A rabbi who counts Nancy Pelosi among “one of the Jewish community’s best friends among House Democrats” now says her latest remarks should worry the people who trust her.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, executive vice president of the Coalition for Jewish Values, gave that warning to Fox News Digital.
It followed a Thursday podcast appearance in which the California Democrat and former House speaker discussed Israel and two of her party’s rising progressives.
Donny Deutsch, host of “On Brand,” raised the subject.
Deutsch, who is Jewish, asked Pelosi how he can keep backing the Democratic Party when some of its politicians say things he considers antisemitic.
“When you say Israel doesn’t have the right to be a Jewish state, that’s antisemitic as far as I’m concerned with all that,” Deutsch said.
Pelosi asked him to name names.
Deutsch pointed to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Michigan. He labeled their remarks “concerning.”
Pelosi took the criticism further than the host did. “No, it’s more than concerning,” she said. “It’s wrong. It’s wrong. And it isn’t a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States.”
She then spoke about each man in turn.
Of El-Sayed, she said, “This new person in Michigan, we’ll see if he gets elected to the Congress.” Of Mamdani, she said, “But the mayor, bless his heart, I hope he succeeds as mayor, but I don’t agree with some of the things he has said.”
She also described how House Democrats handle such statements.
“But in terms of our people in the House of Representatives, if somebody says that, the other members disassociate themselves from it,” Pelosi said.
Earlier in the same conversation, Pelosi gave a different answer to a broader question. She said she knew of no one in her party who engages in antisemitism.
“The fact is that I really do not know of anybody there on our side who is engaged in antisemitism. That may be what it appears to be or what they’re charged to be. But if they are, it’s only a few. If there are, I think sometimes they say things that they shouldn’t and can be interpreted that way,” Pelosi said.
Pelosi also spoke to how much sway the two men hold inside the party. She cited the nature of a House member’s job and the position of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
“People represent their districts, and we have to respect that. The job description, job title is representative, but that doesn’t mean it has an impact on the consensus of the Democratic Party, and [House Minority Leader] Hakeem Jeffries has been very clear on that,” Pelosi said.
Mamdani’s position on the question dates to his run for office. Before he won the mayor’s seat, he repeatedly sidestepped reporters who asked whether Israel should be a Jewish state.
He offered a fuller response during a June 28 interview with ABC News. Mamdani said he supports Israel as a state with equal rights, but he declined to endorse it as a Jewish state.
“I think any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can’t tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else,” Mamdani said.
El-Sayed has also turned aside repeated requests to say whether Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. At a May gathering with Jewish supporters, he told the audience he “struggled” to answer.
He went on to suggest that a Jewish state did not fit with the liberal values “we say we believe in here in the United States.”
Menken said Pelosi’s comments alarmed him because she did not seem to see antisemitism among her own colleagues. He also said rabbis have tried to press the issue with her directly.
“Pelosi claims she wants for those voices to be marginalized within her party, yet she demonstrates that she has turned a deaf ear, both to antisemitic expression from her colleagues and to the rabbis anxious to set her straight on the magnitude of the problem. If she is indeed one of our best friends, should we not be scared by that?” Menken told Fox News Digital.
