Massie’s ‘Tel Aviv’ Jab Exposes a 2026 Antisemitism Crisis

Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who served seven terms in Congress and never once voted for foreign aid to any country, lost his May 19 primary to Ed Gallrein, a Trump-endorsed farmer and former Navy SEAL, in a race that drew more than $32 million in ad spending and became the costliest House primary on record. Conceding that night in Hebron, Kentucky, he paused at the microphone to explain the delay: “I had to call my opponent and concede,” Massie told supporters, “and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.” The line pointed directly at the pro-Israel donors and political action committees that spent millions to end his career.

That remark landed in a primary season when the debate over Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the war with Iran has fractured both parties so visibly that Jewish leaders are no longer just troubled. From a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice leaving the Democratic Party over what he called “acquiescence to Jew-hatred” to a Texas Democrat’s promise to imprison “American Zionists,” the 2026 midterms have produced a reckoning that years of escalating rhetoric made unavoidable.

A $32 Million Ending in Kentucky

The Record Spending and Who Drove It

Gallrein won 54% of the vote to 45% for the incumbent, per the Associated Press. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP, the group’s independent-expenditure arm), along with the Republican Jewish Coalition and allied pro-Israel groups, poured more than $15.8 million into the contest opposing the incumbent or supporting Gallrein, according to Federal Election Commission independent-expenditure filings. The Republican Jewish Coalition alone committed $4 million. Contributors included billionaires Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson.

The previous record for a House primary was $25.2 million, set in 2024 when UDP helped defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.), a vocal Israel critic who lost to George Latimer by a margin of 58% to 41%. The Kentucky race surpassed that figure by roughly $7 million. After the Associated Press called the contest, AIPAC posted that the defeated congressman had been “one of the most consistently hostile voices in Congress toward the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

Trump’s Role in the Outcome

Trump’s sustained personal hostility may have mattered more than any single outside check. The president called his target “the worst congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party” in social-media posts hours before polls opened, continuing a feud rooted in the congressman’s push to release the Jeffrey Epstein files, his votes against the war with Iran, and his broader resistance to loyalty demands. The congressman had voted with Trump’s agenda more than 90% of the time; the exceptions proved decisive.

The spending produced its own disturbing imagery. An outside group supporting the incumbent released a television advertisement featuring pro-Gallrein donor Paul Singer, who is Jewish, with a Star of David visually positioned behind him. The ad paired the symbol with text calling Gallrein’s values “freak values.” Singer and his firm, Elliott Management, did not respond to requests for comment. Separately, NOTUS reported that William Paul, son of Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), drunkenly confronted a New York congressman at a Capitol Hill bar and blamed Massie’s expected defeat on “you Jews.” The congressman he targeted, Rep. Mike Lawler (R., N.Y.), is Catholic; he represents one of the most heavily Jewish congressional districts in the country. William Paul later apologized and said he was seeking help for a drinking problem.

Philadelphia’s Parallel Reckoning

On the same night, Democratic state Rep. Chris Rabb won the primary for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District in Philadelphia, taking the deep-blue seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Dwight Evans. Rabb made opposition to pro-Israel lobbying and to U.S. arms sales to Israel the central message of his campaign, drawing endorsements from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.), and Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.). With no Republican on the general-election ballot, Rabb is effectively a congressman-elect.

His campaign had attracted scrutiny months before the primary. After a December attack at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney that killed 15 people, Rabb’s campaign Instagram account shared a post claiming the gunmen “were likely Zionists themselves.” Australian authorities concluded the attackers were motivated by Islamic State ideology, not the nationality of the victims. Rabb’s team said the post came from a former staff member who had not worked for the campaign for months; Rabb said he had no knowledge of it and disavowed it. The episode left a residue even among Democrats who share his views on the conflict.

Progressive super PAC American Priorities, formed expressly to counter UDP’s spending in Democratic primaries, committed more than $400,000 supporting Rabb, per FEC filings. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish and supports a continued U.S.-Israel relationship, was reportedly working behind the scenes to blunt Rabb’s campaign; Shapiro did not publicly comment on the race.

The Week Rhetoric Crossed Lines

Three other moments during the same primary week illustrated how broadly the discourse had spread beyond the races drawing the most national coverage.

• In Texas, Maureen Galindo, a sex therapist and housing activist running in a Democratic primary, published an Instagram post promising to convert an immigration detention center into a “prison for American Zionists” and characterizing many Zionists as “pedophiles.” Ocasio-Cortez called it “bigoted garbage and antisemitism” before endorsing Galindo’s opponent, Johnny Garcia, ahead of their runoff. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) criticized the Republicans quietly funding Galindo as a presumably weaker general-election opponent and called on GOP leadership to “immediately cease propping up this antisemitic candidacy.”
• The advertisement featuring Paul Singer with a Star of David behind him was produced by Hold the Line PAC, a group that backed the incumbent, according to ad tracking by AdImpact. The spot simultaneously invoked Singer’s Jewish identity and his donations to LGBTQ+ causes, pairing both with the phrase “freak values.” A spokesperson for the incumbent’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment on the ad.
• William Paul’s Capitol Hill tirade continued with claims that Jews were “anti-American.” Rep. Lawler, the Catholic congressman on the receiving end, responded to news of the race’s result by posting on X: “My people have spoken. Shalom.”

In the final days before the vote, he also sponsored a bill requiring AIPAC to register as a lobbyist for a foreign nation, a measure with no realistic path to passage but one that framed his candidacy in explicitly anti-AIPAC terms.

Democrats Who Said ‘Enough’

Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice David Wecht, 63, had been re-elected as a Democrat to a second 10-year term on the state’s high court in November, a contest in which the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and aligned groups spent more than $14 million to retain him and two colleagues. On May 11, he announced he was leaving the party. “Acquiescence to Jew-hatred is now disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party,” Wecht wrote in a statement distributed through the state court system. He cited Nazi tattoos, jihadist chants, and attacks on synagogues as conduct the party had “minimized, ignored, and even coddled.” Wecht had been married at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Congregation, which became the site of the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history when a gunman killed 11 worshipers in 2018.

Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) said he “fully understood” Wecht’s personal choice: “The Democratic Party must confront its own rising antisemitism problem.” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D., Fla.), among the most publicly outspoken Jewish Democrats in Congress, pinpointed the timing of the failure. “We didn’t do enough when this started in our party, and now it has metastasized,” Moskowitz said. “It is going to be a lot harder to deal with.”

Wecht had served as the Pennsylvania Democratic Party’s vice chair from 1998 to 2001 before ascending through the courts. His exit adds to a pattern of Jewish Democrats publicly questioning whether the party’s rapid leftward shift on Israel leaves them a political home. Fetterman himself has faced sustained speculation about his own party affiliation; he said in the same statement that he is not changing his registration.

The Money Map and the Shifting Polls

A Spending Architecture Built Over Three Cycles

United Democracy Project reported roughly $61 million in total disbursements during the 2023 to 2024 election cycle alone, focusing primarily on Democratic primaries before expanding to Republican ones in 2026. AdImpact counted more than two dozen 2026 campaign advertisements featuring messages about Israel, Gaza, or Palestinians. The counter-movement has organized in response. American Priorities has committed to eight-figure spending across at least ten races this cycle, and several progressive candidates have pledged to reject UDP money entirely.

Where Public Opinion Has Moved

A New York Times/Siena poll conducted ahead of the primaries found substantial shifts in how both parties’ voters view U.S.-Israel policy, most sharply among younger cohorts.

• Only one-third of Republicans aged 18 to 44 supported providing additional economic and military support to Israel
• 54% of Republicans aged 18 to 44 said Trump had been “too supportive of Israel”
• 56% of younger Democrats said their party had also been too supportive of Israel
• 25+ campaign ads in 2026, per AdImpact, carried Israel, Gaza, or Palestinian-related messaging

Those numbers carry a practical implication for both parties’ donor classes: the electorates they are trying to manage have already moved. Some of AIPAC’s earlier 2026 efforts backfired visibly, helping progressive candidates win in races where the group’s involvement activated left-wing voters who might otherwise have stayed home. That dynamic played out in an Illinois primary where UDP-aligned groups spent heavily against Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss, who won the race anyway.

Where the Line Gets Drawn

The debate over where legitimate policy disagreement ends and antisemitic trope begins runs through every competitive race this cycle. Matt Brooks, chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, drew his line without qualification. “Massie’s conduct throughout this campaign, trafficking in antisemitism and bottom-of-the-barrel nativism at a time when Jew hatred is on the rise, was wildly unacceptable,” Brooks said in a statement. His criticism, coming from a Republican Jewish organization that helped fund the man who defeated Massie, illustrates how the antisemitism charge now flows in multiple directions within the same primary.

This is at warp speed, unlike anything I have ever seen. This is the mainstreaming and normalizing of antisemitism.

Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust scholar at Emory University and the Biden administration’s former special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, offered that assessment in the days after primary night. She did not confine the warning to one party.

The group behind the Kentucky spending called the results evidence that voters “support Democratic and Republican candidates who view a strong U.S.-Israel relationship as an American interest and reject those who focus on attacking that alliance and pro-Israel Americans.” Critics argue that framing treats any questioning of U.S. aid levels as hostility toward Jewish Americans rather than as a foreign-policy position, a conflation that makes honest debate harder and the rhetoric around it cruder. Both problems will be tested again in California, New York, and Michigan, where the next round of competitive primaries has already drawn spending commitments from both AIPAC-aligned and counter-AIPAC groups. If more anti-AIPAC candidates win there as Rabb did in Philadelphia, the pro-Israel infrastructure’s grip on the primary calendar will look narrower than its Kentucky victory suggests. If the spending holds, the primary landscape through November will be shaped less by remarks made at a losing candidate’s microphone than by the institutional money that made those remarks feel necessary.