A candidate, a staffer, and the identity crisis of the American Jewish left

From the right, the embracement of Israel by conservative politicians reflects a co-opting of Jewish identity in which the humanitarian ideal of Israel as a refuge has been supplanted by a far more jingoistic Israel that symbolises Western military and political hegemony and that, sadly and rather cynically, has been exploited in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to validate anti-Muslim sentiment in the US.

This shift has been paralleled by a rightward lurch in Israel itself: a situation that has left many American Jews, most of whom vote Democratic, caught in a quandary in which support for the humanitarian concept of Israel is deeply challenged by the realities of heavy-handed actions in the West Bank and Gaza. The idea of "liberal Zionism", which supports Israel while criticising its government, represents a reaction to this rightward pull.

On the left, a parallel trend has developed. Furious at continuing injustices towards the Palestinians, social justice movements have increasingly sought to isolate Israel via social and economic pressure (for example the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement). These forms of activism have taken a profoundly anti-Zionist thrust in which Israel's Jewish identity is seen as a non-starter to achieving Palestinian justice, and liberal Zionism, the ideological province of many Jewish Democrats, is dismissed as somewhere between insincere and nefarious.

The rejection of this pro-Israel, humanitarian middle ground of Jewish leftism has found sanction within the critical-theoretical trend of "intersectionality", the idea that intersecting systems of social inequality (for example gender, race, sexuality) must be addressed concurrently rather than independently.

In this context, Palestinians are linked with other marginalised groups, allowing Zionism in any form to be derided as "white", "privileged", or "imperialist", and an implicit threat to social justice. With the sanction of intersectionality, virulent antisemitism is often acceptable under cover of anti-Zionism, and may be expressed with minimal reprimand.

Examples of Jewish students being questioned on their "loyalty" to BDS solely based on their religion are increasing, and students and professors who support Israel increasingly express reluctance to speak openly on the subject.

In the politics of social justice, balance is often just another tragic victim – and perhaps both Simone Zimmerman and Bernie Sanders are human reflections of that reality.

For each, the antidote to a rightward shift in the American narrative of Israel and Jewish identity has been to stake out firm ground on the left: yet locating where that firm ground is, amidst a community in the process of finding itself, is unavoidably fraught.

If nothing else, perhaps we can reflect on Zimmerman's appointment and suspension to better understand ourselves as individuals and a vibrant community committed to Tikkun Olam: a more just and humanitarian world.

Steve Markofsky is a Boston-based politics and archaeology graduate who blogs on US politics