For the first four years of his term, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff has been noteworthy for the news he hasn’t made. The youngest member of the Senate is no longer on TikTok. He doesn’t appear on cable news with hot takes. On any given day, he’s far more likely to be talking to a small-town Georgia mayor than chasing headlines.
But the headlines found Ossoff last week after he, the state’s first Jewish senator, cast two procedural votes that would have limited certain weapons sales to Israel for eventual use in its war against Hamas.
The votes were essentially symbolic. All involved knew the effort led by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and joined by Georgia’s U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, didn’t have the votes to pass. Ossoff also voted to approve the overall effort sending $13 billion of additional military aid to Israel. But that didn’t prevent some high-profile members of Georgia Jewish communities from seeing the narrower votes from Ossoff as a betrayal from one of their own.
“This really hit people in a way that I think is deeper than someone might have anticipated,” Rabbi Joshua Heller, the senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Torah, told me. “If you have a friend who is true nine times, and then on the 10th leaves you hanging, it doesn’t necessarily undo the first nine, but it makes you wonder, ‘What’s going to happen on time 11?”
Heller is one of 20 Georgia rabbis who signed onto a letter to the AJC expressing “strong and sincere disappointment” in the votes from Ossoff and Warnock, which they described as “anti-Israel.” Other major Jewish leaders accused Ossoff and Warnock of “emboldening Iran” with the votes, while a smaller number have supported the senators or remained silent.
Ossoff’s allies have said in the aftermath that he is a leader for the entire state, including the young and progressive Democrats, Black, Jewish and otherwise, who agreed with his votes.
But nobody is more ready to defend the votes than Ossoff himself. And in an interview from his Washington office, he said he wasn’t surprised by the reaction to his latest votes related to Israel.
“I am criticized every day of every week for the decisions that I make, and I welcome criticism, it’s part of public life,” he said.
It hasn’t been only Jewish Georgians angry with him at points in the year-plus since Hamas attacked Israel and the Israeli government responded. After calling the initial Hamas attack “an act of unconscionable brutality,” Ossoff’s office and home were picketed by pro-Palestinian protesters. A sit-in unfolded in his Washington lobby. Black faith leaders recently ran a full-page ad in the AJC urging him and Warnock to push for a cease fire. But he said none of that swayed his thinking.
“Then, as now, it didn’t influence my vote,” he said. “Because when it comes to U.S. national security, my job is to vote according to my assessment of our national interest-- not to navigate domestic politics or worry about short-term political blowback or criticism, but to do what I think is right for the country.”
The country he’s talking about, of course, is the United States. But as the first Jewish senator from the state, he also has the weight of what many in Georgia’s Jewish communities want him to do to protect and defend the Jewish state of Israel, especially in its war in the Middle East.
“Growing up Jewish, I grew up among Holocaust survivors,” he said. His family who survived had fled pogroms in then-Russia, and Ossoff said that history instilled in him “core values about human rights.”
As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Ossoff is regularly briefed by senior military and intelligence leaders on developments in the Middle East. In the Spring, the U.S. State Department said that it was reasonable to conclude international humanitarian law was being violated in Gaza.
“I am confident that the full extent of harm, suffering and displacement of civilians in Gaza are neither necessary nor in America’s national interest-- and that it’s reasonable of the United States to use the leverage that comes with a provision of arms to shape the conduct of our allies,” he said.
Along with briefings in D.C., he said his thinking on the votes was also informed by conversations with what he guessed were hundreds, if not thousands, of community leaders in Georgia who expressed a full range of views on the war. His office held a series of private briefings for Jewish community leaders and he arranged for multiple FBI briefings to address Jewish and Muslim community concerns after antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes surfaced.
“What I’m concerned about is America’s national interests, and that includes whether our national security interests, our laws, and international law are being adhered to by foreign governments who are operating with American weapons,” he said.
His position is detailed and nuanced, but detail and nuance are not attributes that are always rewarded in today’s political climate. And for some Jewish Georgians, there is no room for either in what they see as an existential a war against Hamas where they believe Ossoff is either with them or against them.
Norman Radow, a major Democratic donor in Georgia who is also Jewish, supported Ossoff in 2020. But Radow doesn’t just think the votes could hurt Ossoff’s reelection in 2026, he hopes they will help defeat him.
“I think it’s a naivete of his part. I think it’s probably part of his deep-seated views (about Israel) that I think he’s masked and hidden for the last four years,” said Radow. “And in a way, I’m glad that he’s come out now, because the election is just 23 months away, and now we know who he is.”
Ossoff said all of his work related to Israel-- his statements of support, his votes to fund its war efforts, and his most recent votes to limit the sale of some arms to the country-- are exactly who he is. And he’s confident he’s doing the right thing.
“This is who I am,” he said. “I made the decision when I was elected that I was going to make decisions on the merits, that I was going to pursue substantive solutions, and that I was going to vote according to my well-informed and good-faith assessment of America’s national interests and Georgia’s interests,” he said. “That’s what I’ve done throughout my tenure. That’s what I will continue to do.”
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