{"id":4136,"date":"2026-03-05T02:23:24","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T02:23:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/4136\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T02:23:24","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T02:23:24","slug":"gavin-newsom-calls-israel-sort-of-an-apartheid-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/4136\/","title":{"rendered":"Gavin Newsom Calls Israel \u2018Sort of an Apartheid State\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Democrats\u2019 ranking political weather vane has spoken. In a conversation with Jon Favreau on Pod Save America, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ventured<\/a> onto what was for him new terrain, invoking the A-word\u2014\u201capartheid\u201d\u2014to describe a nation that had once been the cynosure of American liberals\u2019 eyes. He\u2019d clearly ascertained, however, that this was terrain he could safely navigate.<\/p>\n

In a Gallup poll<\/a> released last Friday, more Americans (41 percent) said they sympathize more with Palestinians than with Israelis than the 36 percent who said they sympathize more with the Israelis. This marked the first time in Gallup\u2019s years of polling when sympathy for the Palestinians outpolled sympathy for the Israelis. \u201cFrom 2001 to 2025,\u201d Gallup reported, \u201cIsraelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans\u2019 Middle East sympathies.\u201d<\/p>\n

More from Harold Meyerson: Iraq, Iran, Irate<\/a><\/p>\n

For anyone aspiring to be the Democrats\u2019 presidential nominee in 2028, this repudiation of the Netanyahu regime that has dominated Israel for most of this century is all but mandatory. Fully 65 percent of Democrats told Gallup they sympathize more with Palestinians, while just 17 percent said they sympathize more with Israelis. For anyone aspiring to win the November 2028 presidential election, that repudiation looks today to be a pretty good bet. Gallup reported that 41 percent of independents also sympathize more with Palestinians, which is 11 percentage points higher than those whose sympathies are more with the Israelis. Only Republicans maintain the pro-Israeli edge, by a lopsided 70 percent to 13 percent margin.<\/p>\n

Newsom\u2019s flip, in other words, has landed him square in the middle of Democrats\u2019 worldview. That view and that flip will persist so long as Israel\u2019s government maintains its overall policies. Newsom certainly didn\u2019t repudiate Zionism as such; when asked about halting America\u2019s longtime policy of providing military aid to Israel, he responded, \u201cIt breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don\u2019t think you have a choice about that consideration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today On TAP<\/p>\n

This story first appeared in our Today On TAP newsletter, a weekday email featuring commentary on the daily news from Robert Kuttner and Harold Meyerson.<\/p>\n

Newsom is one of those rare political animals whose funding base is so vast and secure that he could weather whatever torrent of AIPAC dollars could be hurled against him. One consequence of his new position might even be that it could make AIPAC\u2019s funding of down-ticket candidates running in Democratic primaries this year politically toxic to Democratic voters if it\u2019s sufficiently called out. The first test of that could come on March 17, when Illinois holds its primaries. AIPAC donors are funding candidates in four Democratic congressional primaries there. Now that the Democratic establishment\u2019s presidential front-runner considers it all but obligatory to repudiate AIPAC\u2019s fundamental orientation, the candidates whom AIPAC is opposing in the forthcoming primaries might just consider it safe to call out their AIPAC-backed opponents for their support of the savage ethnic cleansers whose rule AIPAC devotedly promotes.<\/p>\n

The ground has shifted, as Newsom\u2019s repositioning makes abundantly clear.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Democrats\u2019 ranking political weather vane has spoken. In a conversation with Jon Favreau on Pod Save America,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[2922,41,2923,1275,2924,159,2231,37,1685,2925,81,1287],"class_list":{"0":"post-4136","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-aipac","9":"tag-benjamin-netanyahu","10":"tag-campaign-finance","11":"tag-democrats","12":"tag-election-2026","13":"tag-foreign-policy","14":"tag-gavin-newsom","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-israel-palestine","17":"tag-on-tap","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-polling"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116174192779094720","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}