But to extend
that fairness, it’s a mistake to believe that American presidents can move Israeli
leaders to do anything they really don’t want to do. It has almost never
happened since the state was founded in 1948. Even the smallest concession by
Israel demands a degree of confrontation from the U.S. that is clearly
off the table at the moment. The Israelis have understood that American presidents
will almost always acquiesce to their demands if they hold out long enough, no
matter how much Susan Collins–style “concern” they express along the way. Such
statements have constituted virtually the entire State Department response to
the consistent stream of IDF-supported
settler pogroms against West Bank residents, as Israelis have killed and
displaced more of them than at any time in the past 15 years (and Israeli opponents of the
occupation have used the word “pogrom” frequently in this context). Benjamin Netanyahu was not wrong when, in a secretly recorded 2001
discussion with West Bank settlers, he promised them: “America is a thing that can be easily moved, moved in the right
direction.… They will not bother us.”
The notion that
American Jews can have any significant influence over Israel’s actions is even
more far-fetched. Their job, as far as the Israeli government is concerned, is
to write the checks, lobby Congress for more aid, and then shut their mouths.
(If they want a say in how Israel’s government behaves, they can, Israelis have
been reminding them for 75 years, “vote with their feet”—that is, move to
Israel.) Before October 7, American Jews and Israeli Jews were
slowly but unarguably drifting apart. Politically speaking, Israel has become a red country, while American Jews are
deep blue. According to data compiled in 2022 by the Israel Democracy
Institute, 62 percent of Israeli Jews now consider themselves to be
“right-wing,” with just 24 percent in the center and a mere 11 percent as left-identifying. Meanwhile, according to the Pew Research Center survey, in 2020,
American Jews remained “among the most consistently liberal and Democratic groups in
the US population.” These
trends, moreover, will accelerate in the future as young Israeli Jews skew further rightward
than their parents and grandparents, and young American Jews further left.
Israel’s
right-wing leadership has not been bothered by these developments. According to
Gary Rosenblatt, former editor of Jewish Week of New York, Netanyahu has said privately that “as long as he has the support in America of evangelical
Christians, who vastly outnumber Jews, and the Orthodox Jewish community, he is
in good shape.” Israel’s former envoy to the U.S., Ron
Dermer—an American-born former Republican political consultant—was willing to
say so aloud, noting conservative
Christians’ full-throated support for Israel’s government while complaining that American Jews were “disproportionately among our critics.”