Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs represents the political dilemma faced by her party over U.S. support for Israel and the crisis in Gaza — and the increasingly precarious balancing act for any politician trying to navigate it. As a Jewish member of Congress with family in Israel, Jacobs is personally invested in Israel’s security, which is not an abstract issue for her. At the same time, she is a millennial and the youngest member of Democratic leadership in the House, making her sensitive to the growing concerns of younger voters and the public over the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The third-term member of Congress from San Diego is in a unique position. She represents one of the nation’s most military-centric districts, and as a member of the Armed Services Committee, she is acutely aware of Israel’s security needs and its key role as a U.S. ally in the region. This dual perspective — both as a supporter of Israel’s security and a critic of the humanitarian impact of the conflict — has made her a focal point in the debate over U.S. support for Israel.
Last night, the Senate narrowly voted down a resolution from Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) to block the sale of U.S. weapons to Israel. While the measure failed, the fact that 27 Democratic senators, more than half the caucus, voted in favor indicates that the horrific images of starvation and devastation in Gaza are starting to erode the largely unconditional support that Israel has long enjoyed among many Democrats.
Jacobs said she would have voted in favor of the resolution, though she wants the U.S. to continue supporting Israel’s defense, including by helping to fund the Iron Dome missile defense system. Her nuanced position came to the forefront at a town hall meeting in her district, where pro-Palestinian protesters gathered noisily outside the high school auditorium in a suburban section of San, Diego where the event was held.
Inside, the audience was restless, and one of the first questions was what Jacob was doing to ensure that the people of Gaza were receiving humanitarian aid and whether Israel had committed genocide. Jacobs, who worked for the U.S. State Department and United Nations before she was elected to Congress in 2020, tried to thread the needle — saying that Israel ‘might’ have committed genocide.
“But I am not a lawyer, and that is a legal determination,” she told the restive audience. “I think we’ve clearly seen serious atrocities. I think we’ve likely seen war crimes, and we’ve definitely seen forced displacement that could amount to ethnic cleansing.”
Soon, members of the audience were yelling at her — and at each other. Her efforts to explain her support for a ban on offensive weapons, but not for defense, were drowned out. A woman shouted, ‘Weapons are weapons.’ A man stood and chanted ‘Free Palestine’ while waving a black-and-white keffiyeh. Members of the crowd shouted back at him.
After about 20 minutes, police escorted the man with the keffiyeh out of the auditorium, and the town hall turned to other topics — mostly expressions of anger about various actions by President Donald Trump wrapped into a question.
Jacobs said the next day that she welcomed the protests and is less worried about the politics of the issue within the Democratic Party than she is about addressing the larger issues. “The thing that needs to be worked out is how we get unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, and then how we get back on a path to a situation where you have two states where Israelis can live safely and securely and where Palestinians can live with dignity and autonomy and self-determination,” she told POLITICO today.
The bitter politics of the conflict aside, Jacobs contends there’s a middle position in which people can condemn both the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas and the Israeli response that authorities say has led to about 60,000 deaths, mostly civilians in Gaza.
“I truly believe both that Oct. 7 was horrible and we should be calling for the release of the remaining hostages, and that what’s going on in Gaza right now is horrible, and those don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” she said. “Civilians shouldn’t be blamed for their government actions, and that’s true of Israeli civilians, and it’s true of Palestinian civilians, and it’s true of American civilians.”
Despite what happened at her town hall, the protests over the war in Gaza around the U.S. have, for now at least, ebbed since last year, and many Democratic voters in general have turned their attention to other issues. But it’s not clear how long politicians like Jacobs, or her party, will be able to walk this precarious middle ground.
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