Litmus Nation: Israel in America’s Public Square

America’s arguments over Israel are a litmus test of the nation’s civic health. Unlike other distant foreign-policy disputes, the question of Israel, to borrow Martin Luther King, Jr.’s resonant phrase, is a projection of America as it “ought to be.” In short, debates about Israel reflect America’s anxieties about pluralism, identity, citizenship, and whether a liberal democracy can make room for diversity and complexity.

Baseline: Definitions and Distinctions

Before anything else, it helps to set a clear baseline. First, Zionism is the national movement for Jewish self-determination and the establishment of a Jewish homeland in the Land of Israel, culminating in the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. It arose in response to centuries of Jewish persecution and the denial of rights in the diaspora. Second, robust American criticism of Israeli policy—on settlements, wartime conduct, minority rights, constitutional reform—is squarely within democratic bounds. Anti-Zionism is something else: the denial of Jewish self-determination as a principle routinely affirmed for others. When that denial fuses with double standards, conspiracy tropes about Jewish power, or eliminationist rhetoric, the stance stops reading as foreign-policy dissent and starts registering as a symptom of illiberal drift.

The Trauma of October 7 and the Humanitarian Crisis in Gaza

The past two years unfolded in a way that sharpened rather than softened America’s domestic discourse. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel’s western Negev region, massacring approximately 1,200 civilians, committing acts of sexual violence, and kidnapping 251 hostages. The war that followed devastated Gaza and convulsed world opinion.

As of October 2025, United Nations reports estimated over 67,000 fatalities in Gaza, with nearly a third under the age of 18—figures disputed by Israeli authorities. Ninety percent of the population is displaced, and ninety percent of homes destroyed, underscoring an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe marked by severe food insecurity.

An early truce in November 2023, brokered by Qatar, Egypt, and the United States, allowed for a limited exchange of hostages and prisoners but failed to cool the rising civic temperature in America.

In October 2025, a U.S.-led ceasefire agreement—now in a tenuous state—brought the most intense phase of the conflict to a close. Hamas released the last 20 surviving hostages, while Israel released 2,058 Palestinian prisoners in exchange. Hamas claims to have returned all recoverable bodies of the deceased hostages; however, Israel continues to demand the return of the remains of 11 Israeli and foreign hostages still unaccounted for.

Against this backdrop of trauma and devastation, America’s debate over Israel hardened into ideological trench warfare—exposing a deeper crisis not of foreign policy, but of democratic habit.

Evolving Civic Discourse in America

If, as the fragile Israel-Hamas ceasefire itself demonstrates, this dynamic backdrop—traumatic, horrifying, and endlessly cruel—has been constant, the civic pattern in America’s public square has been anything but. Developments from one phase of the war to the next inflamed America’s political tensions. Positions hardened into purity tests. Accusations of genocide and ethnic cleansing calcified into shibboleths that foreclosed complexity, and the boundaries of acceptable speech narrowed to exclude any acknowledgement of Israel’s security quandaries.

Dual recognition, of course, is not equivalence: one can condemn the October 7 invasion and the devastation of Gaza while also affirming Israel’s right to defend itself and the need for Palestinian security and autonomy. The health of America’s civic discourse lies not in choosing sides, but in preserving the space for such complex, uncomfortable truths.

Interpretive Shifts on the Left

On the activist left, the interpretive frame had already shifted before October 7, 2023. Where liberal Democrats once widely viewed Israel as a beleaguered democracy and refuge for a persecuted people, large parts of the progressive movement came to filter the conflict almost exclusively through post-colonial theory. In that telling, Israelis are rendered as white European colonizers, Palestinians as indigenous victims, and the conflict as a binary morality play.

The frame leaves little room for stubborn facts: that many Israeli Jews are Mizrahi (descendants of refugees from Arab lands); that Jewish attachment to the land is ancient and culturally rooted; that the Zionist movement arose from centuries-old historical conditions; that Palestinian leaders at pivotal junctures rejected compromise plans; and that Israel faces enemies who publicly avow its destruction.

“Apartheid” became the label of choice, often deployed without attending to countervailing civic facts—such as Arab citizens voting, holding Knesset seats, and sitting on the Supreme Court—even as serious inequities, disparities, and human rights concerns persist. The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, uniquely targeting the world’s only Jewish state, expanded across progressive spaces despite founders’ stated opposition to Israel’s existence in any borders.

Of course, even among BDS and other far left anti-Israel forces there is a measure of internal diversity; some participants advocate for Palestinian rights through non-violent means and dialogue. Still, the movement’s application of double standards, its selective focus on Israel, and its rhetorical convergence with anti-Zionism—particularly when it rejects Jewish national legitimacy altogether—raises disturbing concerns about its ultimate goals.

In America’s public square and on college campuses across the country, the hardening of rhetorical frames concerning the Israel-Hamas war—genocide, ethnic cleansing—has crowded out nuanced discussion about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the language of “anti-normalization” regarding Israel has turned engagement itself into complicity—even when that engagement aims at fostering dialogue.

Cincinnati Case Study: Hijacking Democratic Dissent

A revealing case of this reality unfolded in Cincinnati, Ohio at a recent “No Kings” rally. Drawing an estimated crowd of 12,000 people, the event began as a protest against Donald Trump’s abuses of power and government overreach—a legitimate exercise of freedom of speech and assembly. The event featured historian Timothy Snyder, prize-winning author of On Tyranny (2017), who pointedly noted, “The people who are against democracy try to make you feel alone, try to make you feel there’s nobody on your side.” His remarks included a call and response: “If I say no kings, can you say freedom?”

Shortly thereafter, a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activist took the stage, denounced Israel as a “Zionist terrorist state,” and led the crowd in chants of “Free, Free Palestine” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Suddenly and inexplicably, a domestic rule-of-law protest became a venue for rejecting Israel’s right to exist—an alarming slide from democratic dissent to ideological absolutism.

In that moment it became clear the organizers’ request for “all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values” implicitly excluded Jews and supporters of Israel. This episode illustrates how public protest about America, even when rooted in valid concerns, can be hijacked by absolutist ideologies that undermine pluralism and civic inclusivity.

Contrasting Model: Civic Repair Through Protected Dialogue

Where the Cincinnati No Kings rally exemplified the hijacking of democratic dissent, a subsequent University of Cincinnati event offered a compelling counter-model. Two weeks later, the University of Cincinnati College of Law hosted an event titled “Consensus Building on Campuses During Times of Conflict” featuring Adv. Dana Giloh and Dr. Faina Miliman-Sivan of the University of Haifa Law Faculty’s Mediation and Dispute Resolution Clinic. Against the backdrop of Israel’s most pluralistic university—where Jews, Arabs, Druze, Haredi, and secular students study together—they reported on the hard-won success of a campus-based mediation framework for intercultural conflicts that produced a “Protected Dialogue Charter” (translated into Hebrew, Arabic, and English) and a new Law Faculty intercultural dialogue course.

The University of Haifa model, born in the wake of October 7 and developed collaboratively by Jewish and Arab faculty and students, demonstrates how institutions can maintain community cohesion during times of fracture and embodied what civic repair looks like: structured forums, shared principles, and commitment to dialogue without pre-emptive delegitimization. Notably, the event was tested by disruption from SJP activists, who, even as attendees departed, yelled and created a ruckus—even then they were met with continued engagement by the speakers, who invited them outside into the lobby, exemplifying the very principles of protected dialogue under pressure. That the University of Cincinnati forthrightly provided a platform for this vital work indicates that such strategies can be replicated even in polarized environments—and proving it did not shy away from acknowledging the importance of engagement across deep divides.

The Right’s Parallel Dilemma

The American right’s difficulties take a different shape but ultimately crash into a parallel dilemma.

During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, with President Dwight D. Eisenhower watching from the sidelines, Senator Joseph McCarthy championed a witch hunt in search of Communist subversion. Fueled in part by antisemitic tropes linking Jews to radicalism, moral turpitude, and dual loyalty, the net result was a dark decade of political repression and persecution known as the “Red Scare” that disproportionately targeted radicals, political dissidents, Jews, Black activists, and homosexuals. This convergence of anti-Communism, xenophobia, antisemitism, bigotry, and homophobia reflects a recurrent pattern in which uncertainty and skepticism about America’s liberal traditions feed on the nation’s vulnerable, marginalized, and minority groups.

Christian Zionism among many white evangelicals often couches solidarity with Israel in eschatology: Jewish ingathering and a rebuilt Temple as precursors to Christ’s return, after which Jews convert or face damnation. This is a form of support that presupposes Jewish religious negation; it understandably unsettles American Jews.

In recent decades, populist and far-right movements have systematically revived antisemitic tropes through digital platforms, recasting historical prejudices in modern garb. These include persistent accusations of dual loyalty, conspiratorial narratives about Israeli influence over U.S. institutions, and “America First” rhetoric framing aid to Israel as emblematic of elite betrayal.

Here again a recurring pattern is evident: skepticism toward Jewish self-determination intensifies when American pluralism is thin and exclusionary norms thick.

Charlottesville and the Resurgence of Antisemitism

In 2017, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, starkly illustrated this resurgence. White supremacist groups and alt-right figures converged, with participants chanting “Jews will not replace us!”—a chilling fusion of traditional antisemitism and contemporary replacement theory that blurred anti-Israel sentiment with older forms of Jew-hatred.

The event’s implications extended beyond the immediate moment. President Trump’s subsequent equivocal condemnation of “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides” and his reference to “very fine people on both sides” reinforced perceptions of moral equivalence. Though he later said his remarks did not apply to neo-Nazi participants, the initial framing seemingly legitimized extremist ideologies and failed to distinguish clearly between white supremacist actors and the counter-protesters opposing them.

As recently as last week, speaking at the University of Mississippi to a Turning Point USA gathering, Vice President J.D. Vance asserted, “When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States, they’re not manipulating or controlling this president of the United States”—implicitly suggesting Israel or Jews may in fact have “manipulated or controlled” previous presidents. It wasn’t his first foray into conspiratorial thinking. In June, Vance claimed that “professors are the enemy” and “universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth.”

This pattern illustrates a broader danger. Whether emanating from torch-bearing marchers reviving 20th-century fascist iconography, activists denying Israel’s right to exist, or populist rhetoric that echoes antisemitic tropes, at the dawn of the 21st century American Jews increasingly confront a shared message: their national belonging appears perpetually contingent—a proposition that threatens the foundational democratic principle that citizenship guarantees equal belonging to all.

Tocqueville Revisited: “Habits of the Heart” in a Fractured Democracy

What are we to make of these puzzle pieces coming into view as America navigates the current moment? A voice from America’s distant past is instructive. As civic norms fracture and ideological binaries take hold, Alexis de Tocqueville’s observations on American democracy gain renewed urgency.

The French political philosopher and historian Tocqueville, who visited the United States in 1831 and published Democracy in America (1835), argued that American democracy rests less on parchment guarantees than on “habits of the heart”—mores that dispose citizens to cooperate across deep disagreement. Voluntary associations habituate people to shared rule-making; religion, uncoerced by the state, reinforces honesty and restraint; and “self-interest rightly understood” teaches that long-term personal flourishing depends on the community’s health. Those habits make constitutional forms workable.

Seen through this lens, the aforementioned University of Haifa program becomes more than a case study—it embodies the civic arts a diverse liberal democracy requires: mediation frameworks, charters of protected dialogue, and discourse that strengthens the muscles of disagreement without dehumanization. The University of Cincinnati’s example of providing a space for dialogue offers a striking contrast to left- and right-wing extremists who stigmatize engagement with Israel as “normalization” and who seek to hollow out the very mores that keep pluralism livable. 

Rebuilding the Civic Scaffolding

None of this requires blurring crucial distinctions. Critiquing Israeli governments—forcefully and in detail—belongs in a healthy democracy; so does defending Palestinian rights and dignity. But anti-Zionism’s categorical rejection of Jewish peoplehood, especially when paired with double standards or conspiracism, is not a policy debate. It is a tell about the health of the civic culture in which that debate occurs.

Post-October 7, the tell has been hard to miss: an explosion of antisemitic incidents on campuses, harassment of Jewish students, vandalism of Jewish institutions, and the casual acceptance of rhetoric once unthinkable in mainstream settings.

The deeper story is not that arguments are sharp; it is that the habits that moderate sharpness—the work of voluntary associations, protected charters, and fair-dealing forums—are being treated as suspect.

If America’s Israel debate is a barometer, it is a reading about liberal democratic norms and values at low pressure. Repair won’t come from better talking points alone. It will require recommitting to the very habits that keep a free, diverse nation from flying apart: voluntary association over ostracism, mediation over disruption, and self-interest rightly understood over punitive purity.

Those are not evasions of moral responsibility; they are the democratic arts that preserve the space in which moral responsibility can be exercised. For American Jews, long beneficiaries of a pluralism sustained by such habits, and for Americans more broadly, the task is the same: rebuild the civic scaffolding that lets us argue fiercely without destroying the house we share.

In the final analysis, how Americans argue about Israel reveals how healthy—or fragile—American democracy really is. From the McCarthy era’s suspicion of Jewish loyalty to today’s rhetoric around dual allegiance, the pattern is clear: American pluralism thrives when civic habits are nurtured and frays when they are abandoned.

The challenge is not to silence criticism, but to resist absolutism on all sides and recommit to the “habits of the heart”—dialogue, mediation, and Tocqueville’s concept of “self-interest rightly understood”—that have historically held America’s diverse republic together. In that sense, the Israel debate is not only about the future of the Jewish state, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the changing Middle East. It is a litmus test of America’s health as a republic. It is, and always has been, about America’s soul.