Americans really, really want to avoid war

And have varying definitions of antisemitism

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I’ve been making the same joke a lot over the past week, Groucho-esque gallows humor as rebuttal and self-assurance: I hate myself for plenty of reasons, but it has nothing to do with the fact that I’m Jewish.

It’s gone from a self-effacing gag to a mantra of sorts over the past few days as the rhetoric around war in Gaza has intensified in tandem with the violence. The evil inflicted on the original Israeli victims to has been returned several times over, and the violence has become so overwhelming that it has even detonated generational warfare among both American Jews and the Democratic Party.

Poll numbers released on Thursday evening confirmed what had seemed seemed anecdotally true based on the protestor numbers: Americans’ sympathy for Israel has spiked after the horrifying massacre of thirteen hundred civilians, but the idea of responding to the heinous act with a full-on war is increasingly unpopular.

A majority of both Democrats and independent voters want to see President Biden send humanitarian aid to Israel and Palestine while working out a diplomatic solution to their latest war and the underlying conflict.

It’s just one poll, of course, but it tracks with national polls from earlier this year: Democratic voters’ unconditional support for Israel’s government is declining precipitously from its bipartisan heights in the ‘90s through early 2010s. In March, a majority of Democratic voters told Gallup for the first time ever that they sympathized more with Palestinians than Israel.

That momentous shift was largely due to the serious decline in support for Israel’s government among millennials and Gen Z (who did not get broken out into this graph).

Pro-Netanyahu hawks have sought to label anyone not fully on board with the far-right Israeli government’s indiscriminate killing of Palestinian civilians as antisemitic, but they’re now running up against a serious complication: Even before the war, more American Jews than ever opposed Netanyahu’s reactionary coalition, just as half of Israelis have opposed Netanyahu for years.

Here in the US, liberal Jewish groups have helped lead mass protests over the past two weeks against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, while many more have added their voices in other ways, helping to announce the arrival of a new paradigm in the politics of this seemingly intractable conflict.

That’s an existential crisis for groups like the Anti-Defamation League, which has lurched rightward in concert with the Israeli government. The ADL’s Washington chapter put out a statement on Wednesday accusing Jewish groups that have been critical of Israel’s military response of being radical antisemites who do not represent the Jewish community and stand opposed to the country’s very right to exist.

Each accusation is overwhelmingly inaccurate.

Groups like IfNotNow, which has helped to lead many of the protests in DC, are critical of Netanyahu’s government but not at all opposed to Israel’s ongoing existence. Back in 2021, a poll of found that 87% of American Jews believed that it was OK to question Israel’s government and that doing so did not make one antisemitic.

The poll also found that a full quarter of American Jews believed Israel is an apartheid state, while another quarter did not believe that to be the case but did not think it was an antisemitic accusation.

There’s no doubt that many Jewish-Americans have rallied to support the war effort, but there’s a difference between wanting to eliminate Hamas and being OK with the total obliteration of two million Palestinians, half of whom are children.

The thirteen hundred Israelis who were massacred should not die in vain, but helping Israel’s fringe government to use their deaths to justify a civilian slaughter of historic proportions is now opposed by 66% of Americans. Labeling those who protest against the Netanyahu government’s war crimes as antisemitic is a desperate tactic, and in many ways embodies the mistakes that led to this massive divide.

How Did This Happen?

Since the modern Israeli state was establishment in 1948, it has been presented to American Jews as a distant homeland, a safe haven for a people whose existence has been defined by persecution and shaped by expulsion. For many Jews around the world, especially those living in the Middle East and the Soviet Union, it has play that role at different points in history.

The national post-Holocaust origin story is a stirring one, and for nearly seven decades, the survival of the Jewish people has been presented as intertwined with the fate of Israel, creating the impetus for the homeland as a geopolitical force.

In the US, Israel tends to be the focal point of religious services and education, charity and travel — I never went, but Birthright is free and protected by the IDF. Many American Jews now have roots and family there, and because the future of Israel and the survival of the Jewish people have been so narratively intertwined, a reflexive protectiveness tends to kick in when the country is threatened or rockets are fired.

The awakening to the plight of Palestinians has a number of factors, including the overall trend toward secularization in this country. Growing up watching the United States’ epic two-decade botch job in the Middle East and seeing it come to a pitiful Vietnam-like end also curbs enthusiasm for further wars in the region.

For the most part, the blame falls to the Netanyahu regime. At the same time that Netanyahu was further turning the screws on the Palestinians, he was establishing an (ultimately ill-fated) bromance with Donald Trump and the evangelical right, which has become ultra-invested in Israel for its own superstitious reasons. This put him in league with the enemy here, while mass protests in Israel against Netanyahu’s attack on democracy earlier this year cast him even further as a villain.

If it’s antisemitic for Jews to not trust Benjamin Netanyahu or agree with his violent policies, then a majority of Israeli Jews must be antisemitic.

All that being said, I’m still surprised by the sheer size of the protests against the escalation of war in Palestine, and even more shocked by the number of Jewish people involved in leading so many of them. There are undoubtedly some antisemites participating in some of these mass protests, but that does not equal an endorsement of every message on every sign held up for the cameras.

Some Jewish organizations have expressed a feeling of alienation over the fellow Jews’ unwillingness to sanction overwhelming brutality and a surefire genocide. Antisemitism is real and it is scary, but I don’t know how sanctioning the mass death of Palestinian children is in keeping with religious tradition or even a smart approach to curtailing the threats faced by Jews in Israel or anywhere else. By backing a ground invasion, the US is inviting regional conflict and committing its money and troops to the cause.

The Political Implications

Americans’ disinterest in funding the far-right Israeli war effort and distaste for human rights violations must have come as a surprise to Democrats in DC, who broke out the old playbook and went to work banging the drum for war.

Members of Congress tripped over one another in a race to pump out the most hawkish tweets and official statements about the conflict. President Biden offered his unconditional support to Netanyahu and his staff blasted anyone that did otherwise. The State Department silenced dissenting voices. There seemed to be no hesitation or further consideration especially after billionaires began to complain about those damn kids opposed to funding war. History really does repeat itself.

Republicans were far worse, of course, urging genocide and trying to use the opportunity to flog Iran. People like neo-Nazi icon Ron DeSantis, who sent a plane to Israel and immediately started selling merch to fundraise off of it, are nauseating and subhuman. Yet their actions line up with the interests of Israel lobby groups like the ADL and AIPAC, and the praise they receive only further fuels Democrats’ urgent efforts to impress them.

AIPAC in particular looms as a threat to Democratic elected officials. Funded by Republican billionaires and business interests, AIPAC lobbies to whip support for Israel’s government, no matter how far-right it’s gone, and uses its vast war chest to run primaries against progressives and contribute to Republican campaigns.

Last year, AIPAC and another PAC it funds single-handedly took over the Democratic Party’s primary process, fueling half a dozen conservative candidates to victory and nearly taking out Summer Lee after she began the cycle with a massive lead. It spent more money on primaries than any other organization, and simply having supported President Obama’s deal with Iran was enough to earn AIPAC’s enmity.

This year, AIPAC is back, actively recruiting candidates to take on members of the Squad, including Rep. Jamaal Bowman. It doesn’t only target lawmakers who have the audacity to question Netanyahu’s regime — being an economic progressive got Rep. Andy Levin sniped, because again, it is a Republican billionaire-funded Super PAC. But the threat hangs heavy over the heads of Democratic incumbents. In that sort of atmosphere, with other big donors like Haim Saban keeping a sharp eye, and it has clearly made an impact on what lawmakers are willing to say in public.

It’s hard to say this, because it sounds like such an unfortunate trope to the uninitiated, like a counterpoint to the George Soros obsession on the right. That’s why it’s important to point out again that AIPAC is a dishonest front group for billionaires, not a true expression of a Jewish majority.

As of now, 18 brave members of House have been willing to sign onto call for a ceasefire, but none of the Senate’s usual progressives have shown a willingness to do so yet, despite being urged to do so by staffers. New polling shows that with nearly 4000 Palestinians dead and Israel gearing up for a remarkably ill-advised ground invasion, two-thirds of likely voters now want the US to call for a ceasefire. That includes 80% of Democrats.

While humanitarian aid is beginning to trickle into Gaza, a ground war would be catastrophic in terms of both human casualties and electoral politics. Muslim- and Arab-Americans in Michigan and Minnesota are fuming with Biden over his public unequivocal support for Israel’s indiscriminate bombing, with many promising not to vote for him next year. That could sink his chances at re-election.

There are no easy long-term answers, and to leave Hamas’s unit of terrorists intact would be a grave mistake. But the White House needs to understand that times have changed and the politics of this crisis are transforming before their very eyes. Supporting a ground invasion is likely to draw in militaries from across the Middle East, forcing the US to join combat — in fact, a Navy warship has already shot down planes and missiles sent by Yemen.

Being a wartime president is not the path to re-election when the public is so unenthused about the war from the very start. The longer the administration acts on operates on instincts forged decades earlier, the more needless suffering it will help enable. There’s nothing antisemitic about wanting to avoid a genocide.

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