America is falling out of love with Israel

“If America was being bombed day and night because of something horrific our government did, and many innocent Americans and American children were being killed and traumatically injured, and we begged for mercy, but the rest of the world said, ‘Americans voted for their government so they deserve it’…And our cities and homes were bombed and turned to rubble. And our infrastructure was destroyed, no farms, no grocery stores, no more organised society. And no one helped our injured and hungry children. How would you feel?”

So Marjorie Taylor Greene, perhaps Donald Trump’s most ardent acolyte in Congress, began a recent tweet in support of Palestinians and in opposition to Israel’s war against Gaza. In the same post, she goes on to complain about the military aid that America sends to Israel. She concludes, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country against a foreign people for a foreign war that I had nothing to do with.”

Since June, when America bombed Iran at Israel’s urging, a band of right-wing politicians and pundits have come out loudly against America’s alliance with Israel, a previously unimaginable stance for any self-respecting right-winger. Many of those calling for a big downgrading of ties—Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Matt Gaetz, to name a few—are stalwarts of the MAGA movement. They complain that Israel is dragging America into foreign conflicts, that it is hoovering up resources that America should be using at home, that it is hostile to Christians and that it disregards America’s interests. Unconditional support for Israel, Ms Greene argues, contradicts the Republican Party’s “America first” slogan. In fact, since so many Republicans seem content to lavish money and weapons on Israel, she has come up with a new slogan to rule out such coddling: “America only”.

For at least a generation, support for Israel has been an absolute given in American politics, superseding party, president or circumstance. America, as a result, has become Israel’s closest ally by far, shielding it from diplomatic attack, sending warships when it is under military threat, sharing sensitive intelligence and technology and showering it with aid. Yet Israel’s rightward political shift in recent years, and especially the protracted war in Gaza, has alienated many ordinary Americans. The disquiet about Israel that has been building for some time within the Democratic Party is now growing among Republicans, too. Younger members of both parties have shifted especially dramatically. A fundamental reshaping of one of America’s deepest friendships seems all but inevitable, with huge ramifications for the Middle East and the world.

The sudden dissent on the right in America comes as Israel’s diplomatic support is atrophying around the world. Several of America’s closest allies—Australia, Britain, Canada and France—plan to recognise Palestinian statehood during the current United Nations General Assembly, citing the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza as their motive. The Trump administration has rebuked this move, calling it a “reward for terrorism”, and the State Department has stopped issuing visas to Palestinians travelling to America for the meeting. America’s veto on the Security Council means full Palestinian membership of the UN remains out of reach for now, but the shifting stance of America’s allies indicates how reliant Israel is on America’s backing.

Yet public support for Israel in America is plunging. A YouGov/Economist poll from mid-August found that 43% of Americans agree with Ms Greene that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. The share who say their sympathies in the conflict lie more with Israelis than Palestinians has reached a 25-year low. Before Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7th 2023, and Israel’s ensuing two-year war in Gaza, things looked different. Americans have long had a largely favourable view of Israel. Since the war began, that enthusiasm has evaporated (see chart 1).

The steepest drop is among Democrats. Young Democrats began souring on Israel a decade ago. By the start of the war in Gaza they were solidly hostile. The most notable recent shift is instead among Democrats over the age of 50, whose negative views of Israel have surged by 23 percentage points over the past three years. Republicans tend to be much more pro-Israel. But younger ones are starting to break ranks, too. Those under 50 are nearly evenly split in their views, with 50% seeing Israel negatively and 48% positively (see chart 2). That is a stark change from 2022, when the margin was 35% to 63%. The age effect is even more pronounced among evangelical Christians. A poll commissioned by the University of North Carolina at Pembroke found that between 2018 and 2021 the share of evangelicals under the age of 30 who supported Israelis over Palestinians plummeted from 69% to 34%. There has not been good polling on the group since, but researchers reckon the shift is enduring.

Naturally, politicians are beginning to reflect the feelings of their constituents. Democrats have led the way. In late July 24 of the 47 Democrats in the Senate voted to halt an arms shipment to Israel. Just eight months earlier, in November, only 18 had. Three of the new “yes” votes were senators who took office this year.

Democrats once firmly in Israel’s corner are softening their stance. Jake Auchincloss, a congressman whose district in the suburbs of Boston is home to 100,000 Jews, says attitudes among his constituents shifted rapidly after a ceasefire in Gaza collapsed in March. The policy memos he sends out in response to constituents’ inquiries provide a neat illustration of how rapidly views are evolving. Since January he has updated the ones on climate change and gun violence five or six times. “On the Israel-Gaza conflict, I think we’re on version number 23,” he says. With each revision, his criticism of Israel’s humanitarian failings has become stronger.

Primary pressure is also nudging pro-Israel Democrats to the left. Ritchie Torres, a congressman from New York City who routinely defends the Israeli government, is on a list of politicians that allies of Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor, want to unseat. He recently stated on social media, “The free world has a moral responsibility to Palestinians in distress. Flood Gaza with food.”

Democrats’ disillusionment with Israel has been hastened by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister for most of the past 15 years. In 2015, while the administration of Barack Obama was in the middle of negotiations with Iran to curb its nuclear-weapons programme, Mr Netanyahu accepted a Republican invitation to address Congress about the dangers of such talks. Democrats felt that he was taking sides in American politics. Since then Mr Netanyahu has cosied up to Mr Trump and made his partisan allegiances even clearer. He has even nominated the president for a Nobel peace prize. That has made support for Israel’s government feel like a proxy for backing the American right, says Peter Beinart, a progressive commentator.

Israel’s conduct has also become ever more at odds with Democratic policies. Mr Netanyahu’s expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and the violence that has come with it, has eroded hope for a two-state solution, which Democratic presidents, in particular, have long championed. For many Jewish Americans, who are overwhelmingly Democrats, the Israeli government’s treatment of Palestinians clashes with values taught in schools and synagogues, says Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel lobbying group. That “disjuncture” has brought groups like J Street that are critical of Israel into the Democratic mainstream. Over the past four years J Street’s budget has risen by more than 50%. During the last election cycle it raised $15m, up from $9m in 2020.

Palestinian activists have also managed to build support through solidarity with other left-wing causes, such as the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted across American cities in 2020. Lots of young Americans were first introduced to the Israel-Palestinian conflict when handed flyers at BLM rallies. Many people have come to see it as fitting “a princess-dragon paradigm”, says Enia Krivine, the head of the Israel programme at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think-tank.

Older Democrats, meanwhile, find that the bloodshed in Gaza no longer squares with their image of Israel as a plucky underdog. “For those of us who grew up around the Six Day War there was this romantic vision that Israel was a force for good,” says Paul, a Zionist Democrat retiree attending a recent protest against Mr Trump. “Now it’s being run by a party that has no interest in that.”

Despite the rising chorus of criticism from the likes of Ms Greene, Republicans have not moved nearly as far as Democrats have. At least superficially, Republican support for Israel looks stronger than ever. Ever since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Americans who advocate a strong military response to Islamic extremism have seen a kindred spirit in Israel. Many evangelicals consider the existence of the Jewish state an essential step towards the re-establishment of God’s reign on Earth, and so have made supporting Israel as central to Republican dogma as opposing abortion.

In some respects Mr Trump has been the most enthusiastically pro-Israel president of all. Mr Netanyahu has visited the White House three times since he took office in January, more than any other foreign leader. Mr Trump has made deporting pro-Palestinian foreign students a tenet of his immigration policy and is punishing universities for failing to combat antisemitism, which he often seems to elide with any expression of pro-Palestinian sentiment. His plan to turn Gaza into a glitzy riviera has stoked the Israeli far-right’s campaign to expel Palestinians from the territory altogether. When Israel asked Mr Trump to join in its bombing campaign against Iran this summer, the president obliged. It was the first time that America and Israel have attacked an enemy together.

Most Republicans in Congress are similarly pro-Israeli. No Republican senators voted with Democrats in July to restrict arms sales. In August Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House of Representatives, became the second senior American official to ever visit a West Bank settlement, declaring that the “mountains of Judea and Samaria” belong to the Jewish people “by right”. In the past such visits were considered taboo by leaders in both parties since they undermined the prospects for a two-state solution. Dan Senor, a Republican foreign-policy wonk, says there is “zero evidence” that congressional Republicans are feeling pressure to change their stance on Israel, particularly because they do not face the same primary pressures that Democrats do.

But if the Republican Party learned anything from last year’s election, it is that podcasters and pundits with big online followings have the power to galvanise voters. One indication that senior Republicans have sensed a shift in the public mood is the increasing shrillness with which they defend America’s alliance with Israel. Last month Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, gave an impassioned speech rebutting talk of genocide and reminding his colleagues, “Israel is our friend.” It ended with a histrionic warning: “If America pulls the plug on Israel, God will pull the plug on us.”

There are specific factors feeding disillusionment with Israel on the right, as well. One is the familiar isolationist view, long embraced by Mr Trump among others, that America should stay out of foreign wars. Many in the party are keen to slash military aid for Ukraine, an idea Mr Trump himself sometimes seems to endorse. That only begs the question of why there should be an “Israel exception”. The widespread perception that the Israeli government is committing war crimes makes the question even more awkward.

There has also long been an antisemitic streak in the Republican Party, for all Mr Trump’s professed zeal to protect America’s Jews. Ms Greene, for one, has floated conspiracies about Jewish space lasers sparking wildfires and repeated claims that “Zionist supremacists” are conspiring to dilute Europe’s white population through migration. Nick Fuentes, a far-right commentator who believes the Holocaust is “exaggerated”, recently complained that Mr Carlson and others had finally begun speaking out against Israel only when it became “unavoidable”.

Tellingly, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), America’s most prominent pro-Israeli lobbying group, has recently changed its strategy. It used not to spend any money supporting particular candidates in elections, presumably because there were so few candidates who appeared anything but friendly to Israel. In the decade to 2021 it devoted a mere $157,000 to election spending, a rounding error compared with its lobbying bill of $31m. Over the past two electoral cycles, however, AIPAC spent $65m on elections and just $9m on lobbying. Forget the minutiae of policy: it is fighting to keep friendly congressmen in their seats.

The stage is set for a big political reckoning. Mr Trump may be able to stick to his pro-Israeli stance without paying a price, but other politicians will not be so lucky. The Democrats who join the race to replace him after next year’s midterm elections will be forced to make their positions on Israel known to primary voters, especially if the war in Gaza is still dragging on. A successful nominee will not be able to back the Jewish state as adamantly as Joe Biden, the most recent Democratic president. The Republican primary will probably feature a populist candidate, hostile to foreign entanglements. Rumours abound that Mr Bannon, a household name on the right who has become very critical of Israel, is mulling a run. The same influencers who helped Mr Trump win could whip up support for such a campaign.

J.D. Vance, Mr Trump’s vice-president, is already the Republican favourite. He has been a vocal opponent of sending arms to Ukraine, but his views on Israel are harder to read. In May he was set to visit—his armour-plated limousine had already arrived in Tel Aviv—when he called off the trip after Mr Netanyahu mobilised more troops for the war in Gaza. Curt Mills, a prominent voice among Republicans hostile to Israel, has a good relationship with Mr Vance. From recent conversations with him about the Middle East, he gets the sense that Mr Vance will come round to the “America only” camp. “I think he’s going to be good on this,” Mr Mills avers.

Such pressure will not necessarily dissipate if the war in Gaza ends or Mr Netanyahu leaves office; it reflects a generational shift. “The old Republican consensus has frayed, probably permanently,” says Dov Waxman of the University of California, Los Angeles. Previously routine bilateral matters, such as the negotiation of a new deal to provide aid for Israel to procure American weapons, may not proceed as smoothly in future. Indeed, Israel might find that relations become chillier in all manner of ways, from weapons procurement to diplomatic support. The immutable relationship that has shaped the Middle East for 50 years is suddenly looking shaky. ■