Something has happened in the Democratic primary campaigns that activists fighting the Israeli occupation might not have expected. In response to the Jewish anti-occupation movement IfNotNow’s bird-dogging efforts, many of the leading candidates have already named and shamed the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.

On July 12, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg said that Israel’s “occupation has to end.” It’s not just Buttigieg either. Asked by a pair of young Jewish women if she would fight the occupation like she has fought Wall Street corruption, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren responded, “Yes, yes. So I’m there.” Likewise, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont posed with a group of young Jews holding a sign that read, “Jews Against the Occupation.” Even former Vice President Joe Biden begrudgingly admitted that “the occupation is a real problem.” In just a matter of weeks, the majority of the front-runners have publicly stated that they oppose occupation, setting a baseline for the discussion moving forward.

However, no one should pretend that this emerging Democratic consensus is actually groundbreaking. As journalist Robert Mackey pointed out in his recent piece for The Intercept, Senator Warren’s apparent recognition of the occupation as a problem is not a particularly progressive position when placed in historical context. Even former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, one of the leading war criminals of the latter half of the 20th century, was willing to tell the Israeli public in 2003 that “to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation is, in my opinion, a very bad thing for us and for them.”