Photo by Yana Iskayeva/Getty Images
“Israel’s standing plummets among Democrats,” an NBC News headline reported in March, announcing poll results showing that 57 percent of Democratic voters view Israel negatively. The decline of the party’s support for the Jewish state was vividly displayed on July 15, when nearly half of the House Democratic caucus, 103 representatives, voted to cut all U.S. aid to Israel, worth $3.3 billion, in the next fiscal year.
The effort failed, but the message was clear: The long tradition of solid Democratic support for Israel, based on the recognition of shared liberal-democratic modern values, is dead. Perhaps it will be revived once Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is no longer in power — though we are skeptical. Democratic support for Israel itself once remained unshakable, regardless of who was running the government. Such a revival can hardly be counted on, given the rising influence within the party of Democrats such as Rep. Ro Khanna (California) and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who are overtly hostile to Israel.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Washington Post (paywall)
______________________
Tal Fortgang is a legal policy fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Stuart Halpern is a contributing editor of The Weekend Essay and a regular contributor to City Journal.