Gavin Newsom Calls Israel 'Sort of an Apartheid State' And Calls For Stopping U.S. Military Aid To The Nation

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/2026/03/04/gavin-newsom-calls-israel-apartheid-state-democrats-primaries/


California Gov. Gavin Newsom gives an interview at the Munich Security Conference, February 13, 2026. Credit: Felix Hörhager/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

The Democrats’ ranking political weather vane has spoken. In a conversation with Jon Favreau on Pod Save America, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ventured onto what was for him new terrain, invoking the A-word—“apartheid”—to describe a nation that had once been the cynosure of American liberals’ eyes. He’d clearly ascertained, however, that this was terrain he could safely navigate.

In a Gallup poll 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’s years of polling when sympathy for the Palestinians outpolled sympathy for the Israelis. “From 2001 to 2025,” Gallup reported, “Israelis consistently held double-digit leads in Americans’ Middle East sympathies.”

For anyone aspiring to be the Democrats’ 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.

Newsom’s flip, in other words, has landed him square in the middle of Democrats’ worldview. That view and that flip will persist so long as Israel’s government maintains its overall policies. Newsom certainly didn’t repudiate Zionism as such; when asked about halting America’s longtime policy of providing military aid to Israel, he responded, “It breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down that path where I don’t think you have a choice about that consideration.”

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[JBTaurus83]

1. A Dem that can read the room

It’s going to be a huge primary issue.