Raw and Relentless

October 7 seems to have touched John Fetterman deeply, almost personally. In the victims and the hostages, he sees ordinary people who could have been his family. There’s something visceral about the way that almost a year later he talks about the horror inflicted by Hamas. And even without the fact that the transcription software he relies on post-stroke is easily thrown off by someone interrupting him, there’s a relentless quality to his monologues about Israel.

“When I heard how they tortured, mutilated, and murdered families, I thought to myself that if that was my family, I’d say that that kind of evil should not be allowed to endure. It has to be destroyed. And I can’t imagine why the entire world wouldn’t be appalled by that kind of barbarism.

“We can’t forget about the truths of this war,” he continues. “That Hamas started this, carried out the kind of massacre that hasn’t happened since the Holocaust, and Israel has been forced to respond. Let’s never forget that Hamas is responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people. They don’t have a spiritual connection to the Palestinian people whose death and suffering they deem a necessary sacrifice.”

Such is his relentlessness that in the course of our conversation, he repeatedly returns, unprompted, to the evil of what Israel faces.

I mention Bibi Netanyahu — who said that “Israel has had no better friend” than the senator — and Fetterman pivots to talking about Noa Argamani, one of the hostages who was released in an IDF raid. She joined Netanyahu’s mission to Washington, D.C., when he addressed Congress, and Fetterman seized the opportunity to talk to her.

“When I found out that Noa was there,” he explains, “I was like, I’ve got to meet her. She is my hero. That was a great, great honor for me.”

When I bring up the backlash that his family has faced for his stance, he bats it away. “We’ve had protesters show up at our house, but that is just miniscule compared to the trauma that Israel has suffered.”

Or take this forceful monologue about the false allegations of genocide leveled against Israel. “They claimed that Israel attacked the Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, and that’s not true. That’s not true. It’s actually been proven that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired. And all of the things that they’re talking about throughout all of this — that Rafah was supposed to be a huge catastrophe, and it wasn’t — these kinds of lies have cheapened and destroyed the actual definition of what genocide is, like in Rwanda, the Holocaust, Cambodia, or with the Armenians.”

On the left side of the aisle — and much of the right, too — the sheer ferocity of Fetterman’s takedown of the anti-Israel crowd is unique. In the rarefied world of the Senate, those stances have won quiet plaudits.

“John Fetterman is a great friend of Israel — a very independent Senator who follows his convictions,” says Ben Cardin (D–MD), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of his new colleague.

Malcolm Hoenlein, Vice Chairman Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents, has spent decades interacting with some of the most famous pro-Israel lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. John Fetterman’s ironclad support for Israel has impressed him.

“When he stands for a principle, he doesn’t compromise,” says Hoenlein. “He came to the Israel rally wrapped in an Israeli flag, and put the pictures of the hostages in the corridor outside his office. He told me that Senate colleagues complained, but he was unfazed. He’s completely consistent in his support, and so clearly it emanates from deeply-held convictions.”

Radical Empathy

Whence the passion with which Fetterman takes up the cudgel for Israel? In advance of our interview, I did my homework, reading the trail of profiles that line his ascent to prominence — entirely free of references to foreign policy, never mind Israel. A staple of that genre is the mention of Fetterman’s privileged upbringing, born to affluent Republican-voting parents in York, Pennsylvania.

Despite his journey from conservative to liberal, did his parents’ legacy shape his thinking on Israel? He’s noncommittal on that theory.

“Well, they’re just private citizens, but they are very supportive of what I do,” he says.

In the (short) shortlist of in-depth interviews that he’s given since the war began, the Hamas war dominates. In a New Yorker profile published in June, a staffer called Fetterman’s “radical empathy” one his “political superpowers,” and said that the October 7 violence suffered by Israel had triggered his fierce defense of the country.

But the same profile quoted the bemusement of progressives who’d once been drawn to Fetterman’s brand of empathetic politics. During his stint as mayor in Braddock, Pennsylvania, he marked local killings by tattooing the dates of victims’ deaths on his forearm.

“I just cannot understand how someone capable of such empathy for the victims of violence in Braddock has none for the tens of thousands of Palestinian children who are also victims of violence,” said one (Jewish) activist.

This tragicomic befuddlement in the face of Fetterman’s moral clarity typifies the sense of betrayal that the senator’s erstwhile progressive supporters feel.

They’ve told him so vocally. In January, demonstrators gathered outside his home on Friday night, yelling “Fetterman, Fetterman, you can’t hide. You’re supporting genocide.” As a troll of some talent, he responded by waving an Israeli flag from his own rooftop in an act that went viral.

When keffiyeh-clad protesters picketed the Senate early in the war, calling for a ceasefire that would have served only Hamas, he didn’t keep his head down and ignore them from behind the police cordon, as most other senators might have done. Instead, he walked past holding a pocket Israeli flag triumphantly aloft.

Theatrics are part of his modus operandi, but at its core, for John Fetterman it’s about drawing clear lines. “If you have to pick a side, the easiest choice I’ve ever made in my life is to be on Israel’s side throughout all of this,” he tells me.

Dressed to Impress When John Fetterman entered the Senate in all his hoodie and cargo-shorted glory last year, the dress code amendments necessary to accommodate his sartorial choices seemed to some to confirm a certain picture of the freshman senator. Here was a posturer, a politician trying too hard, who’d lucked out by running against a Trump-backed candidate — TV personality Dr. Mehmet Oz — who was just too extreme for voters.

The conservative Heritage Foundation satirized the dress code violations with a clip called “Fetterman Friday” riffing off dress-down Friday with a young Congressional staffer roaming the halls of the Capitol in shorts and an anorak. Feet on table at a meeting, the staffer intones, “I figure, if Congress only has to work a third of the year, why do I have to wear a full suit?”

Writing in the Free Press in December, Peter Savodnik put it best: Fetterman projected a “carefully curated cartoon image of a down-to-earth Rust Belt Democrat. The hoodie, the tats, even the hunkering six-feet-eight-inches frame and the semipermanent scowl seemed too stilted and staged, like a caricature.”

That assessment now seems to be a textbook case of the peril of judging books by their covers. Or as Savodnik himself put it, “totally, indefensibly, unbelievably wrong.”

Given what we now know of his refusal to barter his beliefs for political gain, Fetterman’s externals are just the most visible aspect of something much deeper: a refusal to follow norms for their own sake. In the same way that he refuses to relinquish his hoodie, he refuses to discard his ideology like a washed-out sweatshirt.

To Pittsburghers, Fetterman’s down-to-earth persona fits a recognizable type. “He’s a Yinzer,” says Rabbi Yitzi Genack, whose Pittsburgh shul has hosted the senator. “It’s a local term that indicates a no-nonsense unpretentiousness that’s about not being fancy.”

There was something else that both sides misjudged: Fetterman’s idealism. To the right, he was a latte liberal, the rich son sponging off his parents while dabbling in politics. Exhibit A was the mayorship of Braddock, a declining, post-industrial hamlet of 1,700 people that paid its mayor $150 per annum. That caricature of a liberal lightweight was belied by the seriousness with which Fetterman went about his public life; in 1999, he graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School with a Master of Public Policy degree.

To the left, his pro bono mayorship was a clear exemplar of idealism — one moreover of a reliably progressive cast. It was of a piece with his support for legalizing marijuana, Medicare for all, and a $15-per-hour minimum wage.

The idealism indeed ran deep. At 23, Fetterman became a mentor in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program, mentoring his “little brother” — an orphaned eight-year-old boy — until the latter graduated from college. His volunteerism continued when he joined AmeriCorps to set up the first computer labs in an underprivileged neighborhood. Settling in Braddock — one of the poorest communities in the state — he continued to work on adult education initiatives before running for mayor in 2005.

Both right and left turned out to be wrong. John Fetterman was genuinely an idealist, but would turn out to profess his own brand of right and wrong, unbeholden to progressive pieties.

The misconceptions about his positions persisted right through his Senate campaign in 2022 — none more so than when it came to Israel.

The Jewish Insider quoted Democratic activist Brett Goldman as saying, “He’s never come out and said that he’s not a supporter of Israel, but the perception is that he aligns with the Squad more than anything else.”

In another sign of the unclarity surrounding his positions, he was approved by J Street, the far-left Jewish advocacy group.

For anyone who cared to ask him, though, John Fetterman was speaking increasingly clearly about his unqualified support for Israel. To the Jewish Insider, he was unequivocal. “Whenever I’m in a situation to be called on to take up the cause of enhancing the security of Israel or deepening our relationship between the United States and Israel, I’m going to lean in.”

Center Court

Fetterman’s emergence as a strident pro-Israel voice is of a piece with his overall journey to the political center. Over the course of this year, the man who endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 delighted Fox News adherents and horrified old friends on the Democratic left in equal measure by calling the surge of illegal immigrants in December a “crisis.” Between March and May, says the New Yorker, he commemorated Vietnam in Cold War language — i.e., uncomfortably retrograde — inveighed against lab-grown meat, and ridiculed a climate activist.

His position on fracking — the extraction process for natural gas that is heavily opposed by environmentalists — tracks this evolution. Between 2018 and 2022, he went from opposing to backing the industry, which employs thousands of Pennsylvanians.

These cardinal sins paled into insignificance next to the supreme iniquity: supporting Israel against Hamas. In October, some former aides had had enough. They wrote him an open letter lambasting him for supporting the “collective punishment” of Palestinians, and calling into question his continued membership on the left. “You can’t be a champion of forgotten communities if you cheerlead this war,” they wrote.

But that boat had long sailed. In December, Fetterman wrote on social media, “I’m not a progressive, I’m just a regular Democrat.” So complete has been Fetterman’s metamorphosis that mention of his former self-identification draws the only interruption of our interview.

“That’s more than eight years ago, a political lifetime, right?” he says, cutting into my question. “Back then, progressive meant much different things. I didn’t leave that label, that label left me.”

Asked to explain how progressivism has changed, he references Israel and the pro-Palestinian protests — a signal of what a watershed the war has become. The pro-Hamas protesters are “idiots,” he says. “At the root of these protests is rampant anti-Semitism. Some of the most extreme left members of my party are supporting the kinds of organizations and nations that literally beat women to death if they don’t wear their hair correctly.

“Why would you stand with the kind of regimes that that force their people to live under values that real progressives in America would never live? Part of our party has lost any kind of moral bearings.”

Hearts and Minds

Willingness to mix it up with his ideological foes is probably baked into the Fetterman DNA, but there are those who see his sharp defense of Israel as a product of something far more recent: his stroke. Four days before the Democratic primary in May 2022, while at a gas station between campaign stops, the then-lieutenant governor fell victim to a stroke triggered by a heart condition. He spent the weekend in hospital, having surgery to remove the blood clot that had prompted the stroke, then having a pacemaker and a defibrillator fitted.

Recovery was long, and at his debate with Dr. Oz five months later, he struggled to express himself clearly.

The brush with death gave him perspective. In comments to the New Yorker, Fetterman spoke of a second chance. “I’ve already been dead once. It’s very liberating.” As explanation for his no-holds-barred Israel support, though, the theory of a fresh start falls short, failing to account for the arc of his political evolution which began changing even before his stroke.

The stroke wasn’t the end of his troubles. Following on its heels came a bout of depression for which he was hospitalized in January 2023, just after being sworn into the Senate. While post-stroke depression is common, severe depression requiring hospitalization isn’t. For six weeks, he was hospitalized in Walter Reed Medical Center, with no Internet access or contact with family.

Tackling the depression that had accelerated after his stroke was a risk, given the cutthroat political environment he inhabits. The admission could have destroyed his nascent Senate career, he knew.

The very public nature of his battle with depression has led the senator to use his high profile to talk about mental health challenges. In May, he introduced a bill to establish a Senate commission on mental health, to improve the provision of treatment across America.

“Like my defense of Israel, that is another conversation that I never realized would reach so many people,” he says. “I have ongoing conversations with people who reach out to me and say, ‘Hey, your voice really mattered to me, or it helped me, or it saved my life, or I got help or things.’ I never expected it when I talked about my own journey.”

All the previous theories on Fetterman’s Israel support — such as his health challenges — are dismissed by the man himself, though.

“It’s a fool’s errand to try and explain my support for Israel,” he declares, giving me a version of what he told his Pittsburgh supermarket interlocutor. “Some people think that it must be religion, but I’m not religious. It’s just being a moral voice and I should never be thanked for being on the right side.”

Limited Influence

For all John Fetterman’s newfound centrism, there is one caveat: He retains a distinctly liberal tinge. Conservatives cherishing the dream that John Fetterman will cross the aisle will be disappointed. His regular invective against Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance should lay those imaginings to rest. The Pennsylvania senator remains a social liberal and committed Democrat, with loyalty as his watchword. He backed Joe Biden long after that became passé in his own party. FiveThirtyEight, the poll analysis outlet, reported that Fetterman had voted with Biden 92 percent of the time in 2023 — 21 percent more than Montana Democrat Jon Tester.

Fetterman’s score on Heritage Action, which grades politicians’ conservative credentials based on their voting record, gives the senator seven percent. Despite his increasingly vocal concern about the administration’s border policies, he voted to dismiss impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He voted against a bill to overturn a Biden regulation providing abortion through the Veterans Administration. In general, the conservative think tank’s skepticism of large-scale foreign aid, institutions such as the FBI, and untrammeled government spending received no backing from Fetterman.

As the presidential election brought Vice President Kamala Harris to Pittsburgh last week, he campaigned alongside the Democratic candidate whose campaign is heavily focused on preventing Donald Trump from flipping Pennsylvania with its 19 electoral votes. Fetterman remains bullish about Harris’s chances of taking the crucial swing state, even as he thinks the Trump-Harris election will be very close.

But John Fetterman remains unafraid of calling it as he sees it on Israel — regardless of party line. He lays into Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s snub of Bibi Netanyahu in July, when the prime minister spoke to Congress and Schumer refused to shake his hand.

“I don’t think it’s helpful to criticize the democratically elected leader of our key ally,” he says. “If you’re not willing to shake his hand, but you’ll stand and clap for things that he’s saying, that’s a strange kind of logic.”

Back in March, the vice president spoke of “consequences” if the IDF went ahead and invaded Rafah. “Hard disagree,” Fetterman fired back on social media. “Israel has the right to prosecute Hamas to surrender or to be eliminated. Hamas owns every innocent death for their cowardice hiding behind Palestinian lives.”

Now that Kamala Harris is in the driver’s seat, is he not worried about the tenor of her ongoing remarks about “too many innocent civilians,” and how that could affect Israel? Fetterman is uncharacteristically circumspect in his response, indicating both his personal determination to stay the course, and the political realities of campaigning for a party leader whose own feelings about Israel are far more mixed than his own.

“I really want to emphasize that my voice is just my voice,” he says. “I have never tried to change anyone’s opinions. I’ll present my views throughout all of this, and that’s how I’m going to continue.”

Fetterman’s struggles against the anti-Israel tide around him are embodied by the turnover of aides, some of whom have berated their old boss for his positions. An astonishing moment came recently when Fetterman’s communications director briefed on the record against the boss.

“I don’t agree with him,” Carrie Adams told the Free Press’s Peter Savodnik. “I have a sense that his international views are a lot less nuanced than my generation.”

The personnel difficulties were a reflection of John Fetterman’s isolation in the wider Democratic Party. It has reached the point where he made the decision not to go to last month’s national convention in Chicago. I ask if he was made to feel unwelcome.

“It’s been disappointing to me that people in my own party didn’t respond in the way that I have chosen to do. I wouldn’t say that it’s made me feel unwelcome. I just think it makes me solitary.”

Whatever the semantic nuances of the terms, John Fetterman clearly isn’t in a position to persuade swathes of the party of his views; at this stage, he’s just soldiering on alone. But he thinks that sidelining views like his — that until very recently were solidly bipartisan — bodes ill for the Democrats themselves.

“If the Democratic Party isn’t willing to accommodate the kind of views that I have in support of Israel, then I would say they do it at their party’s peril.”

Right of Way

AS the windchill factor sweeping in from the left dropped to sub-zero, Senator Fetterman was warmed by the newfound appreciation among Israel supporters. Visiting Los Angeles this year, he rented a convertible and drove around with the roof down. It didn’t take long for him to be recognized by Jewish locals, who delighted him with calls of, “Thank you, Senator Fetterman!”

Nowhere has that appreciation been more full-throated than among the Orthodox community. A high point was his address at Yeshiva University’s commencement at the end of May, where he was presented with the presidential medallion for global leadership. YU President Rabbi Ari Berman called Fetterman Israel’s “single greatest friend” in Washington.

Prior to the event, he was visited in the green room by RIETS Rosh Yeshivah Rav Herschel Schachter, who, with tears streaming down his cheeks, explained to him how during this dark time, the Jewish People owes immense gratitude to those who buck the trend and stand up for Israel with such unwavering courage.

In terms of optics alone, the sight of the giant senator attired in Hogwartesque robes was guaranteed to go viral, but it was Fetterman’s speech that made an unforgettable impact.

“I’m just a senator with a big mouth who happens to stand with Israel,” he said, and then gestured to his Harvard robe, which he wore as a graduate of the university, which has been embroiled in a battle over treatment of Jewish students since the war began.

“Today, I have been profoundly disappointed with Harvard’s inability to stand up for the Jewish community,” Fetterman said. “For me, personally, I do not fundamentally believe that it is right for me to wear this today.”

He drew a standing ovation from the thousands present as he removed the hood of the robe.

It was a joyous, discombobulating scene as the giant senator bestrode the stage with his characteristic, slightly awkward dignity. To receive the medallion, he had to bend at the knees, drawing laughs from the crowd. A head-spinning clip emerged of Fetterman holding hands with Rabbi Berman and Rav Schachter as they and graduates danced to the tune of, “It’s Geshmak to be a Yid.”

At our interview months later, he waves the award as he speaks — with characteristic modesty — about his newfound role as a defender of Israel.

“I never realized and never expected that my voice would have resonated, and I feel unworthy to receive this award,” he says. “Last year’s awardee was responsible for developing the Iron Dome, and I don’t belong in that company.”

Shared Values

What places John Fetterman’s support for Israel in a category of its own is that it has taken place away from the normal channels of the pro-Israel machinery. He wasn’t taken on Israel trips by AIPAC as an up-and-coming politician — a major pathway for familiarizing future American leaders with Israel’s challenges. He went from being the mayor of a small town to the deciding Senate vote at a time of existential challenge for Israel without visiting the country.

That all changed in June when he visited Israel for two days, meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Herzog. Noteworthy about the trip was how low-key it was; this was no triumphal procession with lots of photo ops. Clearly, for Fetterman, this was not about PR, but about genuine identification with Israel’s cause.

Israelis themselves were naturally amused to see the visitor towering over their diminutive leaders, and surprised to learn that at least one Democrat was in their corner.

Perhaps the biggest impact was on Fetterman himself. “It was the trip of my life — my only regret is that I didn’t have more time to spend there, and I really miss it,” he says.

“One of the most profound moments was actually just having dinner with folks in Tel Aviv before I was going to fly home,” he recalls, “and it was a large table of young people sitting around socializing, having a great time, dressed in Western kinds of ways, and talking about their plans, their educations, and their careers. How remarkable that these kinds of opportunities are only promoted in that region in Israel.”

In a world where the language of support for Israel increasingly emanates from the right with its ties to religion, to hear the kind of secular version couched in terms of American values and shared freedoms seems curiously old-fashioned.

That’s entirely in line with Fetterman’s realignment with the center, but as ever, he “leans in” to the Israel cause with gusto. “That nation is a miracle after what your people have been through,” he says.

Wide Angle

Eleven months after the beginning of the war, John Fetterman’s Senate office is still Hostage Central. He meets with the families of those who’ve disappeared into Hamas’s tunnels, and both he and his staff monitor their fate each day in the offices lined with the pictures of the captives.

Despite the fact that the White House has long since reverted to pressuring Israel to agree to a cease-fire and peace process with the Palestinians, the party’s decisive Senate voter won’t be pressured.

“I support Israel until they’re able to neutralize Hamas. How can you ever hope to rebuild Gaza or bring any kind of peace, as long as Hamas isn’t eliminated? It will require billions of dollars to rebuild Gaza — can you run that through Hamas, and ensure that they don’t use that to purchase weapons or build more kinds of tunnels?”

Fetterman deploys his acerbic tongue when it comes to Hamas leadership. “You know, they’re not starving — I’ve never seen a skinny Hamas leader,” he mocks. “They stole billions and billions of dollars, and still live like billionaires in luxury hotels.”

Fetterman is equally determined to view the conflict with Hamas in its proper context — as part of a wider war with Iran.

“I fully support the way Israel has been willing to hold people that were involved fully accountable, whether it’s in Iran, Lebanon, or wherever they are,” he relates.

That full-throated backing is music to the ears of Israeli leaders used to the discordant strains now emerging from some Democrats, and it raises a vital question about Israel’s American patron.

Could John Fetterman’s lone stand make him a rallying figure for pro-Israel Democrats, or is he just too different to galvanize anything bigger than his own giant frame?

Before we discover the answer, one thing is for sure: John Fetterman’s stand for Israel is for real.

“If I’m the last Democrat to have that kind of a view,” he says trenchantly, “I’m sticking with Israel. It might not be considered a political winner, but like, so what? Judge me.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1029)