The Blogs: Beyond Red and Blue: Why Bipartisan Support for Israel Matters

If Jewish American Zionists do not adapt, they risk being sidelined, caught between rival coalitions and left without a reliable constituency.

Support for Israel has always come with strings attached. Republicans and Democrats, Evangelicals and progressives have offered allegiance when it aligns with their priorities and withdrawn it when it does not. Today, those transactional bonds are breaking down. Since October 7, many Zionist Jews who have voted Democrat are shifting to the right, driven by existential alarm and a deeper emotional dislocation. The left still includes principled supporters of Israel, but the rise of vocal Palestinian solidarity and increasingly harsh criticism has led some to reconsider where they feel politically and morally safe. Meanwhile, a new generation of candidates is reshaping both parties with bold, values-driven platforms. The quiet middle no longer sets the terms.

Inside the American Jewish community, familiar refrains still dominate. Phrases like “Israel has a right to defend itself” and “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” are repeated so often that they risk losing their moral force. These claims may offer comfort within communal circles, but they do little to win new allies or respond to deeper public concerns.

This instinctive reliance on familiar messaging echoes the approach unfolding in Israel. The government, shaped heavily by its right-wing ultra-Orthodox bloc, has come to depend on short-term political fixes. Netanyahu uses these maneuvers efficiently to manage public pressure, but they reflect an absence of long-term strategy.

When Ambassador Mike Huckabee blasted Israel’s ultra-Orthodox driven vetting of Evangelical tour groups led by Moshe Arbel’s Interior Ministry, he was reacting to exhaustive questionnaires that froze new clerical visas for the Baptist Conference in Israel. Netanyahu’s overnight reversal, driven by political calculation rather than principle, exposed how inflexible domestic ideology can undermine vital international relationships.

Front page headlines of Palestinians killed at aid sites, Gaza’s only Catholic church struck by shelling and frozen Evangelical visas are reshaping American perceptions and eroding the moral clarity behind bipartisan support. If American Jews cling to defensive slogans instead of confronting these realities, they risk forfeiting both the narrative and the coalition that sustains them.

In the United States, American Jews may not live under rocket fire, but they help underwrite Israel’s security. Nearly 20 percent of the IDF’s military budget comes from U.S. aid, secured through decades of advocacy. That support depends on a fragile, bipartisan consensus. If Israel continues to alienate the left, neglect the center, and tether itself to an increasingly extreme right, that consensus may collapse.

AIPAC’s recent decision to invest primarily in Republican candidates and move away from its bipartisan posture only intensifies this fracture. It disregards the shifting political terrain and the rise of younger leaders whose values will shape future elections. This is not a strategic pivot. It is an abdication.

If Israel and its American Jewish supporters continue to hinge their legitimacy on a narrow partisan alliance while alienating potential allies across the political spectrum, they risk accelerating isolation. If that support remains locked in stale talking points or avoids reckoning with shifting ideological currents, it risks irrelevance to the very political project it seeks to uphold.