A Trump Win Could Actually Be Terrible For Israel

Both Donald Trump and the pro-Palestinian Democratic left would like to make support for Israel into a partisan issue. If either is successful, the consequences for Israel could be far-reaching.

Supporting the Jewish state is one of the few issues in American political life that isn’t already neatly divided along red-blue lines. The cornerstone of Israel’s relationship with the US has traditionally been that both Republicans and Democrats support the Jewish state for reasons that combine the geopolitical value of a close, powerful ally in the Middle East with domestic politics, in the form of Jewish and evangelical support for pro-Israel policies.

But a narrow Harris defeat would generate a fight among Democrats over whether the party should shift away from its traditional pro-Israel stance. (A Trump defeat would likely not prompt the same sort of policy soul-searching among Republicans, since it is unlikely that many anti-Trump voters are primarily motivated by Israel policy.) Some, particularly those on the Democratic left, will argue that Harris paid the price for the Biden administration’s support of Israel in the aftermath of Oct. 7.

And if Michigan is pivotal to a Harris defeat, this argument may be particularly salient. Some 100,000 Democratic primary voters marked “uncommitted” in the state’s primary in February 2024, roughly 13% of those who voted in the primary, signaling their protest against Biden’s Israel policy and the war in Gaza. If there is reason to think Arab-American voters in Michigan chose not to vote for Harris, either by staying home or even pulling the lever for Trump, that will launch a debate about whether a Democrat can win the presidency without Michigan, and whether a strongly pro-Israel Democrat can win Michigan.

The simplest political analogy would be to the historical position of anti-Castro Cuban-American voters in Florida. When Florida was a swing state, both Republicans and Democrats needed to win it, and so both had to maintain a staunchly anti-Castro position.

That changed when Florida became more solidly Republican, to be sure. But that too is a reminder that no political affiliation is guaranteed to last forever. The great majority of American Jews have been liberal for well over a century, for reasons loosely associated with the progressive Jewish religious and cultural commitment to social justice or tikkun ‘olam, repairing the world. But more strenuous calls to abandon the old alliance with Israel could eventually drive a meaningful number of centrist, pro-Israel Jewish Democrats out of the party. That would deepen the partisan cracks over Israel that are arguably already starting to show.

Trump, of course, would love to see the Democratic Party re-balance its Israel policy in a more pro-Palestinian direction. He’s been telling American Jews for years they should vote Republican because of Israel, albeit without much uptake outside the Orthodox Jewish community.

Pro-Palestinian advocates on the left wing of the Democratic Party would like to see that result as well, provided it began to change the party’s Israel policy to make it more pro-Palestinian. Such a shift would mark a victory for those who believe that the US should reconsider its longtime security relationship with Israel.

To see what happens when foreign alliances become a partisan issue, consider Ukraine. The embattled European state faces a genuinely existential threat to its sovereignty. If Harris is elected, US military aid will continue and Ukraine will live to fight another day. If Trump is elected, it’s difficult to imagine Ukraine holding off Russia much longer — he and his party have both opposed US military aid to Ukraine, and without US aid, Ukraine can’t afford to keep fighting. (The European allies of Ukraine do not have the resources to support it without American help.)

The inefficacy of a foreign policy that fluctuates according to who is president is one of the reasons the US foreign policy elite was so relentlessly bipartisan during the Cold War. Yet that’s no comfort to Ukraine, which is caught in the middle of a domestic partisan fight that has little to do with enduring US interests in Europe or beyond.

A US partisan divide over whether Israel has a right to exist would be the worst-case outcome for the Jewish state. As Ukraine could tell you, just about the worst position for a US ally is when your existential struggle for national self-determination depends on who is elected president next.