As America grows less nationalistic, less hawkish, and less religious it will grow less sympathetic to an Israel defined by exactly those characteristics.
In Chicago, Barack Obama lived across the street from a very unusual synagogue, KAM Isaiah Israel, and its very unusual rabbi, Arnold Jacob Wolf. Wolf had been the founding chairman of Breira, the first American Jewish group to advocate a Palestinian state, and throughout his career, he passionately challenged Israeli settlement policies and the American Jewish organizations that justified them. In 1970, in words that could have been written this morning, Wolf denounced American Jewish leaders who, on the issue of Israel, “do not demand support, but rather submission…Any congregation whose allegiance is the least bit critical, any rabbi who holds independent views of the Middle Eastern situation, is eyed with suspicion, if not with downright hatred.”
Wolf
liked Obama, but considered him timid. One month before Obama’s
election, and three months before Wolf’s death, the octogenarian rabbi predicted
that although Obama “knows more than most people do about the [Middle
East] situation…he’s going to go very cautiously and not do anything
that shakes up the Jewish community. I’m not sure I agree with that, but
that’s what’s going to happen.”
Wolf
was right. Obama has been cautious. He’s put far less pressure on
Benjamin Netanyahu to stop settlement growth than George H.W. Bush put
on Yitzhak Shamir. He’s been far more indulgent of Netanyahu’s war in
Gaza than Ronald Reagan was of Shamir and Menachem Begin’s war in Lebanon.
But
although Obama has not changed the American debate over Israel, the
Obama coalition has. Look at the polls taken during this war. A majority of Americans
defend Israel’s actions and blame Hamas for the violence. But among the
demographic groups that backed Obama most strongly, it’s the reverse.
First, young people. According to Gallup,
while Americans over the age of 65 support Israel’s actions by a margin
of 24 points, Americans under 30 oppose them by a margin of 26 points.
Second, racial and ethnic minorities. White Americans back the war by 16
points. Non-whites oppose it by 24 points. Third, liberals. According
to the Pew Research Center, conservatives are 54 points more likely to blame Hamas for the fighting than Israel. Among liberals, it’s tied.
What
do young people, minorities and liberals have in common? They’re the
constituencies whose overwhelming support made Barack Obama president.
In Washington, Democratic politicians from Obama on down still overwhelmingly support Israeli actions. Earlier this month, the entire United States Senate
—including socialists like Bernie Sanders and progressive firebrands
like Elizabeth Warren—supported a resolution on Gaza so one-sided that
it didn’t even acknowledge any Palestinians had died.
But
if Sanders and Warren haven’t changed, the people who vote for them
have. One can still find older commentators like Alan Dershowitz and Abe
Foxman who defend Israel’s actions in Gaza while championing a liberal
agenda inside the United States. Among younger pundits, by contrast,
that combination has virtually disappeared. One of the last holdouts was
New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, a highly regarded critic of
Republican domestic policy who over the years has generally blamed
Palestinians more than Israel for the ongoing conflict. Yet earlier this
week, in a widely discussed column, Chait wrote
that “it has dawned on me that I am one of the liberal Jews who…has
grown less pro-Israel over the last decade.” Among younger Americans,
including younger American Jews, “liberal except on Israel”—once a
common political identity—barely exists.
The
result is that in the media, if not in Congress, the debate over
Israel’s behavior is mostly playing out along partisan and ideological
lines. The strongest defenders of Israeli actions are generally
conservative Republicans who oppose a Palestinian state. On social
media, defenses of Israeli behavior are frequently laced with hostility
toward President Obama and toward Muslims, which is not surprising given
that, according to one recent poll,
63 percent of Republicans believe Islam is incompatible with American
values. But in America’s hyper-polarized political environment, the more
conservatives defend Israeli policy in terms Obama voters find
alienating, the more alienated Obama voters grow from Israeli policy.
The more enthusiastic Sean Hannity and John Hagee become about this war,
the more Obama voters decide it must be wrong.
And
it is Obama voters—not Hannity and Hagee supporters—who are growing as a
share of America’s population. In the United States, Israel has the
same demographic problem as the GOP. Every year, older whites decline as
a share of America’s adult population. Every year, Millennials and
minorities—the two groups most skeptical of Israeli behavior—grow.
The
America that exists in Netanyahu’s head—an America populated by
conservative, fervently nationalistic, white Christians who believe the
civilized West must wage a global war against barbaric Islam—is slowly
dying. On questions of culture, war and peace, younger Americans often
think more like their European counterparts than their own parents and
grandparents. In 2013, for instance, Pew found that Americans under 30
were 24 points more likely to approve of the United Nations than were
Americans over 50, the largest age gap in any of the seventeen countries
Pew surveyed. A 2012 Pew poll
found young Americans 30 points more likely than their elders to say
the United States should “avoid military confrontation” with Iran rather
than “take a stand.” And according to a 2011 Pew poll,
while Americans over 50 were far more likely than Western Europeans to
say “our culture is superior to others,” Americans under thirty were
actually less likely to say so than young people in Britain, Germany and
Spain. Not coincidentally, young Americans are far less religious than their elders too.
As
America grows less nationalistic, less hawkish, less religious and less
inclined to consider its own culture superior, it will grow less
sympathetic to an Israeli government defined by exactly those
characteristics. When will that change American policy? I don’t know. As
the gun control debate shows, well-organized, passionate constituencies
can wield tremendous influence in Washington even as public opinion
shifts against them. When it comes to Israel, older, more religious
American Jews and older, more religious white Christians are such a
constituency. And they will keep punching above their weight for many
years to come.
But
every time a conflict like this breaks out—especially if Israel
continues to elect governments hostile to a viable Palestinian state—the
American mood will incrementally shift. Already, Israel has lost Jon
Stewart, the most influential spokesperson for America’s liberal young.
By the next Gaza War, if God forbid it comes, Israel will have lost
MSNBC too. And eventually, the political fears that have restrained
Obama will not restrain his ideological successors.
I
fervently hope that when that shift comes, it will bring a shift in
American policy towards the occupation and not a weakening of America’s
commitment to Israeli security, as expressed in systems like Iron Dome.
And I fervently hope that when it comes, there will still be a two state
solution to pursue. Somewhere, I suspect, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, of
blessed memory, is hoping that too.
