The Man Who Explains Israel to John Fetterman

Over the last three years, Democratic Party support for Israel has undergone a dramatic reversal. In 2024, 18 Democratic senators backed a measure to block arms sales to the country. In April of this year, it was 40. Polls show about two-thirds of Democratic voters sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis. And even former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — who grew up spending his summers in the country and whose middle name is Israel — has recently begun calling for an end to carte blanche U.S. military aid. “More and more Democrats,” Senator Bernie Sanders told NOTUS last month, are “seeing the light.”

And then there’s Senator John Fetterman. While the rest of his party reluctantly retreats from an ironclad allyship, the Pennsylvania senator has promised to be the “last” Democrat standing with Israel. His political identity is increasingly defined by a blanket defense of the country. Online, Fetterman frequently mocks critics of Israel. In interviews, he has pushed back on claims that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. When pro-Palestine protesters came to his home, Fetterman waved an Israeli flag from his roof; asked on Meet the Press about Israel’s pagers attack in Lebanon, which wounded more than 3,000 people and killed 12, the senator said, “I love it.” On May 19, Fetterman was the only Democratic senator to vote against a War Powers Resolution intended to stymie the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. “President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region,” he said when the war began. “God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel,” Fetterman added, as if these elements constitute some kind of geopolitical holy trinity.

By Democratic Party standards, Fetterman’s position on Israel is extreme. There are a multitude of theories as to why: The senator is a contrarian; he enjoys the attention; he has convinced himself that he is indisputably in the right. But people close to Fetterman cite a previously unreported factor too: Behind the scenes, Fetterman is being encouraged and counseled by a little-known man in his late 30s named David “Dovi” Safier.

Safier, a writer of Jewish history and fundraiser for Orthodox causes, has no public background in government or counseling politicians on Capitol Hill. He is not an official staffer or paid outside adviser. A few years ago, he “just kind of appeared” in the senator’s orbit, one former Fetterman staffer remembers. And then, suddenly, he seemed to be everywhere. Staffers would walk into Fetterman’s office, only to find Safier sitting in the room. When the senator went to Israel in 2025, Safier joined him on the trip; when Fetterman filmed Real Time With Bill Maher, Safier met up with him in Los Angeles. The two are constantly texting and talking, according to multiple former Fetterman staffers, and Safier has unofficially operated as a top campaign fundraiser and senior adviser. He has even set up and attended sensitive meetings with foreign officials; in some cases, he is the only person staffing those meetings, I’ve been told.

In September 2025, Fetterman and some of his senior staffers gathered at the senator’s office for a meeting with Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. According to one of the staffers in attendance, Safier was inexplicably in the room, too. It was far from a public event. During the meeting, Fetterman tested out a proposal to force every senator to vote on whether they think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. (Leiter and Safier did not consider this a good idea; Fetterman eventually backed off.) Throughout, the two politicians gossiped freely. According to the same staffer, Leiter told Fetterman that he had prodded Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — despite his fervent support for the state — to be even more helpful to Israel, asking the Jewish politician if he puts blood in his matzo. Fetterman chuckled, the person in attendance said, not “picking up on the gravity of the insult.” (The Israeli Embassy denies the comment. “Ambassador Leiter said to Senator Schumer — as he’s said to other senators and congressmen — that the accusation of starvation in Gaza is no different than medieval blood libels,” the embassy said in a comment.)

In conversations with 11 current and former staffers for Fetterman — all of whom requested varying levels of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive matters — a strange picture emerges. The senator has isolated himself from many of his Senate colleagues and members of his own party. There are few who Fetterman seems to trust beyond his dad and brother, who are conservative; Bobby Maggio, his 2022 campaign manager; and now Safier, who has become arguably the senator’s closest confidant.

Fetterman’s dwindling inner circle has, by default, given Safier an unusually large influence. When he is on Capitol Hill, Safier will “hang out and sit in Fetterman’s office all day or walk with him to the floor,” a former staffer says. After their conversations, Fetterman would appear “far more radicalized,” the former staffer remembers. The chatter around the office is usually: “Oh God, Safier is here, and now John’s not gonna go to any of his meetings.”

Multiple staffers recall hearing about calls between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Fetterman that Safier listened in on. As Safier’s influence has grown, the senator’s calls with Netanyahu have increased. On the calls, it is either Fetterman alone talking with the foreign leader or just the senator, Safier, and Netanyahu. (Netanyahu’s foreign-press spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.) Safier “would always stick around” when Fetterman chatted with “important dignitaries” from other countries, another former staffer says. Recently, Safier was in attendance for a meeting with the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, according to multiple people with direct knowledge. (The UAE Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.)

It’s not odd for a politician to have a “Kitchen Cabinet” of informal advisers — longtime friends, academics, and former colleagues. But they typically offer “much more structured, occasional advice,” a chief of staff for a current Democratic congressperson told me. Informed of Safier’s close relationship with Fetterman, the chief of staff was stunned. “It’s definitely concerning,” they said. When asked if they’d ever heard of a similar arrangement — an unpaid adviser sitting in on meetings with diplomats and hanging out with a politician during working hours — the chief of staff said, “Truly, no.”

Fetterman’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment or a detailed list of questions about Safier’s role.

The little-known adviser’s growing influence within Fetterman’s office comes at a time when the senator, deeply unpopular among Democrats in his home state, is being wooed by the Republicans to switch parties. He has claimed that it is the Democrats who have betrayed their values, while insisting that he would be a poor fit in the Republican Party. Fetterman is in a political no-man’s-land — a disastrous development for a first-term senator. His staffers are infuriated with their boss’s untenable position in the Senate and his buddy-buddy dynamic with Safier. Fetterman has largely sidetracked other legislative matters, a current staffer said, and is now spending most of his time focusing on Israel. A few people working for Fetterman have even begun to joke that he is the “senator from Tel Aviv” and call Safier “chief” because he has more power than the actual chief of staff. (Cabelle St. John, Fetterman’s chief of staff, announced this week at a meeting she is leaving her position.)

Safier did not respond to repeated requests for comment from New York. In his few public interviews, mostly podcasts focused on Jewish life, Safier has said he grew up on Long Island in an Orthodox community. As a young man, he relocated to a settlement in East Jerusalem — which is illegally occupied by Israel, according to the International Court of Justice — and studied the Talmud at Mir Yeshiva, the largest yeshiva in the world. This background explains Safier’s current public persona: an American Jewish writer who has come back from, and often returns to, the Holy Land. His work mostly appears in an Orthodox magazine called Mishpacha (which currently has a defunct website).

But Safier’s broader employment is unclear. He describes himself publicly only as a “business professional,” and his employers and occupations on political donations forms have been ambiguous: “N/A,” “consultant,” “self-employed.” “David has never been really forthcoming about what he does,” a person close to Fetterman says. “It’s always been very like, ‘Oh, I’m in wealth management.’”

On a 2018 donation form, Safier listed his employer as the Wolfson Group, a New York City–based family investments firm. It’s unclear whether Safier is currently employed there, but over the last few years, he’s told some in Fetterman’s office that he works for the company, and his active email address is still linked to the firm. (The Wolfson Group did not respond to a request for comment.)

The founder of the firm is Safier’s grandfather Zev Wolfson, a real-estate magnate who died at the age of 84. The Israeli Embassy to the United States posthumously recognized Wolfson as one of the “greatest American contributors to the U.S.-Israel relationship.” According to a Jerusalem Post obituary, in the 1960s, Wolfson successfully convinced members of Congress to send Phantom jets to Israel; in the 1980s, he was “personally responsible for saving Israel hundreds of millions of dollars in interest payments on US government loans”; in the 1990s, he helped the Israeli military secure Patriot missiles. Wolfson was especially close with former Hawaii senator Daniel Inouye and former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. But he didn’t “relish the personal attention,” nor did he “put his name on his buildings in the style of Donald J. Trump,” the New York Times said in a late 1980s article. When Wolfson died in 2012, he left behind hundreds of millions in assets, according to court records, and the Wolfson Group, which is still run by Safier’s uncles.

Safier’s work with Fetterman seems to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. In 2023, Bob Pincus, an AIPAC national board member, helped Fetterman’s staff set up a fundraiser in midtown Manhattan with a member of “our broader community,” according to texts I obtained. Safier was a co-host of the event, and it appears he met Fetterman there for the first time. (Pincus said an in email that he “did not make an introduction” between Safier and Fetterman but did not respond to questions about helping facilitate the fundraising event.)

Afterward, Safier worked his way into the senator’s inner circle. In December 2023, Safier texted a former senior staffer about coordinating additional Fetterman fundraisers and floated the possibility of organizing a trip to Israel. In April 2024, Safier reached out to the former senior staffer again: “Got a call from the Israeli PM’s office (a friend of mine is a longtime advisor) … The PM wanted to setup a call with the Senator to thank him for his support (I presume).” Fetterman and Netanyahu spoke to each other a day later. Safier also began to show up to events. In May 2024, he was in the crowd as Fetterman gave a commencement speech at Yeshiva University.

Some staff remember the summer of 2024 as a turning point. That June, Fetterman made a two-day excursion to Israel. During his trip, he managed to squeeze in meetings with Netanyahu and other Israeli officials. He seemed refreshed by the experience. “It was the trip of my life,” the senator later told a journalist at Mishpacha. (That interview was coordinated by Safier, according to texts I reviewed.) After Fetterman returned, several people close to the senator noticed Safier popping up at the office with increasing frequency. One says it became common to see Safier waiting “outside John’s office” to speak. “He became part of our conversations,” the former staffer says. “It got to the point where there was weight in what he said and what he wanted.”

The extent of the access surprised staff. So did Safier’s mode of transport: He occasionally flew down from New York on a private jet owned by Reuven Moskowitz, staff were told. Moskowitz, a wealthy lawyer and technology entrepreneur, sometimes hung out at the office, too. Both Safier and Moskowitz were donors and supporters of former New York City mayor Eric Adams. (The City reported that Moskowitz used an “ethically dubious” loophole to bundle large sums of money for the mayor’s campaign. Moskowitz did not respond to requests for comment.)

Multiple former staffers told me they did not personally dislike Safier. In their interactions, he was often chatty and jovial. They describe him as friendly, if awkward — wholesome and funny, with a childlike energy. But they were still perturbed that he had come out of nowhere politically and flattered his way into Fetterman’s inner circle. And his praise of their boss could be strange. In his new role, Safier has taken to often publicly lauding the senator on X. “Nobody on either side of the aisle says it quite like” Fetterman, a.k.a. the “Secretary of Trolling,” Safier posted recently. Last year, he tweeted an odd AI-generated video of Fetterman and, earlier this year, posted a slowed-down clip of Fetterman walking with staff, overlaid with Sia’s “Unstoppable.”

In March 2025, Fetterman returned to Israel. This time, it was at the invitation of a nonprofit called Relief Resources. The New York City–based Jewish mental-health nonprofit said it wanted to invite Fetterman because of his “leadership in mental health awareness and legislative advocacy.” One of Relief Resources’ board members is a man named Daniel Wolfson, which is the name of Zev Wolfson’s son and Safier’s uncle. Safier was heavily involved in setting up the trip, according to multiple people with direct knowledge. (Relief Resources and Daniel Wolfson did not respond to requests for comment.)

Safier traveled with Fetterman for most of his four days in Israel, according to four former and current staff members. Moskowitz was there too. The senator seemed to relish in the adulation and attention he received. He again met with Netanyahu, who presented him with a silver-plated “beeper” in celebration of Israel’s attack on Lebanon. That meeting was disclosed by the senator’s office. A separate meeting in Tel Aviv with right-wing billionaire Miriam Adelson, confirmed to me by four people close to Fetterman, was not disclosed. (Adelson’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.)

When Fetterman returned, he ran into trouble. In May 2025, New York published an article about his deteriorating health and volatility. In public statements about the story, Fetterman responded with anger and defiance (as did Safier, who said, “Fetterman’s doing fine. It’s the party that needs a checkup”). But since the story came out, Fetterman has become much warier about “leakers” on staff and is suspicious of many of his aides. “He completely isolated himself from the party and anyone that he thought was a progressive,” a former staffer tells me.

Fetterman’s withdrawal from his fellow Democrats has only increased Safier’s sway. In December 2025, Talking Points Memo reported on a letter purportedly written by Fetterman that asked Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, to pardon Netanyahu over charges in his corruption case. According to five current and former staffers, the letter wasn’t drafted by anyone in the senator’s office. Two say Safier passed it along to Fetterman to be signed on Senate letterhead. (Fetterman’s office did not respond to specific requests for comment on the letter.)

By early this year, many on Fetterman’s staff were incredulous and exhausted. In private, their boss was acting like a Republican, they say. In January 2026, Fetterman sent to a group chat with staffers a screenshot of an article headline about how the average working family spends nearly $4,000 annually on health care. “How should it cost? Free?” he complained in the text, which I obtained. “I don’t understand what affordability it is.”

The same month, after the Epstein files were released, Fetterman texted a staffer, “Epstein was a nothing burger. Worst pics I’ve seen were from Clinton lol.” When Alex Pretti was killed by ICE in Minneapolis, Fetterman was consumed with grievances about how Democrats were hypocrites for defending Pretti’s right to legally carry a firearm: “Kyle Rittenhouse brought a gun to a protest. He was roundly condemned for that. Why are now democrats defending the nurse it was legal to carry. Both legal weapons. Square that,” he texted.

The blowback Fetterman has received from Democratic voters has fueled the rumors that he might switch parties. His net approval rating among Pennsylvania Democrats has dropped 108 points since 2023, from plus 68 to minus 40, according to CNN. It’s a massive swing, and Fetterman has had trouble adjusting. Last summer, Fetterman called a rare meeting with senior staff to ruminate about his political future. The presidency still intrigued him (four staffers say he used to openly talk about running for president), but it had been a bruising few months. He floated something more realistic: vice-president on the Democratic Party’s 2028 presidential ticket. “Almost all of us had our jaws on the floor, like, ‘Are you out of your fucking mind? You don’t do your job, you can’t raise any money, and your entire party hates you,’” a person who was in the room says.

People with direct knowledge don’t buy the rumor that Fetterman might switch parties or outright quit his job. He’d instantly become much less interesting to Fox News if he were no longer a self-hating Democrat, and he’d lose his unique sway in the Senate if he stopped being an unpredictable vote. Barring another health scare, people close to Fetterman think he intends to stick it out through the end of his term in 2029.

A former senior staffer told me they expect Safier to keep his informal advisory role during that time, too. Earlier this year, the senator asked that Safier have access to his schedule. And a few weeks ago, Safier accompanied Fetterman on a series of fundraisers in New Jersey and New York City, according to multiple people with direct knowledge. Becoming an actual full-time staffer would mean an entirely different workload for Safier with significantly more scrutiny; it “blows the whole thing up,” the former senior staffer says. Safier seems to want a job more like that of his grandfather Zev Wolfson, whose pro-Israel lobbying efforts in Congress were “entirely under the radar, without any fanfare or publicity,” according to the Jerusalem Post. Those efforts were also incredibly successful. “He’s getting what he wants,” the senior staffer says of Safier. “John will go where he wants, when he wants.”