At a time of rising anti-Israel and, in some cases, antisemitic sentiment in segments of the Democratic Party, Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) said in an interview with Jewish Insider this week that he is not fazed by the pressure, to which some Democratic colleagues have caved.

Suozzi, a moderate pro-Israel Democrat from Long Island, has long been a vocal champion of the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Jewish community in the House, and represents a heavily Jewish district. 

The New York congressman is also the lead Democrat in the House on a bill to establish 100-foot buffer zones outside of houses of worship. He had introduced legislation of his own on the subject earlier this year, but subsequently teamed with Rep. Brad Knott (R-NC), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) and outside advocates on a bipartisan consensus bill, the Right to Worship Act, which Suozzi had a significant role in negotiating.

A slew of outside groups supporting that bill, many of which also backed Suozzi’s original legislation, are set to rally outside the Capitol on Wednesday in support of the legislation.

Suozzi said he “decided years ago that I would be a supporter of Israel through thick and thin, based upon my travel there and different experiences I’ve had in my life.” He said he feels only more emboldened to stick to his guns on the issue in his political second act — Suozzi was a member of Congress from 2017 to 2023, before losing a bid for governor of New York.

In a 2024 special election, he won back his old seat after disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) was expelled from Congress.

After that loss, Suozzi spent time traveling around the country, culminating in a six-day silent Jesuit retreat in the desert, where Suozzi said he “surrendered to the fact that I don’t control things, and things happen the way they’re supposed to happen.”

“You would say things are either beshert or they’re not,” Suozzi said, using the Yiddish word for destined.  “So I’ve decided that I’m just going to stick to my values and work as hard as I can, and whatever happens, happens. And so I’ve decided on this issue that I’m going to do the right [thing]. I’m a little bit more fearless than I was last time around. I’m going to do what I think is right and let the chips fall where they may.”

At this point, he said he’s “used to” the pressure and that he takes the “good with the bad.”

“There are some people there are some people that are really happy with my position, and there are others and there are other people that are very unhappy with my position, and that’s that’s the life I live — I guess we all do,” Suozzi said.

A co-chair of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, Suozzi argues that lawmakers need to communicate more and find areas where they can come together and work together.

“Everybody’s going off into their respective camps on a regular basis, and you know there’s not enough conversation taking place,” he said. “We’re facing a lot of very serious issues in our country right now, and it’s not good enough to just do a video onto your phone and say how bad the other side is. We have to do the difficult work of actually trying to find common ground.”

He points to the buffer zone bill as one example of such work.

As Knott told the story in a recent appearance on Fox News, Suozzi called Knott and approached him on the House floor when he heard that Knott was working on his own buffer zone bill. “He put down his bill, he joined this one, he contributed unbelievably productively to this bill’s formation and now he’s gone and helped secure Sen. Slotkin, Sen. Cruz, so it’s a hats off to Rep. Suozzi in this effort,” Knott said during the interview.

Suozzi has said in multiple interviews about the bill that the goal is to ensure that people feel safe going to religious services, and that showing up to practice one’s religion shouldn’t require facing down danger.

“The objective here was to successfully respect the constitutional protections for the right to free speech and the equally important right to worship, which are both in the First Amendment,” Suozzi told JI. “The big thing in my head was that a person shouldn’t have to show particular courage just to attend a religious service.”

He said he hopes that the Senate will take up the bill during the remaining weeks it is in session before the midterm elections, so that the House can take the bill up during the lame duck session.

“The tough lift, the heavy lift here, is to show that we’re trying to responsibly balance First Amendment freedom of speech and right to worship rights,” he said. 

Asked about his conversations with colleagues on the bill, Suozzi said that the fact that such a wide range of groups, including ones representing a range of religions and religious communities, “makes people feel more comfortable that we’re taking into account those type of concerns” and that no community has expressed serious concerns.

“It’s just a matter of getting people’s attention in the midst of all the different noise that’s going on here in Washington, D.C. these days,” he said.

The coalition of support for the bill is broad, including a range of Jewish groups including the reform, conservative and Orthodox movements, various Christian and Catholic groups, Hindus, Sikhs, Seventh-Day Adventists, Mormons and Muslims — even including a Muslim group that has faced scrutiny for featuring extremist speakers at a recent conference and which was accused of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood at a hearing Cruz chaired.

Suozzi said he’s found Knott to be “very, very thoughtful, certainly very intelligent” and that he’s brought experience as a prosecutor to the issue. A co-chair of the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, Suozzi said that he thinks that members of Congress need to cross the aisle to talk to each other more on both this and other issues.

“Tom Suozzi has been an outstanding leader in fighting antisemitism, supporting Israel, and standing with American Jewry,” Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center said in a statement, of Suozzi’s work. “His work with Congressman Knott to protect our right to worship is exactly the kind of bipartisan leadership we need. There is no greater friend to the Jewish community than Tom Suozzi.”