Part 1: Americans turn away from support of Israel

Part one of two parts

The radical Left, and some not so radical, are making loud honking noises about foreign aid going to Israel, as if it were the top, or only, recipient of U.S. foreign aid. It is neither.

So we  can discuss facts, here are the Top Ten recipients of U.S. foreign aid:

No. 1 on the gift parade is Ukraine, money well-spent in my opinion, to fight off criminal aggression by Russia. Ukraine is a former Soviet Union captive nation that now is struggling to become part of the democratic West. 

Some of you feel that it is not our business, nor should it be our financial burden. But I believe in President John F. Kennedy’s clarion that the U.S. “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Those words were heartedly cheered then. Would they be cheered today?

If the world’s No. 1 Superpower, us,  will not stand for freedom, who will? Without us, who can?

The No. 2 recipient, Israel, has been our friend and ally since the moment of her rebirth as a nation on May 14, 1948. She was immediately attacked by five armies of the Arab world (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria) in a failed attempt to strangle the infant in its crib. While some enemies have agreed to friendship with Israel, others have never stopped trying, switching from total war to subversive terrorism. Israel has not had one minute of peace in its 78 years. She has the strongest military in the region because she would be dead without it.

The rest of the foreign aid list (which includes military, economic, and humanitarian assistance) in descending order: Jordan, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Yemen: Somalia, Nigeria, Egypt.

How many of those are friends, allies, democracies? How many on the Left, and elsewhere, are name checking them for receiving U.S. largesse? None that I hear.

So why is Israel singled out?

Some of it is anti-Semitism, of course.

But it is not the only cause. America’s historic love affair with once-underdog Israel is indisputably on the rocks. That’s what I am looking at in the next two columns — the why it happened and how it can be mended.

Opening a serious discussion was Rahm Emanuel, the former ambassador, Chicago mayor (and Barack Obama whisperer) who earlier this month delivered a brass-knuckled, goal-defining “tough love” speech at Tel Aviv University, which I will analyze in my next column.

The speech is generally clear-eyed, important, and visionary — but Emanuel was a Cyclops on a couple of points.

One is why Israel, unlike other allies, deserves some $3 billion in annual aid (almost all of it military and almost all of that is spent with U.S. defense contractors). 

The answer to his question is simple: Israel has a population of less than 10 million, making it one of the smallest nations in the world. It lives under never-ending threat, and already spends 8% of its GDP on arms, more than any other democracy. The U.S. spends about 2.8% on defense. (In a 4-year-long shooting war, Ukraine spends about 40% on its military.)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, perhaps seeing the future landscape, has announced his decision to wean Israel from American generosity and buy U.S. arms at full markup.

That won’t happen soon, and Emanuel should have mentioned what the U.S. gets from Israel in technical improvements to our weapons, diplomatic support, and incredibly high value intelligence from Israel's peerless Mossad foreign spy agency. 

It is not a one-way street.

In addition to anti-Semitism, another reason for Israel’s falling popularity in the U.S. is the morbid reality I mentioned — the 70,000 dead bodies. I’ll get to that in a moment.

Another is the right-wing policies of Netanyahu and his Cabinet, along with  effective anti-Israel propaganda (such as “from the river to the sea” that even harsh critic Emanual sees as a call for the extermination of the Jewish state).

I have been pro-Israel all my life, and proud of her many achivements, the first being survival. I have relatives there, and from there, but that does not mean I approve of the government. 

That mirrors my feeling toward the United States — I love the nation, I do not always support government policy.

—-

Many Democrats, for many years, have been pro-Palestinian, meaning they believe Palestinian Arabs should have their own state, adjacent to Israel. In recent years, feeling among Americans has shifted from simply pro-Palestinian to anti-Israel. That is an important, and awful, distinction.

A recent Gallup poll, among others, reveals that more Americans  sympathize with the Palestinians than with the Israelis — 41-36%, the first time Palestinians have come out on top. 

For progressive Democrats, being anti-Israel has become kind of a warped litmus test. At the most extreme Left are influencers such as Hasan Piker who says he prefers terrorist Hamas to democratic Israel — and gets away with it from the man he was endorsing for congress, Philadelphian Chris Rabb, who was elected and became an immediate member of the hard left congressional Squad.

In a recent House vote, 103 Democrats voted to end aid to Israel, as opposed to 98 in favor, and 10 who abstained. In a similar vote two years ago, only 37 Democrats voted against Israel. That’s a huge drop of congressional support.

“Forty percent of religious Jews feel very or extremely emotionally attached to Israel compared with only 11% of secular Jews. Forty-five percent of secular Jews do not feel connected to Israel at all. While 48% of religious Jews say supporting Israel is a key part of their Jewish identity, only 12% of secular Jews agree,” according to an AP/NORC study. 

Just a generation ago, American politicians had to campaign among the three Is — Ireland, Italy, Israel.

Israel has almost become a pariah. There is no denying it. But there is studying it — to understand the why of it.

The morbid reality I mentioned above are  some 70,000 deaths inflicted on Gaza, in the wake of the Hamas October 2023 slaughter of 1,200 Israelis (and others), and the kidnapping of 250 men, women, and children.

By any measure 70,000 is far too high, appalling. In the past the Israeli Defense Force had generally been among the world’s most moral, including giving cell phone text warnings in advance of an attack, and using “roof knocking” to warn apartment dwellers in advance of an attack.

This time, not so much. While no Israeli military or government official will say so for the record, it was pay-back time.

The Oct. 7 attack had the equivalent impact on Israel as 15 9/11 attacks on America. Israel decided, this time, to take off the gloves, to inflict massive revenge. It may have felt good, but the world recoiled.

Israel exposed itself to fake charges of genocide — which even some ignorant Jews repeat — and apartheid, which is another lie. Those are lies, as I have detailed before here.

Genocide has a specific legal meaning, tied to an attempt to exterminate a people. Israel has not done that, and anyone repeating it is lying or ignorant. And that applies to the 30% of Jews who use the G-word.

Finally, another thing driving down support is Israeli actions on the so-called West Bank, more accurately known as Judea and Samaria.

There have been questionable if not illegal seizure of Arab land by the government, and, possibly worse, physical attacks on Palestinian farmers by right-wing Jewish extremists. 

Yes, often these are retaliatory, but not always.

The last time I was in Israel, I interviewed so-called “settlers” on the so-called West Bank, who told me their land was willed to them by God. Which I could not confirm.

Palestinians told me it had always been their land. Which I could not verify.

The point is this: Israel is becoming an international pariah. She is on the verge of losing her strongest and most important ally, America.

The tea leaves are there to read in how Democrats in congress vote against Israel, and even in how Vice President JD Vance has the temerity to push a conspiracy theory that child molester Jeffrey Epstein had links to Mossad.

But few things in life are irrevocable, and in the next column probable Presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel gets to lay out his plan for Mideast peace.