Slippage

Americans are losing sympathy for Israel. That’s the word from the latest Gallup poll, recently published in the columns of the Forward and in independent statements from the Gallup organization.

This has been going on for a long-ish time. Last year, the number was 51%, down from a high in 2018. Meanwhile the Palestinian number has risen. As you might expect, given the American animus toward Muslims, it is still much lower than the Israeli number. The figure this year is 33%, the highest ever recorded by Gallup. But the figure for Israel is under water, with only 46% expressing support, a 25-year low in the history of the poll. If you’re the kind of person looking for reassurance, there is still a spread between the two figures, but if trends continue, it will grow significantly smaller.

This is unfamiliar territory for people like me. It’s been a long time since Israel was regarded as an underdog, a scrappy band of resourceful irregulars. But that image of Israel was formative for me. And then, not so suddenly, it became something else, in the long-tail aftermath of 1967. The complications of that war and Israel’s response to conquest have had enormous reputational consequences. When American voters look across the globe, they are as likely to see Smotrich and Ben-Gvir as David Ben Gurion and Moshe Dayan. The latter two figures were plenty complicated, but they were not hyper-nationalist religious idealogues.

If I have a worry (and I most certainly do), it’s that America will slip into irritable impatience. More to come on the whys and the wherefores, but the footage from Gaza has not helped the cause. Because Republicans are generally more sympathetic than Democrats, Donald Trump may hold the line for a while, but the returning president is nothing if not irritable. Depending on who is offering the better deal, he could turn on a dime in the middle of the week. We are in a period of malleable pseudo-commitments that may unravel as quickly as support for Ukraine.

My own commitments have not changed at all. I see myself as lifelong Zionist, fully enlisted in the dream of statehood and the idea of a national homeland in Israel. If this has been an imperfect flourishing of Jewish aspiration, there are no perfect instances of flourishing anywhere. Calling the State of Israel into question is like calling dozens of modern states into question. All are products of nineteenth century nationalism which meant gains for some and losses for others.

I do not expect much attention from Israel for my views. American rabbis have been spectacularly unsuccessful in communicating our discomforts with Israeli policy. Israel takes Jewish support in America for granted and has built its program of public relations around the sensibilities of evangelical voters. But there are many more Americans who will need to be persuaded. Israel’s fate is bound up with America, and it cannot afford to lose its good will.

On the frontispiece: Theodor Herzl, founder of modern political Zionism.