Office Hours: What to do about Israel?

Friends,

Last week’s election results in New York City have shaken the Israeli-American alliance.

The sharp decline in Israel’s popularity over its prosecution of the two-year war in Gaza had already strained the relationship. Yet in those New York elections last week, three pro-Palestinian candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a harsh critic of Israel, defeated moderates in hotly contested Democratic congressional primaries.

These election results did not reflect a rise in antisemitism. After all, New York is home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. They reflected an upsurge in sympathy toward the Palestinian cause and rejection of Israel’s response to the Hamas-led attack.

To be sure, the Hamas attack was heinous and morally repugnant, regardless of whether you sympathize with the plight of the Palestinians. But Israel’s response to it — and the continuation of military aid to Israel in the future — is sure to be an issue in the upcoming midterm elections, in subsequent Democratic presidential primaries, and in general elections of 2028.

So today’s Office Hours examines your thoughts about Israel, its culpability, and what America’s future relationship to Israel should be. It’s a difficult question for many of us, but I think it important to discuss.

Herewith, the major positions on the subject as they’re now being expressed in American politics.

1. Israel is not culpable in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, and the U.S. should continue to support Israel.

People who hold this view say that Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, forced Israel’s response, which was understandable and necessary. Unless Israel fights to protect itself and its citizens, its very existence is threatened. This existential threat requires all the firepower Israel possesses. When others are committed to reducing Israel to rubble and murdering Jews living in Israel, the only conceivable response is to try to eliminate that threat by any means possible. So the United States should continue to ally itself with Israel, and continue to help Israel militarily.

2. Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing government of Israel are responsible for the deaths in Gaza and the West Bank, and the United States should do whatever it can to end Netanyahu’s reign so that a “two-state” solution can be sought.

By this view, neither Hamas nor Israel as a whole are responsible for the deaths in Gaza or Lebanon, nor even the aggression by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. The responsibility lies with Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government in Israel. The proper role for the United States at this juncture is to do whatever we can to remove Netanyahu from power and encourage a new regime to seek a “two-state solution” in which Palestinians have their own homeland.

3. It’s not just Netanyahu. Israel as a whole is to blame for genocide in Gaza, and the United States should stop supplying Israel with military aid and equipment and stop guaranteeing its security.

Two of the candidates who won in New York last week — Brad Lander and Claire Valdez — accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza and want the United States to stop supplying it with arms. Many who hold this view want to end the military security alliance between Israel and the United States, regardless of who’s in charge of Israel. (In a Pew survey in April, 60 percent of Americans say they hold an unfavorable opinion of Israel — up from 42 percent in 2022.)

4. Israel is not only culpable but it should not exist because it is a religious state that relegates non-Jews to second-class citizenship, and has no legitimacy in modern society.

One of the candidates who won last week in New York — Darializa Avila Chevalier — has questioned Israel’s right to exist. She is not alone. Since Israel’s attacks on Gaza, a number of Americans have questioned the legitimacy of a Jewish state. They argue that it relegates inhabitants who don’t hold its religious views to second-class citizenship, creating in effect an apartheid state. Some go further and argue that Israel rests on stolen lands (in contrast to Zionist narratives that emphasize the multi-millennial historical and biblical connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel and the legal purchase by Jewish organizations of vast tracts of land from willing sellers, including local inhabitants and absentee Arab landlords.)

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Hence, this week’s Office Hours question: How should the United States treat Israel in the future?

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