The future of American Jewry is on Israel’s ballot

When Israelis head to the polls on October 27 to elect a new government, many of them will feel a weight they have never felt before when casting a vote, given the turbulence and controversy that has marked the four years since the last Knesset vote. But these elections will not only be impactful for Israelis, or for Palestinians and others in the region who are directly affected by Israeli policies; they will be the most consequential elections in Israel’s history for American Jews. Indeed, the choice that Israelis make will have an outsized impact on Jews beyond Israel’s borders.

The American Jewish community is arguably feeling more angst than at any other time in the post-World War II era. Antisemitism is on the rise by any measure; Zionism, the dominant American Jewish ideology of nearly eight decades, has become a literal slur; and support for the Jewish state has cratered in a shocking manner and timeframe. Democratic Socialists of America candidates are winning statewide and local elections across the country under a banner of questioning American Jewish core commitments to Israel as a Jewish state, while the most popular right-wing podcasts routinely tar Israel as a nefarious entity twisting American foreign policy for its own aims.

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This is new and frightening territory for American Jews, and what makes it worse is that the ability to alter this trajectory lies partially halfway across the world.

It is no coincidence that hate crimes against American Jews are up, physical attacks on synagogues and Jewish community institutions are now commonplace, and Jews are being ostracized in professions from publishing to medicine. To be an American Jew today is to be nervous about societal acceptance, political homelessness, the fracturing and concurrent weakening of the Jewish community along the fault line of Israel, and how ideological commitments and markers of identity may have to be obscured or even left behind to be full members of the American polity.

This is new and frightening territory for American Jews, and what makes it worse is that the ability to alter this trajectory lies partially halfway across the world. Because while part of what is taking place is the age-old and all-too-familiar story of antisemitism that has plagued Jews across time and space, part of it is that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government have destroyed much of Israel’s credibility and goodwill across the American political and demographic spectrums. It is American Jews and our connection to Israel that are left to bear the brunt of what the Israeli government has wrought here. Israel’s direction come this fall will have enormous consequences for our ability to continue flourishing as the most successful diaspora Jewish community in history.

Americans used to view Israel as a country that shares its liberal democratic values. Among Democrats, where that was most important, that perception is no longer the case, driven by an Israeli response to Hamas’s horrific October 7 massacres and abductions that was unrelentingly punishing and devastating to Palestinian civilians; daily escalating Jewish terrorism against Palestinians in the West Bank and settlement policies designed to herd Palestinians into encircled urban enclaves; and Israeli ministers who revel in destruction and cruelty.

Americans also used to view Israel as a country whose interests aligned with the US, a country that was an invaluable strategic partner. Among Republicans, where that was most important, that perception is also under assault, driven by Israel’s championing of and participation in an Iran war that has become an albatross around President Donald Trump’s neck; constant Israeli friction with regional neighbors such as Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria that requires American mediation in a way that appears to many to be disconnected from American interests and goals; and the view that Israel is constantly asking for American favors and backing during the rise of American neoisolationism under the banner of Trump’s America First movement, which cannot understand why a tiny country in the Middle East is taking up so much American time and energy.

This is reflected in American public opinion, where the precipitous drop in support for Israel among Democrats, independents, and Americans of all political persuasions under the age of 50 after decades of these numbers being stable and highly pro-Israel cannot be solely chalked up to antisemitism or social media influence campaigns. They reflect a tide that has definitively shifted in response to Israeli actions, and they are echoed in polling of American Jews, majorities of whom both dislike Netanyahu and remain emotionally attached to Israel, but only 37% of whom now identify as Zionist, a number whose most logical explanation lies in the fact that the term is now coded as supporting this Israeli government and its policies. There will always be those who hate Jews for being Jews, and there will always be those who refuse to accept a Jewish sovereign state under any guise. But as uncomfortable as it is for many to accept, there is no way to disentangle the discomfort that many American Jews are experiencing for the first time in their lives from this Israeli government and its complete disregard for how its actions reverberate beyond Israel’s borders.

If the next Israeli government adopts the makeup, policies, and posture of the outgoing one, the repercussions will be severe.

Israeli voters must understand the impact of their vote on their American Jewish brethren, and it should be something they take into account when they decide which slip to put into the ballot box. What is needed goes beyond a different face, a nicer diplomatic language, and a resumed commitment to bipartisan engagement. Israel’s problems in the US stem from its policies and its actions, and the consequences of those problems are felt most immediately and acutely by American Jews.

Israelis are understandably consumed with their own internal problems, and that should be their first and main priority. But alongside that, they should take seriously the increasingly frantic warnings from the American Jewish community. If they assume that Israeli governments only impact Israelis, they will not only be undermining the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel, but destroying one of the most valuable strategic assets they have in an American Jewish community that has been the foundation of a strong US-Israel relationship.

If the next Israeli government adopts the makeup, policies, and posture of the outgoing one, the repercussions will be severe. As Israel’s standing in the US craters even further, American Jews will more than ever feel that they face a precarious and uncertain future, as ordinary Americans transpose their feelings about the Jewish state onto the Jews that they encounter every day. The inevitable result will be growing antisemitism, an American Jewish fortress mentality, and more and more American Jews shedding their actual associations and emotional attachments to an Israel with which they do not identify and whose actions they refuse to defend.

And while American Jews will continue to feel these consequences most immediately and acutely, Israel will end up suffering as much when it wakes up to a world where the American Jewish experience has been transformed – perhaps irrevocably – for the worse, and with it a US-Israel relationship that has been the backbone of Israel’s strength and success.

David A. Halperin and Michael J. Koplow are respectively the CEO and Chief Policy Officer of Israel Policy Forum

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