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THE ISRAEL ISSUE FLIPS  
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Robert Kuttner
July 22, 2026
The American Prospect
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_ The end of U.S. unconditional military support has gone from
unthinkable to mainstream. _

, Credit: sezer ozger/iStockj=

 

Last week, House Republicans tried to embarrass Democrats by offering
a floor amendment ending all military aid to Israel. But then 103
House Democrats
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more than half of the Democratic caucus, voted for the amendment as a
badge of honor. They included former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House
Democratic Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts.

In the space of a few weeks, the Israel issue has finally flipped. The
critics have become the mainstream and the defenders of Israel are now
the outliers. Polls show
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that 58 percent of Democratic voters say the U.S. is too supportive of
Israel and 52 percent call Israel’s actions in Gaza genocide.

All this has consequences, both for Israel and for domestic politics.
Progressive Democrats, who have been winning a string of primaries
mainly on pocketbook issues, have long been attacked as overly
critical of Israel. But now, criticism of Israel is increasingly the
dominant Democratic position, while support from AIPAC and affiliated
political action committees has become toxic. 

This increases the influence of the left in the Democratic Party
generally, since calling out Israel’s barbarism is now a political
bonus rather than a burden. There are simply too many Democrats
espousing this position, both candidates and voters, for the House and
Senate campaign committees to demonize them.

The ultimate weathervane in Democratic politics, Rahm Emanuel, long in
the Israel-right-or-wrong camp and a self-promoted candidate for
president in 2028, recently invited himself to Israel to deliver a
much-publicized speech at Tel Aviv University. “Your government is
complicit in the horrors now being inflicted on innocent families in
the West Bank,” he said. “That undermines your international
legitimacy, as a small nation, at a time when you can least afford
it.”

Emanuel criticized Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but also
U.S. administrations for serving as his enabler. “We’ve done you
no favors by averting our eyes,” he said. Emanuel, you might say, is
a day late and a shekel short.

_The New Yorker _recently ran a deeply reported piece
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on the Biden administration’s repeated failure to use the leverage
of extensive military aid to limit Israel’s barbarism. The writer,
David Kirkpatrick, interviewed every major senior player making Middle
East policy under Biden. 

Every time Biden advisers sought to condition aid on greater
restraint, they were out-played by Bibi and a few hard-line Bibi
allies around Biden, and most importantly by Biden himself. “Even
though Biden and his advisers privately told Netanyahu many times not
to provoke Iran, the Israelis repeatedly blindsided the Americans by
doing exactly that,” Kirkpatrick writes. Even worse was Biden’s
indulgence of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and the West Bank. Biden kept
making threats that aid might be cancelled, but never delivered.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National security adviser, went on the
record. “We repeatedly raised and discussed options for withholding
weapons,” he told Kirkpatrick; but, except for the brief suspension
of one shipment of bombs, “‘the President always deferred on that
decision, because we kept thinking that we were close to getting a
deal’ for a hostage release and a ceasefire.’” Sullivan added,
“When you look back at it in the cold light of day, the trap in that
kind of thinking is easier to recognize. … I will say
straightforwardly—we should have put more pressure on Israel to take
a different approach.”

Even taking the reputation-burnishing with a big grain of salt, a
tragic picture emerges of a missed opportunity to save Israel from
Bibi’s worst instincts and to save tens of thousands of Palestinian
lives. And there was a worse tragedy. Trump was elected thanks to a
huge falloff in Democratic turnout in 2024, much of it among the
young. Biden’s appalling failure to hold Israel to account was a big
part of the story, since younger Democratic voters tend to be far less
indulgent of Israel’s brutality.

Bibi’s success in playing Biden for a fool segued directly into his
manipulation of Trump, with even more dire consequences in the form of
the Iran War. Critics have widely pointed out that all of Trump’s
assumptions have been proven wrong. But those were Bibi’s
assumptions, which he foisted on Trump.

Israel has now been sidelined. The Israelis were not part of Trump’s
short-lived truce, nor are they part of Trump’s resumed war.

At home, the increased strains in the alliance with the United States
has weakened Netanyahu, who faces an election in the fall. Whoever is
the next prime minister, Israel will be even more isolated globally.

The oft-repeated false claim that criticism of Israel is tantamount to
antisemitism has been weakened by this shift. But given Trump’s
vanity and opportunism, as he comes to appreciate that the Iran war is
a fiasco with no good exit, he could well reflect on how Netanyahu
manipulated him into launching the war. And though Trump has found it
expedient to pose as a friend of the Jews, it is a short step to
blaming history’s perennial scapegoat.

_ROBERT KUTTNER is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect,
and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School. His latest
book is __Notes for Next Time: Surviving Tyranny, Redeeming America_
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Bob at his site, __robertkuttner.com_ [[link removed]]_,
and on Twitter._

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* US Congress
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