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David Pernick

A Trump Victory May Break the US-Israel Alliance

Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Whatever misgivings Pro-Israel voters might have about Donald Trump personally, many believe he is the better candidate on Israel. After all, Kamala Harris is more likely to advocate for limits in the Israeli government’s actions. Trump would voice no such objection, perhaps even urging them to go further. As Israel fights an existential war, it’s not hard to understand why someone voting mainly on Israel would support Trump.

However, there is more than meets the eye here. If Trump retakes the presidency, the political fallout may threaten Israel in far more lasting ways than comments about civilian casualties ever could.

The bedrock of Israeli security is its strong, bipartisan support from the US government. Game-changing innovations like Iron Dome and David’s Sling were born from investments by presidents of both parties. Their funding is routinely renewed by Congress with overwhelming majorities in both parties. This April, the US passed a massive aid package for Israel with the approval of 81% of House Democrats, 88% of House Republicans, 96% of Senate Democrats and 63% of Senate Republicans. For all the noise that the progressive fringe made on campuses, they have been utterly irrelevant in Congress. Israel has the tools it needs to go after Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Iranian regime because our alliance remains a non-partisan issue in Washington.

No amount of tough talk from a president can outweigh the importance of this bipartisan consensus. Yet it has been so stable for so long that we may take it for granted. Minor differences between Democratic and Republican candidates come to seem major. But we should not miss the forest for the trees: the Republican Party is strongly Pro-Israel, and the Democratic Party is strongly Pro-Israel.

Kamala Harris is squarely aligned with this tradition. She rejected the far-left’s demands for an arms embargo, reduction in aid or any other change in the alliance. She stared down Anti-Israel protestors in front of 15,000 Detroit rallygoers. Even as Harris expresses her hope to end the war through diplomacy, she commits to fully backing the IDF’s efforts to secure its borders with Lebanon and Gaza. She has given nothing of substance for Pro-Palestinian voters to hang their hats on, during this war and more generally.

But Harris has suffered real consequences for this. Her support among Arab-American voters has plummeted, and that of Black voters has plateaued. Both Harris and Trump are supporting Israel, but only she is doing so at cost to herself.

America will remember the year 2024 for Israel’s war, the Biden Administration’s support for it, and the protest movement that ensued. Accordingly, the 2024 campaign will be remembered for whether Harris’s approach on Israel worked. Democrats hoping to run for seats in ’26 and ’28 will surely ask themselves: ‘If I buck anti-Israel noise and pressure, can I still win my race? Will the losses in voters or donations be made up for by the gains?” Harris’s fate will answer these question, and it is in our strong interest to make sure that their answer is yes. It is okay to disagree with Democrats like Harris on some points or emphases. But our vote incentivizes them to continue standing up for Israel when it’s hard, preserving the bipartisan consensus that has always kept Israel safe.

Conversely, if we’re lured by the red-meat rhetoric of Republicans, this sends a different message: defending Israel will lose Democrats their races. Doing so would seem to alienate Israel’s opponents yet still not win enough trust from its supporters. Nothing could prove this more clearly or prominently than a Harris loss.

In case politicians didn’t hear that message themselves, voters would make sure of it. Think what would happen if Trump is re-elected via a victory in Michigan. Immediately, Dearborn’s Arab-American leaders will crow that Harris’s disregard for their anger about Gaza cost her the election – just as they warned. Student activists will blame her Pro-Israel stance for insufficient turnout from the state’s many universities. It would be hard to argue with either of them. After a year like this, the narrative of Pro-Palestinian political power would reverberate across the country, emboldening these coalitions.

If the Biden-Harris Administration’s bold defense couldn’t win the trust of Pro-Israel voters, some Democratic candidates in ’26 and ’28 would stop trying. Instead, they would seek to build better relationships with the disenchanted Pro-Palestinian voters who were decisive in the 2024 election. Without a Pro-Israel, Democratic president to protect, politicians would feel free to use stronger rhetoric against America’s Israel policies. The bipartisan consensus would start to erode. The “Squad” may have been impotent before, but now would feel the wind in their sails.

If this all sounds like empty speculation, consider that we’ve seen this before. After 2016, progressives insisted that Trump won because neither Bernie Sanders nor Hillary Clinton elevated their concerns – in that instance, about racial injustice. What followed was a breakthrough for candidates who did. In fact, the main members of the “Squad” (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Cori Bush and Ayanna Pressley) were all first elected during Trump’s presidency.

However, if you’ve recently seen ads from your local Democratic candidates touting their work across the aisle – or their support of law enforcement, middle-class homeowners and border security – you might recognize that this has changed. Moderates now drive the conversation. What stopped progressives’ momentum?

It was not the failure of their Party, but their failure within the Party. Voters rejected both extremes in 2020 and elected centrist Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee, then President. His success empowered many more moderate Democrats to defeat far-left primary challengers in 2022, then far-right general election opponents. That trend towards the center has only grown in this year’s congressional races. For all Trump’s rhetoric about Biden empowering the “radical left”, it was his mainstream presidency that killed progressives’ leverage, and demonstrably stunted their numbers in Congress.

Besides empowering moderates and neutralizing progressives, Biden’s presidency positively influenced Democrats who were somewhere in between. They had an incentive to avoid contradicting Biden and Harris on Israel, lest they make them more vulnerable. This is a key reason why progressives could not get more liberal Democrats to sign on to their opposition to the war.

In this election, Pro-Israel voters can best defend Israel by protecting the resurgent center-left. We must prove to Democratic candidates that supporting Israel is good both for America and their own careers. A Trump presidency will create a Democratic leadership vacuum, fracturing the bipartisan bedrock of our alliance at the worst possible time. Years down the road, congressional votes to secure Israel’s defense could become a crapshoot depending on which party wins control. For the safety of our family members and friends in Israel, we must do what is in our power now to prevent this.

In the short-term, Trump’s words may feel gratifying. But the danger that his victory could pose to the long-term American-Israeli alliance is profound. Additionally, he stokes the destruction of bipartisan consensus by treating our homeland as a political football. We should not accept any Democrat or Republican undermining Israel’s status as a non-partisan issue for personal political gain.

Israel has had the freedom to fulfill nearly all of its objectives in this war. With the Biden-Harris Administration’s support, the IDF has killed most of Hamas’s leadership, including the mastermind of October 7th. They’ve ended Hamas’s control of Gaza, humiliated Hezbollah, and are now pushing them back from the Northern border. Harris promises the necessary cognitive stability and continuity to see this through. Combined with her consistent Israel support as a Senator from California, we have a track record to know that her partnership is strong and sincere. Put simply, don’t fix what ain’t broke.

The rise of antisemitism in American culture is frightening. But the American government still has the backs of Israel and the Jewish people. There is only one way to insure this protection for years to come. A Harris victory preserves the leverage of Israel’s supporters in the Democratic Party, and dispels the narratives of its enemies. In doing so, it safeguards the Jewish people’s long-term security.

I urge you to reach out to your family or friends in battleground states and encourage them to support Kamala Harris. Help them make a voting plan. You can also concentrate your impact by phone banking for her campaign in Michigan.

Israelis cannot afford more damage to the strong bipartisan support that created and sustains its military strength. They are fighting a war for their long-term security, and we must be thinking in these terms as well.

About the Author
David Pernick is a Masters of Social Work student at Stony Brook University, with a specialization in community organizing. He most recently led a project to help Modern Orthodox communities across the U.S. navigate and resolve communal divisions. He has led workshops at Stony Brook to help students recognize Anti-Semitism, and plans to expand these interventions into high schools.
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