the Trump administration’s support for the Israeli government and autocratic Arab regimes — pledged to use his position “to strengthen America’s relationships with Israel and our Gulf allies.” And he acknowledged the power that he will have, telling Axios, “If Democrats take control of the House, I’ll be in a position to help steer U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East.”

Moskowitz, Wasserman Schultz, and Meeks are grossly out of step with Democratic public opinion. Nearly three-quarters of registered Democrats oppose providing additional military or economic aid to Israel. Indeed, eight out of 10 Democrats and Democratic-leading independents view Israel unfavorably and barely 16 percent think favorably of the U.S.-backed Israeli government. Sixty-five percent of Democrats now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, as compared with 17 percent who side with Israel.

Indeed, there is probably no issue where the policies pursued by the Democratic leadership are so out of step with the views of the rank-and-file.

Israel is not the only occupying power supported by Moskowitz. The Florida Congressman is a strong backer of Morocco’s illegal and repressive occupation of the nation of Western Sahara, a full member state of the African Union that the kingdom invaded in 1975 in defiance of a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions and a landmark ruling of the International Court of Justice. He is one of only a handful of Democrats to support a bill to designate the Polisario Front — the secular, democratic, and moderately leftist movement which governs Western Sahara — as a foreign terrorist organization, despite the fact that that they have never engaged in terrorism or have ties with any terrorist groups.

Moskowitz has pushed to fast-track arms transfers to Morocco to support its increasingly brutal occupation, ostensibly to counter Iran and Iran-backed groups, even though that northwestern African nation is thousands of miles from Iran or any pro-Iranian militia, and none of them has weapons capable of reaching it. This bill also supported expediting arms to Bahrain, which has brutally suppressed the pro-democracy movement in that island nation, as well as to the United Arab Emirates, which has been supporting the genocidal Rapid Support Forces in Sudan.

In addition, Moskowitz serves as co-chair of the Congressional Friends of Egypt Caucus, which promotes closer ties and billions of dollars’ worth of military aid to the brutal dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Indeed, authoritarians throughout the region know they now have a powerful and influential friend in the Democratic leadership.

Meanwhile Moskowitz is also one of Congress’s leading Iran hawks. During sensitive negotiations prior to the war, Moskowitz declared that “now is not the time to appease” Iran, insisting that the Trump administration adopt a tougher stance — even acknowledging that he was to the right of Vice-President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff and was more closely aligned with far right senators Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and the late Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina). Last year, he was one of only two Democrats to oppose an effort to block an incipient war on Iran through enacting the War Powers Resolution, calling it the “Ayatollah Protection Act.”

Perhaps not coincidentally, Moskowitz has bought stock in Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest military contractor, on four occasions since joining the Foreign Relations Committee.

In short, the Democratic leadership has chosen an ally of a right-wing Republican administration as the Democratic party’s chief representative of a key subcommittee, despite his views on the Middle East conflicting with those of an overwhelming majority of Democrats. The appointment of Moskowitz in 2026 is essentially the equivalent of the Democratic leadership having in the 1980s appointed a supporter of the Salvadoran death squads, the Contra terrorists in Nicaragua, and the genocidal junta in Guatemala to the leadership of the Western Hemisphere subcommittee.

Not surprisingly, right-wing news outlets such as the National Review, Algemeiner, Washington Examiner, and Newsmaxhave defended the selection of Moskowitz and the other hardliners while dismissing concerns from Democratic human rights activists.

Democrats and other liberal and progressive critics are pushing back, however.

Dylan Williams, vice president for governmental affairs at the Center for International Policy, noted how “Moskowitz is deeply out of touch with Democratic voters on the very issues the party’s House leadership just entrusted to him.”

The Institute for Middle East Understanding sent out a statement saying:

Just as the Democratic Party is asking its voters to donate and volunteer for the midterms, party leadership in Congress elevated one of its most out-of-step members to block the changes most Democratic voters are demanding. This encapsulates so much about what’s wrong with today’s Democratic Party leadership.

Carrie Kharrazian, a senior policy adviser for Demand Progress, said:

By making a hard-line Israel supporter their point person on Middle East policy, House Democratic leaders are doubling down on a failed approach to Israel that shows contempt for the clear and growing majority of Democratic voters who want to stop cutting blank checks for the Israeli government. Donald Trump’s ongoing wars in the Middle East and his commitment to keeping the US joined at the hip to Israel are wildly unpopular and have been a disaster for the nation. Elevating someone who consistently sides with Trump in support of Israel, and who has a long record as an Iran hawk, represents clear political malpractice on behalf of House Democratic leaders.

Erik Sperling, executive director at Just Foreign Policy, called the decision to appoint Moskowitz “shocking,” noting that “Meeks and [House Democratic leader Hakeem] Jeffries are apparently intending to signal that the anti-war and pro-Palestinian movements are unwelcome in the [Democratic] Party.”

Ben Rhodes, who served as Deputy National Security Advisor during the Obama administration, wrote that the Democratic leadership was “showing zero regard for the vast majority of their own voters,” adding that their “disregard for war crimes and voter concerns could not be clearer.” He spoke for many by observing that it was “a giant ‘fuck you’ from Democratic leadership to Democratic voters.” He continued, “Dems are counting on people not noticing how they approach governing. Appointments on HFAC are a signal of what the party cares about and the disregard for war crimes and voter concerns could not be clearer.” And he predicted that the House leadership’s choices would leave Democratic voters feeling like their concerns were being “completely ignored.”

Congressional Democrats have been speaking out as well. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), argued that, “By elevating a genocide denier who has said he is ‘to the right’ of JD Vance on the war on Iran, Democratic leadership is once again ignoring the base of our party who want the funding of the genocide to end.” And Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California) shared a social media post saying, “Don’t put Israel hawks out of touch with our voters in charge of our Middle East policy.”

Congressional committee assignments are not usually the top thing on voters’ minds come Election Day. However, this blatant disregard for the views of the Democratic rank-and-file will only reinforce a growing sense that the Democratic Party leadership simply doesn’t care what their constituents believe. Despite establishment Democratic leaders’ dismissal of peace and human rights advocates’ anger at their support for dictatorship, repression, occupation, apartheid, genocide, colonization, and terror as “single-issue” politics, for many Democratic-leaning voters these are fundamental moral issues that go well beyond the Middle East.

As we approach what may be the most critical midterm election in our nation’s history and with so much at stake, the appointments of Moskowitz, Wasserman Schultz, and Bell will only add to the bitterness and cynicism of progressive Democrats.