The brouhaha over Reps. Ilhan Omar’s and Rashida Tlaib’s canceled trip to Israel has died down. Yet the uncomfortable problem raised by the episode still lingers, and leading Democrats are loath to confront it — namely: the inexorable drift of one of America’s two major parties toward anti-Israelism and, often, outright anti-Semitism.

Democrats like to focus their frustrations on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and they did so this time, as well. Yet Tlaib and Omar targeted Israel itself.

It is a standard progressive talking point that criticizing the government of Israel isn’t the same as anti-Semitism, criticizing Israel writ large or questioning its right to exist. But this is precisely where Tlaib, Omar and other far-left Democrats are changing the debate. When Omar uses air quotes while calling Israel a democracy, and Tlaib compares it to apartheid South Africa, they are questioning the very legitimacy of the Jewish state.

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While Democrats point the finger at Netanyahu for making Israel a partisan issue, they should be taking stock of their own rhetoric and conduct. The constant condemnations of Israel from within their own caucus, with nary a mention of Palestinian terrorism, marks a new moment in Democratic politics.

Fact is, there is no possible Israeli government that would appease those on the Democratic hard-left and the base who are convinced that Israel is an evil nation.

What would have happened had Bibi let the congresswomen in?

As Tlaib and Omar made clear at their recent news conference, their intention all along was to expose Israel’s alleged wrongdoings. Tlaib was prepared to travel to Israel with MIFTAH, a group that has published Jewish blood libels and propaganda questioning the Holocaust.

Mainstream Democrats’ tacit acceptance of hateful rhetoric, and their refusal to call out Omar’s and Tlaib’s calls to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel, should trouble all Americans who value Israel as a safe haven for Jews and a strategic ally.

These are the same Democrats who rail against Republicans for failing to call out Trump’s allegedly racist rhetoric. But when their own members paint Israel as a cruel oppressor rather than a vulnerable nation threatened by an entire region dedicated to its destruction, they go silent. Somehow a handful of progressive congresswomen have instilled fear in the Democratic leadership on this and many other issues. This is shocking.

Thus far, Israel and the Middle East have not been major issues in the 2020 Democratic Primary. That has to change. With the progressive zeitgeist in America moving so strongly and swiftly against Israel, the American people need to know where these candidates stand on the issue.

It will not be enough to simply say that there are divergent opinions in the Democratic caucus; men and women who wish to be president must decisively back the right of Israel to defend itself and vociferously oppose any efforts to punish Israel economically.

They cannot in good faith criticize Israel for barring entry to politicians intent on deriding that nation, while tolerating the view that the United States should be actively punishing that nation, and placing it at risk.

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Ideas about Israel and Jews were once well outside the mainstream of both parties but are now spreading like a dark shadow over the Democrats. Fewer than 20 years ago, then-President Democrat Bill Clinton said that if Israel were attacked he would “personally grab a rifle; get in a ditch, and fight and die.”

Today’s Democratic leaders don’t even have the courage to fire off a press release defending Israel.

The question facing the Democratic Party isn’t Netanyahu or this or that Israeli government or this or that Mideast development. The question facing Democrats is whether they will confront members of their own party whose disdain for Israel is worn like a badge of honor.

The question is whether Democrats will stand for democracy or theocracy, for freedom or the tyranny that besets the rest of the region.

If the Democrats bend the knee to these apologists for terrorist organizations just because they don’t like Bibi or Trump, they will be playing a dangerous game. They must make clear, now, that they stand with Israel and the Israeli people in their quest for peace and security.

David Marcus is The Federalist’s New York correspondent. Twitter: @BlueBoxDave