Standing With Israel

How much shit from Israel can you tolerate?

Americans who dislike Israel are deeply divided over this question.

My personal limit was reached with Trump’s strikes on Iran yesterday which he did solely for the sake of Israel and his Zionist donors. Starting a war with Iran has always been my red line.

Here is a short list of awful things which were not deal breakers:

• Israel’s horrific genocide in Gaza
• Israel’s various wars with Lebanon, Syria and Yemen
• Israel’s spying on our government
• The Antisemitism Awareness Act
• The TikTok ban
• Hate speech laws in Georgia and Florida
• The $26 billion in foreign aid that Israel got after October 7th
• The crackdown on anti-Israel protests on college campuses
• Mahmoud Khalil
• Defunding Ivy League colleges to fight antisemitism
• The half dozen or so pro-Israel resolutions passed by Mike Johnson
• AIPAC’s corruption of Congress

I could go on and on.

I can swallow performative gestures of “Standing With Israel” from state officials like Kay Ivey which at the end of the day do not matter much because I care more about other issues.

Specifically, I care more about identity issues like race, identity and immigration than I do about Israel and the Middle East. I don’t support the “Axis of Resistance.” Thus, I was willing to support Trump because I care more about domestic policy issues like immigration than I do about anti-Zionism. I was convinced that he wouldn’t do this because he had Elon Musk’s money and X to get his message out.

My view of Israel is essentially that what happens here in America is more important than what happens in the Middle East. Two weeks ago, we were focused on the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles and Congress was poised to pass Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, which is his domestic policy agenda. There were negotiations going on with Iran over its nuclear program. Trump had just returned from the Middle East where he stood in Saudi Arabia and condemned decades of disastrous regime change wars. We were happy with Trump BECAUSE events in the Middle East could be treated as annoying background noise.

Today, we are in a fundamentally different place.

Bibi Netanyahu launched this war with Iran and seized control of the Trump administration. He succeeded in steering us into an offensive war with Iran … a war which is predictably already sucking all the oxygen out of the room, and which required setting aside America First to put Israel First. Now the focus is on “remaking the Middle East” which has imperiled Trump’s domestic policy agenda and risks transforming the political landscape by giving an enormous political lifeline to Democrats.

Until now, Republicans politicians have gotten away with “Standing With Israel” because their younger voters care more about national identity and immigration than Israel. They haven’t had to pay a political price for it. The anti-Israel camp has been internally divided because the focus hasn’t been on Israel’s influence on American politics. Israel hasn’t been dominating the political frame. We have been satisfied with progress on other issues and content to let MIGA Zionism fade with the Boomers.

This development has the potential to force the issue and it is now beyond our control. Iran is now in the driver’s seat and its response to Trump will shape our politics moving forward.