The donkey, the elephant, and the lion

Republican support of Israel stems from different sources than Democrat support does. As recent statements by appointees to the incoming Trump administration demonstrate, Republicans view Israel as a respectably muscular military power; an important ally to counter Islamic terrorism and level out “imbalances” in the region. Plus, there are, of course, the evangelicals: people to whom the Jews in Israel represent biblical prophecy to be fulfilled; nothing less than a religious imperative.

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Democrats come — or rather, came — at it from a different point entirely: from respect for the achievement of establishing a state post-Holocaust. The Labor-Zionism of David Ben Gurion and Golda Meir, a valiant thread in the Democratic tapestry of civil rights and courage: a Jewish cousin to Martin Luther King, if you will. But the Democratic Party that thought of Israel in this way is leaving the stage with Biden’s cohort. 

Born in the 1940s, the Silent Generation grew up with the image of WWII sharp and defined in the rearview mirror. With the Boomers, this image began fading as it withdrew into the middle distance, which fading then precipitated a recalibration of thought about Israel, and a rethinking of how American Jews related to it (if at all). To Kamala Harris (perhaps more Gen X than Boomer) Israel is a country like any other: an often inconvenient ally, rather than a redemption story against all odds. To Democrats younger than her, Israel is actively a force of evil, an irredeemable colonial mistake to be corrected ‘by any means necessary’.

While the Kamala generation wished to separate Israel from Jews (yay Barbra Streisand, nay Jerusalem as the capital, yay bagels, nay IDF) the younger generation actively works to equate it. The Jews, in the decades post World War II, went from civil rights icons to cultural tastemakers to the destroyer of civil rights in the imagination of first-time-voter Democrats, so much so as to sway the “Blue No Matter Who” sloganeers into becoming uncommitted, voting for one trick pony Jill Stein, or, shock horror, voting for Trump.

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Meanwhile, on the Republican side of the isle, the evangelical push to ingather the exiles is often stronger than American Jews’ own feelings on the matter. Because to many American Jews, the newly founded state of Israel was a quaint idea of the sweat-on-the-brow building of an alternative Catskills that is hotter and further away. The elevating of Hanukkah — by all measures a minor festival in Israel  — to the favorite Jewish American holiday featuring gifts and decorations, at least partly due to its proximity to Christmas, demonstrates this push toward assimilation, caused perhaps by the avoiding of a Holocaust in America and the certainty that it could never happen there. 

While much was made of the religious Jewish support of Donald Trump (a virtual monolith in its vote for the Republican candidate), American Jews tend not to be very religious. And they still vote overwhelmingly Democrat. It would seem that their compatriots turning implicitly against them on the matter of Israel did not make the Jews turn against their compatriots.

It would be unfair not to mention at this point that Israel, too, has changed from what Democrats saw in it back then into what Republican America loves about it today: the kibbutz no longer features as a thing that stirs the imagination, the Holocaust is no longer a driving force but part of history, and Israel is the startup nation, a military superpower. 

Save, of course, for October 7, a date on which all manner of movement in fault lines along the matter occurred: Israel is not as strong as some thought. Israel seems entirely too strong for others. Rifts between factions who either believe that Israel is the David in the story or the Goliath in the story deepened.

Some see Israel as a tour-de-force of indigenous nation-building. Others think Israel is a colonialist project. Meanwhile, Jews unhappily caught up in the fray of an increasingly “multicultural” West are told to go back to Israel, while Israelis should go back to Poland. Israel is the only Jewish state. Israelis are not real Jews. Hummus is Palestinian, matzo ball soup is from Eastern Europe. Israel is the only real democracy in the Middle East. Israel is a Western interloper on Arab land. 

The truth, of course, is that the face of Israel is much less that of the often-invoked European “colonizer” and much more a tapestry of mixed (although majority Middle-Eastern) origin. The majority of Israelis are not Ashkenazi. Most statistics, whether from the Israeli Census Bureau or independent research, put Ashkenazim at around one-third of the Jewish population of Israel. Not that this matters to protesters demanding a free Palestine from river to sea. Funny enough, the bloc that is Ashkenazi in (vast) majority is that of the ultra-Orthodox, who refuse to take up arms and enlist in the IDF. Also chiefly Ashkenazi are the American voters who, teaming up with a sizable chunk of Arab Americans, helped bring Trump back into the White House — because both thought Democratic support of Israel unacceptable, albeit coming at it from head-spinningly different directions. 

Perhaps the cooling of the war (made possible by returning the hostages, hey, there’s an idea) will result in the cooling of feelings surrounding this topic. After all, Free Tibet as a movement is dead in the water even though Tibet has not, in fact, been freed. Nary a pin or iron-on patch of the sunny flag are seen on a university student’s denim jacket in the West today. Perhaps the keffiyeh too will be relegated to the back of the closet, as it has before. And perhaps, as ceasefire agreements are signed, Gaza is freed of Hamas and rebuilt as a livable, peaceful enclave with a real future, current college students will age out of the time in one’s life where every social cause is more pressing, important and essential than homework. Perhaps, perhaps not. 

But the fate of American Jews as a Democrat darling, quiet in the back row of minorities, is in jeopardy, while the efforts of Republicans to make everyone once again aware that Jews are the protagonists of history may yet backfire. Ultimately, the shifting sands of ideas about, and support for, Israel and its extension, the Jews, ought to demonstrate one thing: no support for Jews is ever truly “ironclad,” statements of assurance from either the left or the right notwithstanding.