For a decade, the American right was the one pillar of Israel's support that never wobbled. This week, from the White House podium, the Vice President started pulling it down.
The American public including Jewish Americans are capable of forming opinions outside of labels "left/right," based on the news from the West Bank and Gaza, and now Lebanon. They aren't being manipulated in their conclusion that Israel no longer represents what it claimed. Ben Gvir could have been fired after the Flotilla video but he wasn't.
J.D. Vance is an opportunist who wants to distance himself from failure, but he has no core values. He is the guy who scapegoated Haitian immigrants by claiming they were eating pets, in the lead up of the 2024 election. That is about the furthest you can get from the lessons of the Holocaust.
Very well said. But I worry that Israeli demographics are such that electing a stable, centrist government that can actually change course is nearly impossible. There are just not enough voters who see the world that way, regardless of who’s running.
The left is leaving not because of what Israel does, but because of what Israel is, because it exists, because Jews in Israel aren't entirely reliant on non Jews around them to provide their defense. The left prefers Jews, whereever they be, exist as victims, and preferably dead. The right has no issue with a strong Israel.
First of all had Kamala won there would most likely be a full blown arms embargo, hostages still in Gaza and another hundred thousand Muslims imported to America to reliably vote against anything Israel. And I mean anything. Nothing short of the enfeeblement and eventual destruction of Israel will satisfy the new insect overlords of the Democrat party. Their moderates/establishment leaders are basically in the process of being dethroned. Meanwhile Trump himself basically called the woke reich youtubers idiots and contributed to the defeat of Massie. Who do you think voted against this incumbent in the primary? The vast army of Jewish Kentucky backwoodsmen? The right is full of pro-Israel voices like Rubio, Cruz and DeSantis, all of whom are legit competitors to Vance (assuming the current version of Vance is even what remains- no one on the right has forgotten his original position on Trump). I’m not unconcerned, but Jews were always a small part of the GOP coalition. If I was a Jewish liberal I’d be looking for a refund of the decades I spent building a party thats now intent on kicking me out or at least redefining my faith for some measure of acceptance.
I’ve told my Israeli friends for years that Bibi’s strategy of only courting Republicans would be a disaster. They’re panicking now and I don’t want to gloat, but…
This is exactly right. And also illustrates the 2 reasons that the American Israeli alliance was formed. Democrats supported Israel based on a perceived shared moral and ethical commitment. Republicans based on utility, first against Communism then against Islamism. Now Democrats view Israel as immoral and Republicans view Israel as no longer useful.
The Israeli Far Right vision, maximalist and contemptuous of International Law, preferred the Law of the Jungle. But only the biggest or most numerous can be the strongest in the Jungle. Israel, by it's nature can never be either. And only the strongest survive in a world ruled by such Law.
Israel can win back maga support by phasing out aid, not involving America in its wars, and continuing to produce useful tech for the US.
It can win back centrist Democrat support with a more reasonable government that doesn’t expand isolated settlements and such. Also it can make sure it avoids fighting big wars with lots of dead children. The way to do that is don’t withdraw the IDF from Gaza and the West Bank.
You can’t fix a relationship that’s already soured by just stopping the bad things that caused it to sour.
being useful in terms of tech is good, but that’s the strategy Taiwan is trying and if you think maga would commit to helping Taiwan if China invades…
and the relationship with the democrats, evens the centrists ones, is broken. Merely stopping the wars with dead children won’t be enough. You’d have to give up something substantial
I don't think MAGA will commit to helping Israel, but I think it's more like, they will happily sell Israel weapons and planes and do joint missile defense, but they will want to stay out of direct US involvement in Middle Eastern wars and not give Israel free money.
Replacing Netanyahu and winning the ICJ genocide case would help a lot. Cracking down on settler violence. Greatly reduce building in isolated settlements.
Your model is definitely plausible: arms sales, joint missile defense, no free money, no American wars. But that's the downgrade itself.
A relationship that's only commercial is what Israel already has with plenty of countries. The thing eroding is the special one, America underwriting Israel, fighting beside it, shielding it at the UN because of shared values. Arms sales survive that erosion. The specialness doesn't. Becoming an ordinary customer is the loss itself.
And the aid point cuts the opposite way from how it's usually played. Phasing out aid does remove the burden the America First right objects to. But the dependency is much of what gives the alliance its weight. An Israel that needs nothing from Washington stops being a burden and stops mattering at the same time. You don't win that crowd back by becoming irrelevant to it. That could be what Israel wants but it is still fundamentally changing the relationship.
On the two paths you laid out — self-reliance for the right, replacing Netanyahu and winding down settlements for the left — those are different, and parts of them pull against each other. There's no single move that reopens both doors.
I mean, Israel's tech sector is growing and growing. In my view, the real essence of the US-Israeli alliance is hi-tech cooperation. That one only improves with time. The US doesn't give aid to Britain or Japan.
I don't see why Israel can't both become more self-reliant military, and have a new Prime Minister. Do you think Bennett and Eisenkot wouldn't want to beef up Israel's arms industry?
You really misunderstand the objection then. Israel has to be a Liberal Democracy to maintain Democrats support. If Israel chooses to stay in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians have to get the vote. Otherwise Democrats will view Israel as 21st century South Africa and push for it to be treated accordingly.
As for MAGA, once it identifies Israel as a taker, they're not going to want Israeli influence in American society at any level. An Israel with close military ties will be the subject of the wildest conspiracy theories once that ball gets rolling. Israel has to produce something that is recognizably Israeli but that MAGA craves. Then they'll love Israel.
I don't think the West Bank dilemma is the core of the issue here. Gaza is a bigger problem than the West Bank. Non-occupation is a bigger worry than occupation.
What kind of thing can Israel produce that MAGA would love? Missile defense?
You suggest getting the mothballed cold-war Nike missile sites up and down the Pacific coast retrofitted with Israeli missile defense tech is going to win back MAGA hearts and minds?
Gaza is a problem because it seemed to confirm for Democrats an Anti Zionist argument about Israel and it's intentions that the far left has been making for a long time: namely that Israel intends to take all of the land of the West Bank and Gaza and either permanently disenfranchise or ethnically cleanse the Palestinians living their. Most Pro Israel voices said that was ridiculous. Now they don't sound so ridiculous.
As for MAGA, missiles might work. But America makes missiles. They might be persuaded if Israel hates dogs me one they hate sufficiently, or are perceived to. But only if it's hate that isn't costly (won't get America into a war).
Anti-Zionism among younger American Democrats is filling the vacuum once occupied by support for a US-brokered two-state solution, which the vast majority of Americans still would support but everyone knows it is dead with nothing to replace it. And the only Israeli leaders who are articulating for world-consumption a coherent post-Oslo vision for Israel’s future for the Palestinians are Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
Plus Israel’s defenders in the US talk a lot about Israels “right to exist” and “right to self-defense” but are incapable of making any distinction between legitimate means and ends. Opposing heavy-handed military tactics in the Gaza war was to oppose the continued existence of Israeli itself—that they are one and the same thing. Same thing for settlements and hilltop violence, which Israel’s supporters rarely defend but only condemn in the most ethereal abstract terms.
The problem is that argument works in reverse to make the case for anti-Zionism. It is to say: If you oppose those policies then you have no choice but to oppose Israel itself.
I mostly agree here. On the last sentence: I think that both Anti Zionists and people like Smotrich agree: to oppose the Smotrich vision is to be opposed to Israel and Zionism. But that is of course not true. No matter how much they push that narrative.
But when Israel advocates embrace the Israeli Far Rights logic and rhetoric, even if they think it's just necessary posturing, they play right into Anti Zionists hands. Why they don't get that....
Yes. But does Israel intend to allow them to in the future? After saying for almost 3 years that they want the Palestinians to be gone, Democrats and the broader center left are no longer sure.
And even if they don't leave, will they be citizens of Israel if they will be denied Statehoodby Israel? It's clear to most Americans that that answer is no. And for the center left it raises the question: why support an anti-democratic Israel? Because it's the only Jewish State isn't a persuasive answer to most non-Jews.
Israel must continue to survive and thrive. I love that little country.
The American public including Jewish Americans are capable of forming opinions outside of labels "left/right," based on the news from the West Bank and Gaza, and now Lebanon. They aren't being manipulated in their conclusion that Israel no longer represents what it claimed. Ben Gvir could have been fired after the Flotilla video but he wasn't.
J.D. Vance is an opportunist who wants to distance himself from failure, but he has no core values. He is the guy who scapegoated Haitian immigrants by claiming they were eating pets, in the lead up of the 2024 election. That is about the furthest you can get from the lessons of the Holocaust.
Very well said. But I worry that Israeli demographics are such that electing a stable, centrist government that can actually change course is nearly impossible. There are just not enough voters who see the world that way, regardless of who’s running.
The left is leaving not because of what Israel does, but because of what Israel is, because it exists, because Jews in Israel aren't entirely reliant on non Jews around them to provide their defense. The left prefers Jews, whereever they be, exist as victims, and preferably dead. The right has no issue with a strong Israel.
First of all had Kamala won there would most likely be a full blown arms embargo, hostages still in Gaza and another hundred thousand Muslims imported to America to reliably vote against anything Israel. And I mean anything. Nothing short of the enfeeblement and eventual destruction of Israel will satisfy the new insect overlords of the Democrat party. Their moderates/establishment leaders are basically in the process of being dethroned. Meanwhile Trump himself basically called the woke reich youtubers idiots and contributed to the defeat of Massie. Who do you think voted against this incumbent in the primary? The vast army of Jewish Kentucky backwoodsmen? The right is full of pro-Israel voices like Rubio, Cruz and DeSantis, all of whom are legit competitors to Vance (assuming the current version of Vance is even what remains- no one on the right has forgotten his original position on Trump). I’m not unconcerned, but Jews were always a small part of the GOP coalition. If I was a Jewish liberal I’d be looking for a refund of the decades I spent building a party thats now intent on kicking me out or at least redefining my faith for some measure of acceptance.
I’ve told my Israeli friends for years that Bibi’s strategy of only courting Republicans would be a disaster. They’re panicking now and I don’t want to gloat, but…
Me too.
This is exactly right. And also illustrates the 2 reasons that the American Israeli alliance was formed. Democrats supported Israel based on a perceived shared moral and ethical commitment. Republicans based on utility, first against Communism then against Islamism. Now Democrats view Israel as immoral and Republicans view Israel as no longer useful.
The Israeli Far Right vision, maximalist and contemptuous of International Law, preferred the Law of the Jungle. But only the biggest or most numerous can be the strongest in the Jungle. Israel, by it's nature can never be either. And only the strongest survive in a world ruled by such Law.
Israel is very useful, they make so much technology. Nvidia has a tremendous presence there, and so on.
Israel can win back maga support by phasing out aid, not involving America in its wars, and continuing to produce useful tech for the US.
It can win back centrist Democrat support with a more reasonable government that doesn’t expand isolated settlements and such. Also it can make sure it avoids fighting big wars with lots of dead children. The way to do that is don’t withdraw the IDF from Gaza and the West Bank.
You can’t fix a relationship that’s already soured by just stopping the bad things that caused it to sour.
being useful in terms of tech is good, but that’s the strategy Taiwan is trying and if you think maga would commit to helping Taiwan if China invades…
and the relationship with the democrats, evens the centrists ones, is broken. Merely stopping the wars with dead children won’t be enough. You’d have to give up something substantial
I don't think MAGA will commit to helping Israel, but I think it's more like, they will happily sell Israel weapons and planes and do joint missile defense, but they will want to stay out of direct US involvement in Middle Eastern wars and not give Israel free money.
Replacing Netanyahu and winning the ICJ genocide case would help a lot. Cracking down on settler violence. Greatly reduce building in isolated settlements.
A lot of good points.
Your model is definitely plausible: arms sales, joint missile defense, no free money, no American wars. But that's the downgrade itself.
A relationship that's only commercial is what Israel already has with plenty of countries. The thing eroding is the special one, America underwriting Israel, fighting beside it, shielding it at the UN because of shared values. Arms sales survive that erosion. The specialness doesn't. Becoming an ordinary customer is the loss itself.
And the aid point cuts the opposite way from how it's usually played. Phasing out aid does remove the burden the America First right objects to. But the dependency is much of what gives the alliance its weight. An Israel that needs nothing from Washington stops being a burden and stops mattering at the same time. You don't win that crowd back by becoming irrelevant to it. That could be what Israel wants but it is still fundamentally changing the relationship.
On the two paths you laid out — self-reliance for the right, replacing Netanyahu and winding down settlements for the left — those are different, and parts of them pull against each other. There's no single move that reopens both doors.
I mean, Israel's tech sector is growing and growing. In my view, the real essence of the US-Israeli alliance is hi-tech cooperation. That one only improves with time. The US doesn't give aid to Britain or Japan.
I don't see why Israel can't both become more self-reliant military, and have a new Prime Minister. Do you think Bennett and Eisenkot wouldn't want to beef up Israel's arms industry?
Thank you for your notes, Usually Wash. It’s always a pleasure.
Yes, some really good points in this thread, exactly the kind of disagreement that makes a comment section worth having.
It’s incredibly hard watching the current events unfold. ✡️
You really misunderstand the objection then. Israel has to be a Liberal Democracy to maintain Democrats support. If Israel chooses to stay in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinians have to get the vote. Otherwise Democrats will view Israel as 21st century South Africa and push for it to be treated accordingly.
As for MAGA, once it identifies Israel as a taker, they're not going to want Israeli influence in American society at any level. An Israel with close military ties will be the subject of the wildest conspiracy theories once that ball gets rolling. Israel has to produce something that is recognizably Israeli but that MAGA craves. Then they'll love Israel.
I don't think the West Bank dilemma is the core of the issue here. Gaza is a bigger problem than the West Bank. Non-occupation is a bigger worry than occupation.
What kind of thing can Israel produce that MAGA would love? Missile defense?
You suggest getting the mothballed cold-war Nike missile sites up and down the Pacific coast retrofitted with Israeli missile defense tech is going to win back MAGA hearts and minds?
Maybe if we installed them along the Rio Grande…
Was thinking more about Golden Dome ICBM defense kind of stuff.
Gaza is a problem because it seemed to confirm for Democrats an Anti Zionist argument about Israel and it's intentions that the far left has been making for a long time: namely that Israel intends to take all of the land of the West Bank and Gaza and either permanently disenfranchise or ethnically cleanse the Palestinians living their. Most Pro Israel voices said that was ridiculous. Now they don't sound so ridiculous.
As for MAGA, missiles might work. But America makes missiles. They might be persuaded if Israel hates dogs me one they hate sufficiently, or are perceived to. But only if it's hate that isn't costly (won't get America into a war).
Anti-Zionism among younger American Democrats is filling the vacuum once occupied by support for a US-brokered two-state solution, which the vast majority of Americans still would support but everyone knows it is dead with nothing to replace it. And the only Israeli leaders who are articulating for world-consumption a coherent post-Oslo vision for Israel’s future for the Palestinians are Ben Gvir and Smotrich.
Plus Israel’s defenders in the US talk a lot about Israels “right to exist” and “right to self-defense” but are incapable of making any distinction between legitimate means and ends. Opposing heavy-handed military tactics in the Gaza war was to oppose the continued existence of Israeli itself—that they are one and the same thing. Same thing for settlements and hilltop violence, which Israel’s supporters rarely defend but only condemn in the most ethereal abstract terms.
The problem is that argument works in reverse to make the case for anti-Zionism. It is to say: If you oppose those policies then you have no choice but to oppose Israel itself.
I mostly agree here. On the last sentence: I think that both Anti Zionists and people like Smotrich agree: to oppose the Smotrich vision is to be opposed to Israel and Zionism. But that is of course not true. No matter how much they push that narrative.
But when Israel advocates embrace the Israeli Far Rights logic and rhetoric, even if they think it's just necessary posturing, they play right into Anti Zionists hands. Why they don't get that....
Vast majority of Gazans have stayed where they are right? West Bank virtually all.
Yes. But does Israel intend to allow them to in the future? After saying for almost 3 years that they want the Palestinians to be gone, Democrats and the broader center left are no longer sure.
And even if they don't leave, will they be citizens of Israel if they will be denied Statehoodby Israel? It's clear to most Americans that that answer is no. And for the center left it raises the question: why support an anti-democratic Israel? Because it's the only Jewish State isn't a persuasive answer to most non-Jews.