Few issues become singular fixations that determine politicians’ allegiances to the exclusion of all other matters. Such issues drive politicians and voters to excommunicate allies who otherwise perfectly align with them ideologically.
Over the past 60 years, very few issues, like abortion and Vietnam, have attained this status. Now, unnaturally and arguably irrationally, attitudes toward Israel have become single-issue deal breakers and drivers of fratricide on the political left.
We on the right should proceed with caution, as some conservative commentators are following suit in making this a counterproductive litmus test within our movement.
On the left, it started at several elite universities, where students became obsessed with the completely inconsequential impact of their schools’ endowment investments in companies that do business in Israel. This gradually expanded to the excommunication of any politician with a friendly attitude toward Israel, even if he or she was otherwise a devout progressive.
The best example of this phenomenon came with the primary defeat of New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman in June.
As an incumbent, strict liberal, strident critic of Donald Trump, and lead counsel in impeachment hearings, Goldman was an unlikely candidate for a serious primary challenge. However, he maintained the firm support for Israel once typical among liberal New York politicians, and that, primarily, was enough to defeat him by over 30 points (and deny him service in a coffee shop in his district, to add insult to injury).
A week after Goldman’s loss, Colorado Representative Diana DeGette, who had an impeccable liberal record, lost to anti-Israel zealot Melat Kiros in a primary that closely followed the script from the earlier New York race.
It is difficult to understand how the left has made perceived transgressions by Israel paramount to all other issues when there are numerous other international actors whose actions are worse by a quantum.
The hard left shrieks about Israel’s actions in Gaza but does not whisper about the rest of the Arab world, which will not take in refugees from that miserable spot. Nearby, Iran recently killed perhaps 40,000 street protesters.
The outrage directed at Israel is not so much selective as it is comical.
Some on the right have become equally obsessed with Israel as a single determinative issue. Unequivocal support for positions taken by Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu now seems like a priority even above support for President Trump, who had the right’s undivided loyalty.
A significant faction on the right, that is otherwise completely aligned with Vice President J.D. Vance, is working feverishly to prevent him from becoming the next GOP nominee for president based on his perceived recent coolness to Israel. This faction has become overtly strident in the wake of Vance’s recent interview with Joe Rogan. (In the interest of solidarity, I’ll omit specific names.)
Important voices within Israel, like Jerusalem Post Editor Zvika Klein, have warned that Vance’s critics among American conservatives have no legitimate basis to characterize him as an anti-Israeli effigy.
In the Rogan interview, Vance gently suggested that while Israeli and American interests typically align, at times they might depart, and in such instances, he does not begrudge Israel’s aggressive advocacy for its own interests. He merely suggested tactical nuance, alternate carrots and sticks for Iran as opposed to the strictly sticks approach advocated by Netanyahu.
That was enough to prompt some members of our conservative movement to declare that he should never be president.
The United States has seen fit to have a special relationship with Israel, but for a few of our friends on the right, it is never enough.
There is too much at stake over the entire menu of domestic and foreign issues to sabotage a potential generational political talent like J.D. Vance over purity with respect to Israel. We should leave single-issue allegiance and fratricide over Israel to the left.
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