Instead of acknowledging Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Dem politicians Mallory McMorrow and Andy Beshear complain about ‘purity tests’ and ‘litmus tests.’
By Andrew Perez and Prem Thakker, Reposted from Zeteo, April 2, 2026
This shouldn’t be at all controversial. After two and a half years, Democratic candidates and elected officials should – and indeed, must – be willing and able to name and condemn the genocide that Israel has committed against Palestinians with US support.
It is not a question of whether Israel has committed genocide. Putting aside the long list of human rights experts and organizations that have come to this conclusion, we in the US have all watched the genocide unfold on our screens, and on our dime. Since Oct. 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 72,289 people in Gaza – and potentially as many as 215,000 people – while forcibly displacing 1.9 million.
The genocide is precisely why Americans’ opinions on Israel and Gaza have radically and rapidly shifted – especially among Democratic voters. And Kamala Harris’s inability to separate herself from Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza likely played a significant role in why Democrats lost the 2024 election.
Unfortunately, we continue to see Democrats – from Senate candidates, to potential 2028 presidential hopefuls, to party-aligned think tanks that advise Dems what to say and think – refuse to call Israel’s genocide what it is. In doing so, they deny reality, and doom themselves both morally and politically.
If Democrats want to regain power and the trust of the American people – and restore America’s supposed standing in the world – they cannot assume they can dance their way around this issue.
‘Purity Tests’
The preferred rhetorical crutch these days appears to be that voters who want Democrats to condemn Israel’s genocide in Gaza are not attempting to gauge their politicians’ values, but instead are unfairly subjecting them to a “purity test” or “litmus test.”
Take the Michigan Senate race, for example.
In October, Democratic Senate candidate Mallory McMorrow agreed that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza – “based on the definition” of the word, though she did not use the word herself.
“I don’t care what you call it,” she said, adding that “our position should be that there is no individual life that is worth more than another individual life.”
McMorrow has since complained that the word “genocide” has become a “political purity test.” She told Jewish Insider on Tuesday: “People seem to be more focused on a word than a goal, which is why I have since said this does feel like we’re splitting hairs over the definition of a word and not talking about for most people, we want the same thing.”
Roxie Richner, a spokesperson for Abdul El-Sayed, one of McMorrow’s primary opponents, tells Zeteo: “Voters want politicians who will call things what they are. Abdul has been clear: The systematic murder of more than 75,000 Palestinians is a genocide. If you can’t even name that, it’s hard to imagine you fighting for anything at all.”
McMorrow isn’t the only prominent Democrat sidestepping this word. When Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a likely 2028 presidential hopeful, was asked last week whether Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza, he responded: “That’s becoming one of those new litmus tests that we said we would never do as a party again.”
Beshear said Israel has a right to defend itself, before arguing “it could have been done without a lot of the suffering.” Even more awkwardly, he said: “I put a lot of that blame also on Donald Trump.”
Of course, Israel’s genocide in Gaza began under President Joe Biden. His Democratic administration funded, armed, and defended Israel as the genocide unfolded. It continued under Trump – and Israel has continued to kill Palestinians with impunity despite the supposed “ceasefire” deal he negotiated. Still, to put a lot of the blame on Trump, while ignoring Biden, is simply wrong.
Banning Candidate Questionnaires
While some consider the question of whether Israel is committing genocide using US taxpayer dollars to be an unfair litmus test, others go further, framing the basic question as something you’d only reckon with on a college campus.
The centrist think tank Third Way, which aspires to be “the chief opponent of the left in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary,” recently published an op-ed asserting that the terms “genocide” and “apartheid” are “loaded words taught in social justice seminars,” used by “Jew-haters on the left.”
While the deeply unpopular US-Israeli war on Iran and vicious Israel settler violence in the occupied West Bank rage on, Third Way has set its sights on canceling leftist Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, an Israel critic, and labeling him an antisemite as part of its campaign to crush the left.
The group has repeatedly hammered El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate candidate, for his plan to campaign next week with Piker. So have his opponents, McMorrow and Haley Stevens.
Though Third Way has pushed Democrats to ban “candidate questionnaires” and “refuse to participate in forums that create ideological purity tests,” the organization on Tuesday sent a questionnaire to El-Sayed, while demanding he disavow a series of statements from Piker.
On Wednesday, Politico reported on Third Way’s questionnaire for El-Sayed, cheekily describing it as a “Purity Test.” Third Way co-founder Matt Bennett responded with alarm, asking: “is it really a ‘purity test’ to ask a Democratic candidate if he agrees with the bigoted views of someone he plans to campaign with?”
Zeteo reached out to spokespeople for McMorrow, Beshear, and Third Way to ask if they are willing to characterize Israel’s genocide in Gaza as a genocide.
“Yeah, nothing says it’s a straight and not at all loaded question like asking if we will ‘characterize a genocide as a genocide,’” Bennett from Third Way responded. “Hard pass.”
McMorrow and Beshear’s teams did not reply.
Toxic Politics
To be clear, there are issues that Democratic voters, by and large, consider to be a litmus test as they choose candidates – abortion being the most obvious one. There are exceedingly few federal Democratic candidates who oppose abortion rights – and there’s nothing wrong with this.
If Democratic voters want politicians to restore the federal right to an abortion, they need to elect candidates who view this as necessary.
Likewise, if Democratic voters want to see their politicians stop arming Israel, and don’t wish to see their party support and fund genocide, they need to elect candidates who oppose Israel’s genocide.
That Israel has committed genocide has become an increasingly mainstream view in the US, and particularly among Democrats.
A poll conducted for Zeteo last year found that US voters believe Israel is committing genocide by a margin of 47% to 33%. Weeks later, a Quinnipiac poll similarly found US voters agree that Israel is committing genocide by a margin of 50% to 35%. This included 77% of Democrats.
A poll conducted in October found that American Jews resoundingly believe Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, 61% to 29%. About four in 10 American Jews said Israel is guilty of genocide.
Recent polling from Gallup found that Americans, by a margin of 41% to 36%, say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis. And nearly two-thirds of Democrats feel this way, compared to 17% who sympathize more with Israelis.
Even if Democratic politicians are not concerned with the moral stakes, and only the politics, they should view the question of genocide with more urgency.
On Sunday, Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair emerita of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, posted a video on Twitter, speaking to the consequences of US and Democratic support for Israel’s violence.
“Democrats are finally admitting it. Harris lost support over Gaza. And here’s the thing: I was warning Biden and Harris for over a year, personally, in numerous direct conversations with each of them. I kept saying that our refusal to hold the Israeli government accountable over the destruction and genocide in Gaza was morally, legally, and politically wrong,” Jayapal said.
She continued: “We kept being told, ‘it’s not in the numbers,’ that changing course was too risky or too liberal. But that’s not strategy. It’s risk aversion dressed up as wisdom. And it didn’t just shape an election, it helped shape a crisis.”
Andrew Perez is a Senior Politics Editor at Zeteo .Prem Thakker is a Political Correspondent & Columnist at Zeteo
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