Trump Drew the Line on Israel Alliance
When historians write about Donald Trump’s second term, they will have to explain something that looked unlikely in 2024: the most consequential defense of the American-Israeli alliance, and of Jewish Americans themselves, came from the man many establishment conservatives once declared unreliable on the subject.
Begin with the record. In February, American and Israeli forces struck Iran’s nuclear program after a quarter century of warnings from every serious strategic thinker in both parties. The operation, which Trump ordered, did in weeks what five presidents had declined to do for decades. Eighty-three percent of Republican voters supported it, per the March J.L. Partners poll. Sixty-three percent supported it strongly. Among MAGA-aligned Republicans the number reached 92 percent. The base knew what was at stake.
The American-Israeli partnership is the outer wall of the Judeo-Christian inheritance both nations were built to defend.
Add the Abraham Accords. The Jerusalem embassy. The recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The Board of Peace overseeing postwar Gaza, where Vice President JD Vance reminded Americans this month that a stable Middle East means millions of American jobs. And at home, a Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism at the Department of Justice, the first of its kind, established within two weeks of Trump’s second inauguration and already at work on the campuses where the worst abuses of the last two years unfolded. These are the achievements of an administration that has declined to apologize for the proposition that American interest and Israeli survival are aligned.
Standing with Israel has never meant agreeing with every decision her government makes. Allies disagree; that is what alliances are for. But a proven ally, one that has fought alongside Americans in every regional war since 1973 and shared intelligence that has saved American lives, is not discarded the moment a disagreement arises. That is the difference between a partnership and a transaction, and it is a distinction the serious American right has always understood.
Yet a strain on the right has emerged that refuses the partnership entirely. It has grown loud on podcasts and among influencers with tens of millions of followers. It calls Israel a “demonic state.” It has suggested Jews were behind 9/11 and the assassination of Charlie Kirk. It has praised Ulysses Grant’s 1862 order expelling Jews from American territory, an order Grant himself later disavowed. It calls the President who ordered the strikes on Natanz a “slave to Israel.” It has platformed an open Hitler admirer and invited him into the conversation as if he belonged there.
The President’s America First has always been a doctrine of clear naming. Naming Iran, which has pledged to destroy two American allies and spent four decades killing American soldiers. Naming Russia, which sustains Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. Naming China, which underwrites both. That is what it has meant to put America first. Identify the real threats. Refuse to flinch.
The faction that now trades on the label has chosen different enemies. It has chosen the Jewish state and, increasingly, Jews themselves. Every coalition that ever wrapped that choice in patriotic clothes, from the Coughlinites of the 1930s to Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, ended in the same place. History has kept the receipts.
Trump has seen it for what it is. He has called the loudest of these voices a “broken man” and rebuked their line in plain language. Senator Ted Cruz has warned colleagues that antisemitism is being normalized under a conservative label. Ben Shapiro has said the same, at real business cost. Dennis Prager published a 15-page rebuttal and, in January, a sharper follow-up.
Still, pockets remain. The writer Rod Dreher reported this winter that sources place the share of Republican Hill staffers following the movement’s most extreme voice at somewhere between 30 and 40 percent. Leaked Young Republican group chats confirm the pattern. A Tennessee school shooter last year named two podcasters among his inspirations for targeting Jews. The argument that this rhetoric is harmless cannot survive contact with the obituaries.
Here is the test Republicans face before the midterms. A coalition is a living thing; it accepts or rejects its worst members. The President has shown the way. He has drawn a clear line between the movement he leads and the subculture that has tried to colonize it. Congress, the RNC, the governors, the donor class: each will have to decide whether to follow.
The polling suggests they should. Only seven percent of Republicans, per that same J.L. Partners survey, would take the loudest critic’s endorsement over a Trump endorsement. Fifty-five percent would be less likely to support a candidate echoing the anti-Israel line. Marjorie Taylor Greene has resigned her seat. Thomas Massie is fighting for his political life in a primary. The electorate has spoken in the language electorates speak.
The party of the Abraham Accords, of the Jerusalem embassy, of the Golan recognition, has always understood what this alliance secures. The American-Israeli partnership is the outer wall of the Judeo-Christian inheritance both nations were built to defend, and standing with Israel is part of the same moral architecture as standing with America.
Trump has kept that faith under greater pressure than any predecessor faced. The rest of the party now has a choice. It can stand with the President, and with the 75 years of bipartisan conviction that built the strongest alliance in the free world. Or it can stand with the podcasts.
History will notice either way.
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The writer is the former chairman of the United States Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad. Appointed by President Donald J. Trump.