JRV1320

What’s Causing Decline in American Public’s Support of Israel and What We Can and Can’t Do About It

#1320 May 3, 2026

Jonathan Tobin has a thoughtful JNS article this week on what’s causing the precipitous decline in American public support for Israel, and what we Jews here can and can’t do about it.  I throw in some suggestions.

What’s Causing Decline in American Public’s Support of Israel and What We Can and Can’t Do About It

A long time ago, 2003-2004, I had the privilege to serve, in its ninety-eighth and ninety-ninth years, as what once really had been national president of the fraternal order Brith Sholom.  We invited as guest speaker at our annual mid-winter free membership brunch (our elderly fiscal hawks snow-birding in Florida) the then-editor of Philadelphia’s then-community owned Jewish Exponent, Jonathan Tobin. (Alas it snowed and only 150 of our stalwart members showed up.)

Among what Jonathan told us (beyond that “Jerry doesn’t think I’m tough enough”) was that the readiest believers of the media’s malportrayal of our Jewish homeland of Israel are many American Jews. 

A JNS piece this week by Jonathan Tobin, its editor-in-chief, recalled this long ago fraternal order free brunch to my mind. Titled Who’s To Blame for Declining American Support for Israel, Jonathan’s article makes the point that today’s precipitous decline in the American public’s support for Israel

“is a product of changes in American society, not the mistakes or even the alleged crimes committed by Israelis.

“Accepting this terrible truth is as difficult for Israelis and their Jewish supporters as solving the intractable policy dilemmas that Jerusalem faces.  Yet accept it they must if they are to avoid compounding the problem by making further blunders that will only make the situation worse.

“Ironically, many Israeli and American Jews have internalized some of the most unfortunate tropes of traditional antisemitism.”

The consequence, Tobin continues, is that “many Jews have accepted this mindset, attributing to themselves the power to fix insoluble problems and to persuade people with minds that can’t be changed to see reason” – i.e., that just as they’d “once thought they had the power to win over Palestinians via goodwill and far-reaching concessions, some are now ready to believe that they have the power to change American public opinion,” that “Israel has become too right-wing, nationalist and religious” under Netanyahu and his cabinet members like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, that “the war Israel waged on the Hamas perpetrators of the Oct. 7 atrocities was too brutal and killed too many civilians in Gaza.” He concludes:

“Those Americans who cling to ideas like two states or imagine that there is anything any conceivable Israeli government can do to persuade the Palestinians to end that war simply haven’t been paying attention to the events of the last 25 years or choose not to do so for reasons of their own.”

Of all the capturings of those events of the last 25 years, one in particular years ago that left an indelible impression upon me was captured by of all persons world affairs columnist of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Trudy Rubin. In her 6/8/07 column, datelined Sderot, Ms. Rubin quoted the school marm on the game her kids play in the school yard:

“When they play, they shout, ‘Color Red, Color Red!’ and then they go hide.”

Tobin appropriately ends his article by wrestling with the bottom line question “What can Israelis and the pro-Israel community do about this?”  Harking back to his article’s sub-head

“The growing distaste for the Jewish state isn’t the fault of Netanyahu or Israeli behavior. It’s driven by forces seeking the destruction of the West and beyond the control of Jerusalem”

he says, among other steps, we should “support those seeking to defend the values of the West and the Judeo-Christian heritage that is the foundation of American democracy, as well as Zionism.” 

I heartily agree with that.  Addressing the reticence of many in our community leery over associating with Christian groups seeking converts, I told my fellow Brith Sholomites of one huge group headquartered in southern New Jersey with which I’m familiar, “Look, their first name is ‘The Friends of Israel,’ their last name is ‘Gospel Ministry, Inc.,’ but we’re on a first name basis, all’s well.”  They wear their mission on their sleeve. (Compare the not-well-disposed-toward-us Christian sect in the area that for a while was running phony synagogues.)

Here’s another example of supporting those who support us: The state of Tennessee this week banned the name “West Bank” from official documents.  Tennessee bans the name ‘West Bank’ from official documents | WPLN News: “The ideological and cultural conflict over Judea and Samaria represents a broader civilizational struggle between Judeo-Christian values,” HB 1446/SB 1663 reads. “Radical Islamic ideologies … seek to undermine Western democratic principles and religious freedom.”  I went out and bought a fifth of Jack Daniel’s.

Tobin concludes:

“Equally important would be for friends of Israel to stop the breast-beating and start playing offense by pointing out the lies being told about them.  In particular, those who care about Israel and the facts should support independent media outlets that tell the truth about the conflict like JNS, rather than those that mainstream pro-Hamas propaganda.”

Ok, Jonathan, you’ve earned that plug for your Jewish News Syndicate, and if I ever told you you’re not tough enough, I take it back.  But here, specifically, I put to my fellow grassroots American Jews how to contest the pejorative poison with which the mainstream media laces its reporting on Israel. It’s only to contest a few pejorative terms, but they’re drip-by-drip daily poisoning Americans’ perception of Israel.

Specific Responses to Media’s Anti-Jewish Homeland Poisoned Pejoratives

*** The media wouldn’t be caught dead saying “Judea and Samaria,” Hebrew-origin names in use for three thousand years, including by the UN itself in 1947. It can’t even restrain itself to touting “West Bank.”  These days it doubles down with invariably “occupied West Bank.”  This is in news articles, not so-labeled opinion pieces.  The self-respecting Jewish response to this is not to concede Judea-Samaria as “disputed.”  Our adversaries don’t call “the West Bank” disputed; they call it “occupied Palestinian territory” – i.e., Theirs.

*** A couple years ago when Israel reopened the Temple Mount to Jews, having closed it only to them for a few days due to Muslim violence thereon, my Philadelphia Inquirer in news coverage (5/24/21) headlined Jews reascending the Temple Mount plaza “Mosque Visits Resume,” calling the entire Mount “the third holiest site in Islam.”  This was an Inq betrayal not just of the Jews but the West. A 2016 CAMERA study noted the media morphing from saying “Temple Mount” and “Haram al-Sharif” in parallel to “Al Aqsa Mosque compound known to Jews as Temple Mount.”  How quaint of us.

*** To the media, Jews living in Judea-Samaria are “settlers” living in “settlements,” while Palestinian Arabs are “residents” of “towns, villages, neighborhoods.”  Israelis themselves say “settlements,” which is to the media and to the world a dirty word.  The one time my hometown Philadelphia Inquirer said “Palestinian settlements” it instantly withdrew it.  “Clearing the Record” Saturday, 3/16/02:

“In an Inquirer article Thursday on President Bush’s news conference, the words ‘Palestinian settlements’ [emphasis not the Inq’s] were used in reference to attacks by the Israeli military in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The attacks were directed at Palestinian towns and refugee camps.”

Actually, those Israeli “attacks” were directed at terrorists in those Palestinian towns and refugee camps, but such subtleties are perhaps beyond the Inq.

Bottom Line

There is no substitute for us standing up for ourselves.  Among the root causes of antisemitism, of which anti-Zionism is a manifestation, is bullying, a sense they can pick on us because we won’t respond, maybe that we’ll even acquiesce, if Tobin’s right, even agree.  If Hillel were with us in these days of Israel-bashing’s crescendo, he’d put it, “And if not now, when?”