J. is the media partner of the 2025 Z3 Conference at the Oshman Family JCC in Palo Alto on Nov. 9. This week, we are publishing a trio of op-eds from speakers at this year’s conference, just a slice of the diverse perspectives on the Israel-diaspora relationship that attendees will be able to hear at the event. They were solicited and edited solely by J.
Updated on Nov. 5
Most American Jews grew up in a world where the U.S.-Israel alliance was a given. They can hardly recall a time when it wasn’t steadfast and cannot imagine a world without it.
In some ways, this was always an illusion. Nations, as they say, have no permanent friends, only permanent interests, and even those are ever-shifting. Politics is rarely sentimental, and any alliance is always temporal and potentially imperiled.
Today, sadly, the U.S.-Israel alliance is imperiled.
Over the last two years, powerful forces in American politics have exploited the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre and the ensuing war to not just demonize the Jewish state but to effectively demand an end to American support for Israel. These forces encompass both the political left and the political right.
On the left, the culprits are apparent. They have taken to the streets and campuses to vilify the Jewish state and demand an end to arms sales and other ties between Israel and the U.S.
The members of this coalition, from the antisemites who assault Jews on campus to prominent politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sanders are quite open about what they want: to disempower Israel in order to force it to acquiesce unconditionally to a Palestinian state and, in the end, to its own outright dissolution.
Mamdani, who won New York City’s mayoral race on Tuesday, has repeatedly refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He has attempted to hedge via hypocrisy by saying “Israel has a right to exist.” But being a Jewish state is Israel’s raison d’être. Refusing to recognize it on that basis is a refusal to recognize its right to exist. Indeed, it is difficult not to conclude that Mamdani and his compatriots hope that Israel will go the way of apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union.
The anti-Israel left, both on campus and in Congress, knows this cannot be done without breaking the U.S.-Israel alliance, and they are more than happy to make the attempt.
This movement is an ugly one, but in some ways, its right-wing counterpart is even uglier. On the left, antisemitism is usually elided by demonizing “Zionists” as a euphemism for “Jews.” On the right, the movement is openly antisemitic, often in the crudest terms.
It is led by social media influencers like Nick Fuentes, whose online “groypers” are notorious for their antisemitic slurs. There are also media figures like Candace Owens, who flirts with Holocaust denial, and Tucker Carlson, who recently resurrected the deicide libel, accusing Jews of murdering Jesus. Along with them are mad extremists like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who entertains fantasies of “Jewish space lasers” controlling the weather.
These figures claim to be isolationists, concealing their hatred behind an “America First” ideology. They label all supporters of the U.S.-Israel alliance as “neo-cons” who must be purged from the conservative movement and the Republican Party in order to end the U.S.-Israel relationship immediately.
The antisemitism embraced by both the left and right opposing the U.S.-Israel relationship threatens American Jews with marginalization, ghettoization and violence.
It is also a threat to Israel’s survival. Without U.S. support, Israel’s ability to defend and sustain itself would be severely compromised. While Israel could potentially find alliances with China or India, the loss of American high-tech weaponry and diplomatic support, especially at the United Nations, would be a significant blow to its fight for survival.
This constitutes a double threat because if antisemitism seizes the commanding heights of U.S. politics, Israel will be American Jews’ only refuge. If that refuge is also imperiled at precisely the moment American Jews’ position in the United States is most precarious, they will be in existential danger.
Regrettably, it is not entirely improbable that, without robust opposition, anti-Israel forces will prevail. Consequently, for American Jews, there is only one imperative: Don’t let it happen.
What, then, can be done?
First, American Jews must abandon the culture of quiescence. They must agitate, make noise and make trouble. They must cry out on behalf of the alliance, march in the streets and, most of all, make it clear that Jewish support cannot be taken for granted.
They should unequivocally declare that an end to the U.S.-Israel alliance would be the most grievous betrayal and would not be tolerated. They must state clearly that if either party turns against the alliance, there will be no more Jewish financial support, votes or activist energy forthcoming.
American Jews must say: You can no longer take our stuff and then spit in our faces. The cost of our support is support for the U.S.-Israel alliance, and it doesn’t matter how sanguine your other policies may be. If you betray Israel, you betray us.
This will not be easy. American Jews will be accused by both sides of perfidy and dual loyalty, but they must weather the storm. It is the cost of safeguarding their only refuge. Ironically, it is the antisemites themselves who have proven that such a refuge is essential now more than ever.