(July 23, 2026 / JNS)
The pro-Israel community feels besieged as Israel-bashing risks competing with baseball as America’s national pastime, with people swinging hard from the left and the right. Demonizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while denouncing the genocide-that-never-happened, is becoming the ultimate virtue signal, the latest way to avoid solving America’s problems.
My new e-book, The Essential Guide to the U.S.-Israel Partnership: The 250th Anniversary Edition, fights this mania and resists the despair.
The Guide proves that Israel is America’s singular “Defend It Yourself Ally” and “Return on Investment Ally.” It details the mutual benefits of the alliance, using language that will appeal to open-minded progressives, genuine liberals, security-minded voters, Bible believers and true conservatives.
Patriotic Americans should buttress a transactional analysis of the U.S.-Israel alliance with an existential analysis, too. They must fight what the book calls “braided bitterness”: how anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism keep reinforcing one another.
Antisemitism is an elaborate conspiracy theory that reflects an obsession with placing the Jew, Judaism or the Jewish people at the center of whatever the haters hate. Stoked by a worldwide, decades-long pro-Palestinian campaign that fuses Jew-hatred with Zionophobia, anti-Zionists focus their obsessive hatred on the Jewish state of just 10 million people. They cast America, a continental superpower, 350 million citizens strong, as Israel’s dupe or co-conspirator.
Because bigots keep merging the two hatreds, the burden of proof is on the Israel-bashers to prove that their anti-Zionism isn’t antisemitic. Left-wing anti-Zionists accuse Israel of “genocide” and claim that supporting Israel risks America’s soul. Right-wing anti-Zionists accuse “the Jews” of “putting Israel first,” alleging that supporting Israel risks America’s soldiers and bankbook. Both take out their bigotry on individual Jews.
While charging Jews with dual loyalty, both betray America by claiming it is “systemically” broken or overrun by all-powerful “Zios.” Meanwhile, America’s Silenced Majority fears being tagged as evil and cancelled, or doesn’t follow the issue carefully, allowing the zealots to shape the conversation.
As anti-Zionists burn American and Israeli flags together and vandalize universities, congressional offices and American monuments while cheering Iran, Hamas and the Houthis, they illuminate the ideological affinities at work. Just as Americanism, liberalism and Zionism rhyme much more than they clash, anti-Americanism, antisemitism and anti-Zionism overlap. It’s a braided bitterness that interweaves six ideological threads:
Anti-Westernism brands successful if imperfect democracies like America and Israel “oppressors” and “settler-colonialists.” Shouting “Globalize the intifada” or “Shut it down for Palestine” envisions expanding the anti-Zionists’ war beyond the Jews and Israel.
Pro-terrorist nihilism celebrates violence. The logic of “By any means necessary” spawned post-Oct. 7 pronouncements that “Rape is resistance” and “This is what decolonization looks like.”
Anti-capitalism and a superficial romanticization of socialism exploit frustrations with economic inequities, especially among armies of overeducated underachievers.
A selective suicidal pacifism builds on an anti-establishment impulse rooted in 1960s identity politics. It encourages defunding the police and sapping America’s military might while blaming Israel for any perceived abuses on America’s streets and the Iran war.
This cumulative enmity is unpatriotic, expressed by shrieking slogans like “Freedom for Palestine means death to America,” “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around,” or “U.S. drones in the sky, Iran’s missiles will reply.”
Finally, conspiracism links anti-Zionists from right to left. Right-wingers attacking America’s federal government as “ZOG”—Zionist Occupied Government—or left-wingers branding Congress or Washington “Israel-occupied territory” discount America’s independence and institutional resilience.
Critics often accuse Jews of being thin-skinned and lumping antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Americanism together. Yet in the age of intersectionality and radicals hunting down “systemic” sins, connect the dots.
“If you grow up in the United States, you are naturally socialized to obscure settler-colonialism in a settler-colony … you’re just socialized to be a capitalist, and to be a racist, to be a settler, and then—to be a Zionist,” claims Noura Erakat, professor of Africana Studies at Rutgers University. Similarly, in 2023, Zohran Mamdani insisted that “we have to make it clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”
Patriots love their countries always despite their policies. Like all countries, Israel has good and bad policies. But liberal media has so demonized Netanyahu, who indeed has coalition allies contemptuous of liberal values, that even many Jews reject the Jewish state, not just Israel’s government.
Hopping on the bandwagon led by anti-Zionist zealots and media bias, many Americans who didn’t leave America despite hating Biden or Trump abandon Israelis because of Israel’s government. By contrast, in Israel, many Bibi-bashers fight courageously alongside Bibistas to save their country.
As November draws closer, the pro-Israel community must not panic.
Over the next 100 days, tensions seem destined to escalate.
It is true that most Republicans echo the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s ardent defense of Israel and have disavowed their marginal anti-Israel minority. More than 60% of Republicans join U.S. President Donald Trump in supporting the Jewish state.
This right-handed hug confuses many American Jews long enmeshed in the Democratic Party. A total of 103 Democrats—more than half the party’s congressional delegation—just tried blocking America’s $3.3 billion aid package to Israel. (Few noticed that America wastes more than that sum on renting empty office space or that Egypt receives about $2 billion annually with minimum reciprocity.)
The Democratic Party now welcomes rabidly anti-Israel politicians whose obsession with the Jewish state parallels many antisemites’ obsession with “the Jew.” Moreover, the Democratic leadership has wilted in the face of the haters. In a stunning reversal that history and most Americans will not judge kindly, few Democrats will confront anti-American democratic socialists, let alone fanatical anti-Zionists. It appears that such extremists are acceptable so long as they’re anti-Trump.
This means that, as the congressional midterms approach, the admitted minority of Democratic candidates who root their identity in Israel-bashing and genocide libels will become more brazen. Their campaigns will mainstream hate speech as Democrats focus on winning. This is happening with the Iran conflict careening wildly and Israel rushing toward a high-stakes election seven days before America’s midterms.
Clearly, the Iran war’s outcome will influence how long the anti-Zionist mania lasts. The day the Iranian regime falls, Israel will be dramatically vindicated. But if the war drags on or if America seems to have lost, Israel’s stock will tank.
Similarly, if Netanyahu wins re-election, American Jewish despair and the broader anti-Bibi hysteria will turn feverish. If Netanyahu loses, Israel will have a historic chance to reset its public image and relationship with American Jews.
But there are no guarantees. Anti-Zionists ranted against the Naftali Bennett-Yair Lapid government that included an Arab party as violently as they denounce Netanyahu. The haters demonize what Israel is, not what it does or who leads it.
As November draws closer, the pro-Israel community must not panic. This American moment is particularly volatile. Whatever damage anti-Zionists cause could be significant but can be reversed. Meanwhile, Israel and its supporters should practice political Pilates, strengthening the pro-Israel core while opposing the braided bitterness that merges anti-Zionism into a broader anti-Americanism.
Most importantly, we must cut through the noise to identify potential supporters.
We haven’t made enough efforts to ally with the Iranian-American community, the Cuban community, and other religious and ethnic groups that recognize the jihadi threat abroad and anti-American sentiment within. We should collaborate with Democratic moderates smart enough to understand that the Democratic Socialists of America could help Republicans dominate American politics for a decade.
We must also find new sources of support, including American military veterans, pro-capitalist tech enthusiasts and anti-woke culture warriors, who understand that we are not solely fighting for Israel and the Jewish people.
We must all mobilize to save America from itself.
