With the U.S. midterm elections following only a week after Israel holds its election for a new Knesset, most Americans aren’t paying much attention to the contest in the Jewish state. But even if the battle for Congress wasn’t diverting them from it, the vast majority of Americans don’t pay much attention to foreign elections or anything that happens outside of their borders that doesn’t directly affect their lives.
For the relatively small minority who do care, the focus is not so much on rooting for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or the coalition of “anybody-but-Bibi” parties that are desperate to defeat him, as it is on having their way with Jerusalem.
American diktats
That’s something that the coverage of the issue of American endorsements of Netanyahu or the opposition misses. Whether discussing Trump’s enthusiastic endorsement of the prime minister, Vice President JD Vance’s emphatic non-endorsement of the Israeli leader or the tsunami of bile hurled at Netanyahu from most Democrats and the foreign-policy establishment who have been hoping to bury him for decades, the real point of these positions is often lost.
While Trump has generally allowed the Israelis more leeway than his predecessors, all of those commenting on Israeli politics from America are, as a rule, disinclined to let the Israeli people decide their own fate. What they want is an Israeli leader who will comply with the policies they want to impose on the Middle East.
As we await the verdict of the voters of Israel and then, a week later, those of their American counterparts, maybe those eager to impose their will on the Jewish state should take a step back and simply respect the right of the Israelis to choose their own government. Just as important, they should give equal respect to the right of that government to obey the will of its voters and conduct its policies in a manner to ensure their security.
Instead, many Americans remain eager to impose their fantasies about a two-state solution the Palestinian Arabs have never wanted. That would raise the possibility of a repeat of the horrors of the Hamas-led Palestinian terror attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, on the rest of the country.
Democrats threaten the alliance
Some aren’t even bothering to hide their lack of interest in Israeli democracy. Senior members of the Democratic House and Senate caucuses have already made clear their plans if they win control of Congress in the midterms. They’re ready to impose sanctions on Israel, cut off arms, and, in general, downgrade the alliance with the Jewish state.
In an op-ed in The New York Times, Jon Finer, the deputy national security adviser under President Joe Biden, was blunt about the direction that Democrats would take in the coming years. While he thinks opposition leader Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, a retired chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, would be marginally better than Netanyahu, he rightly points out that no conceivable Israeli government would be willing to yield to the American left’s diktats about territorial withdrawal and the empowerment of Palestinian forces bent on the Jewish state’s destruction.
Finer isn’t much interested in Israeli democracy. He just wants an Israeli government that will do as it’s told.
That’s important to remember when you think of all the Democrats, liberal think-tank scholars and pundits who spent the months before Oct. 7 weighing in on Netanyahu’s efforts to reform Israel’s out-of-control judicial system. At that time, they were all for Israeli democracy.
That was made easier by the way the Israeli government’s domestic political opponents had picked up on the Democrats’ 2022 midterms “democracy” talking point. Like their attempt to depict Republicans as authoritarians bent on destroying democracy, they smeared Netanyahu in the same manner. That was made even more ironic by the fact that the issue on which this battle was joined was the prime minister’s efforts to stop the Israeli Supreme Court from essentially invalidating democratic rule to preserve the country’s traditional liberal elites’ hold on power that they lost at the ballot box.
Without a trace of irony and drenched in hypocrisy, American opponents of Netanyahu called for granting the Israeli judiciary powers that they would have fought to the death to oppose if anyone had suggested giving them to the U.S. Supreme Court. In both countries, it’s fair to say that the political left largely defines democracy as being whatever allows their side to rule, while opponents are made to fall into line.
Few actually cared about Israeli constitutional issues. They were just eager to assist Netanyahu’s foes because they wanted him replaced by someone willing to resume efforts toward Palestinian statehood. Once Hamas launched a war on Oct. 7, the debate on judicial reform was put aside as the Israeli nation pulled together to fight a genocidal foe. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s U.S. opponents concentrated their criticism on efforts to hamstring Israel’s war effort or on spreading blood libels against the Jewish state.
Competing visions
Still, a difference exists between foreign-policy establishment types like Finer and the intersectional left wing of the Democratic Party, which appears to be holding the whip hand over it these days. What’s left of the party’s establishment is still talking about reining in Israel, while retaining a downgraded alliance. The progressive caucus and the growing ranks of the “Squad” in the U.S. House of Representatives—or those hoping to join it, like Michigan senatorial aspirant Dr. Abdul El-Sayed—disagree. They aren’t so much interested in a compliant Israeli government as they are in aiding the effort to have no Israel at all.
The seeming split between Trump and Vance also betrays competing visions for the relationship with the Jewish state among Republicans.
Trump expects Netanyahu or whoever succeeds him not to oppose Washington’s diplomatic initiatives and will bluster at Jerusalem when it hesitates to do so. But he values Israel as a strategic partner that can defend itself. Trump also recognizes that as America’s Western European allies go into a steep decline while distancing themselves from the common fight against Islamist enemies like the regime in Iran, Israel has become a unique asset. It’s the only U.S. ally willing to pitch in and effectively fight alongside America, as well as being an irreplaceable source of intelligence-sharing, technological innovation, and cooperation when it comes to security and defense.
Though not personally an antisemite like his close friend, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Vice President JD Vance is, at best, less enthusiastic about the alliance. His isolationist tendencies put him closer to the Democrats when it comes to dealing with enemies of America like Iran. And like them, should he become president, Israelis should expect more tension between Washington and Jerusalem on a host of issues. And the fact that he is unwilling to ditch Carlson, a purveyor of antisemitic conspiracy theories as well as an avid opponent of the U.S.-Israel relationship, from his inner circle, bodes ill for both Israel and American Jews.
That means that if Vance or any of the Democrats likely to run in 2028—whether hardline left-wingers or supposed moderates—are elected, relations with Israel may become even frostier than they were a decade ago under former President Barack Obama, when more “daylight” between the two allies was his objective.
End the military aid
Although the alliance is of immense value to Washington and the annual military aid package is almost all spent in the United States—making it in effect as much aid to American arms manufacturers as to Israel—it is increasingly a political liability for the Jewish state. It gives both Democratic and Republican critics a way to falsely depict Israel as a drain on American resources as well as a source of leverage that undermines Israeli security.
That puts Israelis, both in the Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu camps, on notice that they need to become less reliant on U.S. military aid and better able to produce more of the arms and weapons they need to fight off Iran and its terror proxies.
Complete independence is impossible. Israel is never going to be able to manufacture everything it needs to defend itself. And no other power shares its common values and is therefore sympathetic to the country or able to help. Still, the next Israeli government and those that follow it need to make good on Netanyahu’s past promises to end the flow of military aid from the United States as soon as possible.
Nevertheless, no matter who prevails in 2026 or 2028, Americans need to respect the verdict of Israel’s voters. They don’t have to like Netanyahu, Eisenkot or anyone who might become prime minister. But they do need to stop falling prey to the notion that Washington’s role is to give orders to Jerusalem against its interests or to help those Israelis who can’t win an election there.
The two countries aren’t always going to agree. As much as they currently are and should be aligned in most respects, their national interests are not identical. Sometimes, as has frequently happened in recent decades, Israel’s government must act to defend its people when it might serve America’s interests to avoid any conflict, even if that strengthens bad actors like Iran. It’s also true that politicians like Trump or Vance know the American people don’t like wars or the higher gas prices they can cause.
The United States is the senior partner in the alliance and due some deference. Yet the notion that Americans are a better judge of Israeli national interests than the Israelis—the conceit of U.S. Middle East policy under almost all administrations not led by Trump—is simply wrong. Unlike most Americans, the Israeli people have been paying attention to events in their region over the course of the last three decades since the Oslo peace process became the centerpiece of Clinton administration policy. And, unlike the Democrats and Vance, they are aware that the Palestinians and Iran don’t want peace; they want Israel’s destruction.
No conceivable Israeli government will ever go along with a withdrawal from Judea and Samaria or from parts of Jerusalem. And no American government will ever have the power to persuade their leaders otherwise. The better part of wisdom for any administration is to listen to the Israeli people and treat their choices—whether they keep Netanyahu in power or not—as something they do not have the right or the power to overturn.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS. Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.
