Does Israel Need U.S. Jewish
Support?
By Daniel Pipes
Israel Hayom
April 18, 2016
Martin
Kramer then added a second factor: the changing balance of power between
American and Israeli Jews. "When the state of Israel was established in
1948, there were six million American Jews and 700,000 Israelis: a proportion of
nine to one. ... today, the ratio of American to Israeli Jews is
one-to-one—about six million in each country. In another twenty years, there
will be well over eight million Jews in Israel, and probably fewer than six
million in America." Nor are numbers the whole story: "these Israelis
are economically prosperous and militarily powerful" even as "Jewish
political clout" erodes in the United States. As a result, Israelis pay
less attention to American Jewish opinion, which in turn leads to American
Jewish alienation.
I agree with both their arguments
and should like to add a third perspective:
Jewish support for Israel has
weakened primarily because Jews are solidly on the liberal-left of the political
spectrum (these days symbolized by Bernie Sanders), the side most critical of
Israel.
From Israel's point of view, the
fact that American Jews are losing their ardor for Israel is a distinct loss.
But it is made up for by American conservative support for the Jewish state.
The conservative-moderate-liberal
spectrum of opinion is consistent in poll after poll (I have collected a
decade's worth of them here)
and it shows large and growing conservative support for Israel. For example, the
Gallup
poll in February 2016 found Republicans favoring Israel over the
Palestinians by 79 percent to 7 percent, or a margin of over 11-to1. With such
political backing, Jews have lost their primacy in pushing the U.S. government
to a favorable policy toward Israel.
To be sure, this support could one
day erode too but it looks solid for now, being a core issue of the conservative
outlook. As one proof, note how a Republican politician (Charles
Boustany) who associated with J Street felt compelled publicly to apologize
for this step ("I had been deliberately misled").
Conservative support includes
self-professed Christian
Zionists, of course, but it also comprises many others (such as defense
hawks or those worried about Islamism) who do not have a religious outlook.
Mathematically, is it better to
have the near-unanimous support of Jews, who make up 1.8
percent of the U.S. population, or the very substantial support of the 38
percent who are conservative? To ask that question is to answer it. That
said, this change does have disadvantages for Israel: For one, conservatives
tend to know less about Israel. For another, Israel has become a partisan issue.
These subtleties aside, it remains
true that as Jewish support weakens, conservative backing has moved in to take
its place. The focus on Jewish opinion, therefore, has less salience than it
once did. Conservatives, now the Zionist bulwark, deserve that attention and
solicitude.