Israel and the Israel lobby allied with Trump and damaged the Democratic Party

by Donald A. Smith, PhD

There are plenty of principled, humanitarian reasons for opposing U.S. support for Israel’s current government.     Multiple human right groups, UN bodies, international courts, Israeli politicians, and genocide organizations have accused Israel of engaging in war crimes, including genocide, in Gaza and the West Bank.  The invasions of Lebanon and Iran are likewise criminal humanitarian disasters.

There are also practical foreign policy reasons for opposing the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby.  Jeffrey Sachs argues convincingly, in Stop Netanyahu Before He Gets Us All Killed, that Israel encouraged most of the U.S. foreign policy disasters in the Middle East and Africa:

In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors devised a “Clean Break” strategy. They advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Palestinian lands captured in the 1967 war in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would reshape the Middle East to its liking. Crucially, the strategy envisioned the US as the main force to achieve these aims—waging wars in the region to dismantle governments opposed to Israel’s dominance over Palestine. The US was called upon to fight wars on Israel’s behalf.

The Clean Break strategy was effectively carried out by the US and Israel after 9/11. As NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark revealed, soon after 9/11, the US planned to “attack and destroy the governments in seven countries in five years—starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.”

The U.S. followed through with military actions against all those countries, which now lie in ruins, except for Iran, which Israel and the U.S. are in the process of destroying. “Netanyahu was a cheerleader of these wars of choice–either in public or behind the scenes–together with his neocon allies in the U.S.” (Ibid)

Israel has corrupted U.S. foreign policy, causing the country to fight unnecessary wars and create unnecessary enemies.

Aside from the humanitarian and foreign policy reasons for opposing the influence of Israel and the Israel lobby on American politics, there are also political reasons. Foremost among them is that Israel and the Israel lobby have repeatedly lent their substantial financial and political influence towards helping elect Republicans, including Donald Trump and towards electing Democrats disliked by many Democratic voters.

During the Republican primary debates in 2016, Donald Trump criticized the invasion of Iraq and said that U.S. policy in the Middle East needed more balance: more support for Palestinian rights.  But during the general election campaign, Trump had a meeting with Sharon and Miriam Adelson, who promised to help fund his campaign (source).     From that point on, Trump has been staunchly pro-Israel.

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson donated approximately $100 million to pro-Trump super PACs during the 2020 election cycle.

The New York Times reported in 2021 that the Adelsons’ contributions to GOP campaigns and organizations had totaled around half a billion dollars since 2010.

In 2024 Miriam Adelson donated $100 million to help elect Donald Trump and spent a further $500 million on other Republican causes. According to OpenSecrets, from 2023 to 2024, pro-Israel PACs gave $5.4 million to candidates, almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican Jewish Coalition spent over $14 million supporting Trump since 2020. The New Republic says that AIPAC spent $45 million in the 2024 elections.

In 2024, Trump ran as the peace candidate, promising to stop the war in Gaza.  Kamala Harris’ support for Israel was a significant cause of her election loss (source, source).

Polls (this and this) have shown that among Democratic voters, support for Israel has plummeted.  In April 2026, Pew found that 80% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents viewed Israel unfavorably, up from 69% in 2025 and 53% in 2022. Gallup found in July 2025 that only 8% of Democrats approved of Israel’s military action in Gaza. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released August 4, 2026 found that only 16% of Democrats supported continuing military and economic aid, while more than 80% of liberal Democrats considered reducing aid important or essential.

The victories of socialist and pro-Palestinian candidates (e.g., Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary) during the 2026 primaries — despite tens of millions of dollars spent by the Israel lobby to defeat them — further illustrate the fact that the Democratic base is rejecting mainstream Democrats who support Israel.

Of course, AIPAC does not represent the views of all American Jews.  Roughly seven in ten Jewish respondents in a March 2026 survey identified as Democrats, and younger Jewish voters have become significantly more critical of unconditional aid.

The Democratic party’s congressional leadership has continued defending a position overwhelmingly rejected by its own voters. That creates several electoral injuries:

• Young voters conclude that Democratic leaders do not represent them.
• Arab American and Muslim voters feel deliberately disregarded.
• Antiwar progressives see the party as morally compromised.
• Other voters see wealthy donors overriding public opinion.
• Republicans can run as outsiders or supposed “peace candidates,” however dishonestly.

You could call this a representation deficit: Democratic politicians become more responsive to a donor network than to Democratic voters.

In 2024, the Israel lobby helped unseat representatives Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.  Republican-aligned billionaires should not be able to determine which candidates Democrats are permitted to nominate. In 2026 the Israel lobby helped unseat Thomas Massie, one of Trump’s biggest Republican critics.

Though the Israel lobby gives to Democratic candidates too, its political strategy is not simply bipartisan support for Israel. Its effect is asymmetrical: it helps Republicans win national power while policing the Democratic Party from within. It supports Republicans directly, then spends heavily in Democratic primaries to defeat candidates who challenge Republican-backed Israeli policies. Democrats therefore bear the electoral cost of unpopular policies while Republican candidates receive both financial support and an issue with which to divide the Democratic coalition.

In short, powerful pro-Israel organizations are harming the Democratic Party. This is not because support for Israel is inherently Republican, and not because Jewish voters are disloyal Democrats — many Democrats strongly oppose Israel’s policies — but because these organizations increasingly enforce a Republican-aligned foreign policy inside a Democratic electorate that rejects it. They finance Republicans, import Republican donor money into Democratic primaries, punish dissenting Democrats, divide the Democratic coalition, and bind Democratic leaders to policies that damage the party’s moral credibility and electoral prospects.

Democratic Party leaders and activists should stop allowing a pro-Republican, pro-war lobby from distorting its policies and choosing its candidates.

The Israel lobby, for its own sake, should think hard about whether it wants to support a quasi-fascist movement. For more on this, see Supporters of Israel will eventually regret that they allied with fascist Trump.