A recent report from CNN revealed that in just eight years, Democratic voters in the United States had reversed their views on Israel.
In 2017, Democrats sympathised more with Israel over the Palestinians by 13 percent. In 2025, Democrats sympathised more with Palestinians by 43 percent. That is an unprecedented swing in so short a time.
In many ways, this completed a trend that has been building for years, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly embraced the Republican Party, leading the once solid, bipartisan support for Israel to split along party lines.
Until now, Israel could always count on rock-solid support among Republicans and senior Democratic leaders, as proven by President Joe Biden’s unstinting support for Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. That bet seemed even surer as President Donald Trump, with his fanatical Christian Zionist base, returned to office.
But it turns out that support among Republicans is not so solid. In recent weeks, there has been increasing evidence that support for Israel among conservatives is fraying significantly.
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Last month, a Quinnipiac poll found that 64 percent of Republicans sympathised more with Israel than with the Palestinians.
That sounds like a lot – until you consider that just one year earlier, that number was 78 percent in the same poll. Sympathy for Palestinians did not increase: only 7 percent said they sympathised with Palestinians. So the drop was solely due to a declining view of Israel.
The dynamic is not confined to polls by any means.
Negative attitudes
There has long been a sector of the American right wing that holds negative attitudes towards Israel.
For the most part, that attitude has little to do with sympathy for Palestinians. Rather, it stems from either isolationism, antipathy towards Jews, or some combination of the two. Both of those tendencies have been magnified recently.
Though the amendment to cut Israeli military aid received only six votes, the fact that it came from within Trump’s camp was a shock
The roiling, revived controversy over serial sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein’s mysterious client list has rocked Trump and, for the first time in a decade, shaken support among parts of his MAGA base.
The president who once seemed to be made of Teflon – immune to every controversy – is finally showing signs of vulnerability to a scandal he himself long tried to weaponise against Democrats.
Similarly, some of Trump’s most vocal and racist supporters have come out strongly against him on matters concerning the Middle East.
Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News pundit who once called Iraqis “primitive monkeys” and promoted antisemitic theories that Jews were facilitating the entry of undocumented immigrants to undermine “white America” – known as the “Great Replacement Theory” – has become an increasingly vocal critic of Trump’s policies.
This reached new heights when Trump threatened, and then followed through with, bombing Iran. In a viral interview with far-right Senator Ted Cruz, Carlson ridiculed the senator for blindly backing the policy while knowing nothing about Iran. The criticism of Trump was blatant.
Another long-time Trump supporter, Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia, has broken ranks with Trump on Israel.
Greene, a known conspiracy theorist, Islamophobe, and antisemite, who once posited that space lasers operated by Jews started a catastrophic fire in California, recently brought an amendment to the Defence Appropriations Bill that, among other things, would have stripped half a billion dollars from Israel’s annual funding for its Iron Dome missile system.
Unsurprisingly, the amendment received only six votes in support. But that it came from within Trump’s camp was a shock. The only other Republican to support it, Congressman Thomas Massie, is not in Trump’s good graces.
Greene’s amendment did receive support from four progressive Democrats.
Notably, it stirred anger at leading progressive Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who opposed the amendment, arguing that the Iron Dome – which gives Israel the ability to attack others without significant fear of retaliation – is a purely defensive weapon. Her progressive community clearly disagreed.
Still, the fact that a proposal to cut military aid to Israel received bipartisan support and originated with Republicans was notable.
Israel targeting churches
Into this mess came a high-profile Israeli attack on the Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City. It was at least the sixth attack on a church in Gaza since 7 October 2023, but this one caught the attention of the US.
Just days earlier, an attack by Israeli settlers on a church in the West Bank village of Taybeh also drew attention. The Church of al-Khader (St George), which dates back to the fifth century, was damaged when settlers attempted to burn it to the ground.
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Israel has been evasive about the incident and has yet to arrest anyone in connection with the attack. It claims that the settlers were trying to put out the fire and that the arsonists are unknown. Few outside of the settlers’ supporters put much faith in that account, given well-documented Israeli settler hostility to Palestinian Christians.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee condemned the attacks on Palestinian churches – a remarkable shift for a man who has long defended Israel against virtually every allegation, no matter how well documented.
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“It doesn’t matter whether it’s a mosque, a church, a synagogue,” he told reporters. “It’s unacceptable to commit an act of sacrilege by desecrating a place that is supposed to be a place of worship.”
Huckabee has never spoken out about the more than 960 mosques that Israel had damaged or destroyed in Gaza as of January 2025.
But the attack on the Holy Family Church has resonated. Right-wing pundits have expressed outrage and frustration at Israel’s attack on the church, with few believing Israel’s claim that it was an artillery misfire.
US Senator Lindsey Graham, another staunch supporter of Israel, expressed similar concern: “When you have Christian churches under siege in Gaza and the West Bank, it needs to stop,” he told Jewish Insider.
“You’re not helping your cause by allowing people to abuse Christian holy sites,” he added, warning that such actions could undermine Israel’s ability to maintain support in the United States.
“You’re losing me,” said influential conservative pundit Michael Knowles. “The Israeli government is really screwing up. This horrific war must come to a complete end.”
Epstein fallout
Another issue that has exposed a growing rift within Trump’s base is the resurfacing of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and the president’s close personal friendship with the convicted sex offender.
Epstein was finally jailed for his crimes in 2019 and was found dead in his cell, ostensibly by suicide, a little more than a month later. For a variety of reasons – some more substantial than others – many suspect Epstein was murdered.
The connection between Epstein and Israel is now gaining traction in right-wing circles
Given that he was trafficking underage girls for sex and is known to have handed those girls over to at least some very prominent global figures, the roots of the theory are obvious, even if some of the speculation remains wild and unsubstantiated.
A purported list of clients that Epstein allegedly maintained is at the centre of the controversy, although it is not at all clear that the list exists.
For years, Trump and others within his circle – such as the pro-Trump lawyer and pro-Israel zealot Alan Dershowitz – hinted that there were prominent Democratic figures on that list. Trump detractors, naturally, pointed to his long-time friendship with Epstein, along with various videos and photos of them together at Epstein’s parties, as proof that Trump had something to hide.
Adding fuel to the speculation is the fact that Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who also died under mysterious circumstances and was widely believed – though never proven – to have been associated with the Israeli spy agency Mossad. (The media tycoon received a grand state funeral in Israel’s Mount of Olives cemetery, attended by senior Israeli leaders.)
The connection between Epstein and Israel is now gaining traction in right-wing circles.
All of these factors are converging and revealing a deepening split on Israel from the right. A Pew Research poll in April found that 50 percent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 have a negative view of Israel – a 15 percent jump from 2022.
Of course, Republican megadonors like Miriam Adelson and others will continue to pump as many dollars as they deem necessary to maintain solid support for Israel. But in the end, money in politics is only worth as much as the votes it can buy.
Netanyahu made a bet years ago that if he were more brazenly brutal and radical in his oppression of Palestinians and aggression towards Israel’s neighbours, solid support among Republicans – bolstered by the American pro-Israel lobby on both sides of Congress – would compensate for losing liberal Democratic voters.
That looks like an increasingly poor bet today.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.
