American support for Israel is eroding, and the decline can no longer be dismissed as a phenomenon confined to the political Left. The shift is now visible among the American public generally and, increasingly, among conservatives.
Gallup reported in February 2026 that fewer than half of Americans—46 percent—now sympathize more with the Israelis in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while 33 percent sympathize more with the Palestinians. This was the narrowest advantage for Israel in Gallup’s nearly four decades of asking the question. Republicans remained the most pro-Israel partisan group, but even among them favorable views of Israel had fallen to 69 percent—a 15-point decline in only one year and the lowest Republican rating Gallup had recorded in more than two decades.
Pew Research Center found a similarly striking deterioration. In April 2026, 60 percent of American adults held an unfavorable view of Israel, an increase of seven percentage points in one year and nearly twenty points since 2022. The percentage expressing a very unfavorable view had nearly tripled since 2022, rising from 10 percent to 28 percent.
Some of this decline is undoubtedly a reaction to the suffering in Gaza, disagreement with particular Israeli policies and hostility toward Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. No honest defense of Israel requires us to deny Palestinian suffering, declare every Israeli decision wise or treat criticism of Israel as inherently antisemitic. Israel is a nation governed by fallible men, not an object of religious or political infallibility. Nevertheless, it is precisely when public sentiment becomes emotionally charged that Americans should step back and ask the larger question: What does Israel represent, who seeks to destroy it and where do America’s interests actually lie?
An America First foreign policy should not mean that America has no allies, recognizes no moral distinctions and withdraws from every conflict until hostile powers dominate the world around us. It should mean that American commitments are measured according to American interests, that our allies contribute materially to their own defense and that we do not squander American lives and treasure on utopian nation-building projects. Properly understood, that policy strongly favors the preservation of Israel.
Israel is not merely another Middle Eastern regime asking Washington to guarantee its survival. It is a parliamentary democracy with competitive elections, organized political opposition, an independent judiciary, an adversarial press and legally protected civil liberties. Freedom House’s 2026 assessment classifies Israel as “Free,” awarding it 73 out of 100 points for political rights and civil liberties. No surrounding Middle Eastern country receives that designation.
That does not mean Israeli democracy is flawless. Israel has serious political divisions, disputes over the power of its judiciary and legitimate controversies concerning the treatment of minorities and Palestinians. But it remains a society in which governments may be voted out, officials are publicly challenged, policies are litigated in court and citizens openly denounce their leaders without disappearing into a prison cell. Its founding declaration promised equal social and political rights regardless of religion, race or sex, freedom of religion and conscience and full citizenship for its Arab inhabitants.
That distinction is fully relevant. America does not strengthen itself by abandoning the only durable free society in the region to governments and movements that reject nearly every political principle Americans claim to value. A foreign policy that treats democratic Israel as morally interchangeable with Hamas, Hezbollah or the Islamic Republic of Iran is not realism. It is moral blindness full tilt.
Nor is Israel a helpless dependency requiring Americans to fight its wars for it. Israel maintains a powerful military, compulsory national service and a demonstrated willingness to bear the overwhelming burden of its own defense. American assistance strengthens Israel’s capabilities, but Israelis themselves patrol their borders, enter the tunnels, intercept the missiles and bury their dead. This distinguishes Israel from supposed allies that expect American forces to perform tasks they are unwilling to undertake themselves.
The United States also receives substantial strategic benefits from the relationship. Israel is a major purchaser and co-developer of American defense technology. As of April 2025, the United States had 751 active Foreign Military Sales cases with Israel valued at approximately $39.2 billion. The relationship supports American defense production, testing and technological cooperation while strengthening a military power capable of checking hostile forces without requiring the permanent deployment of large American ground armies.
Israel also stands at the front line against enemies that do not regard the United States as a neutral bystander. Iran’s regime has armed and supported Hamas and other militant organizations while Iranian-aligned militias have attacked American forces and interests. The United States intelligence community has warned that Iran’s regional network threatens not only Israel but also American allies, American personnel and international shipping.
This is a point some advocates of “America First” increasingly overlook. The forces attempting to destroy Israel are not generally friends of American independence, Christian civilization or Western liberty. They do not promise to leave the United States alone after Israel is eliminated. Iran’s revolutionary leadership has spent decades denouncing America while financing forces that attack Americans. Israel is called the “little Satan” because the United States is regarded as the “great Satan.”
We must also be honest about the stated objectives of Israel’s enemies. Hamas’s 2017 political document (2017 Hamas Charter) attempted to present the organization in more politically acceptable language, but it still defined Palestine as extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, rejected the legitimacy of the “Zionist entity” and declared armed resistance a strategic means of achieving liberation. Its earlier covenant was even more explicit in framing the conflict as a religious struggle and rejecting negotiated coexistence.
Whatever rhetorical distinctions Hamas may draw between Jews as a people and Zionism as a political movement, a program to eliminate the State of Israel means the destruction of the existing national home of millions of Jews. One cannot endorse the removal of Israel “from the river to the sea” and then pretend to be indifferent about what happens to the people living between that river and that sea.
The same essential purpose has repeatedly been expressed by Iran’s leadership. In March 2025, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described striving to eliminate the “Zionist” regime from the region as a religious and moral duty. Such statements cannot be ignored. The twentieth century should have taught us the danger of treating open declarations of extermination or national destruction as theatrical exaggerations until those making them acquire the power to act.
Supporting Israel, therefore, is not simply a matter of sentimentality, biblical attachment or deference to a foreign lobby. It is the recognition that nations have a natural right to defend their people against organizations expressly committed to their destruction. Americans would never accept the proposition that our own government must negotiate indefinitely with an armed organization dedicated to eliminating the United States. We should not demand that standard of Israel.
None of this requires a blank check. America may oppose particular Israeli policies, insist that American weapons be used lawfully, demand greater protection for civilians and resist attempts to draw American forces into wars that do not serve a clearly defined national interest. Friendship does not require servility, and alliance does not eliminate accountability. A sound America First policy must evaluate each proposed commitment according to its costs, objectives and likely consequences.
But there is a vast difference between prudent oversight and abandonment. There is a difference between criticizing an Israeli administration and undermining Israel’s ability to survive. There is a difference between compassion for Palestinian civilians and political indulgence toward Hamas. And there is a difference between seeking to limit American military entanglements and allowing hostile powers to destroy one of America’s strongest and most capable allies.
Indeed, the current erosion of conservative support may reveal a deeper confusion about the meaning of nationalism. Nationalism does not require a nation to have no friends. It requires it to choose friends according to concrete interests rather than abstract global crusades. Israel shares intelligence, purchases American equipment, confronts common enemies, possesses the will and capacity to defend itself and maintains a political order recognizably closer to our own than that of any state surrounding it. Supporting such an ally is not a betrayal of America First. It is what America First should look like.
There is also a moral question that cannot be escaped. The Jewish people established a sovereign refuge after centuries of persecution culminating in the Holocaust. That history does not excuse every action taken by an Israeli government, but it does explain why demands that the Jewish state surrender the power of self-defense are received with skepticism. History has repeatedly demonstrated that promises of international protection may evaporate when Jews need them most.
The preservation of Israel is therefore both a strategic American interest and a matter of elementary justice. Israel should be held to moral standards, as every nation should be. But it should not be held to the impossible standard of absorbing massacres, rocket attacks, kidnappings and declared plans for its destruction without decisively defending itself.
Americans are free to criticize Israel. We are free to question the amount, form and conditions of American assistance. We are free to condemn wrongdoing wherever it occurs. But we should not lose sight of the fundamental realities: Israel is a free and allied nation surrounded by profoundly illiberal forces, many of which openly seek its destruction; those same forces frequently threaten American interests; and Israel bears the primary human cost of resisting them.
An America First policy worthy of the name does not sacrifice American soldiers in every foreign quarrel. Neither does it abandon capable allies, reward terrorism or pretend that free governments and totalitarian movements are morally equivalent. It recognizes that the United States is safer when its enemies are checked by strong regional partners rather than permitted to dominate strategic regions until Americans themselves are forced to confront them.
For those reasons, America First should remain pro-Israel—not because Israel is perfect, but because it is free; not because every Israeli policy is correct, but because its survival is just; and not because America owes Israel unlimited support, but because standing with a capable democratic ally against enemies committed to its destruction advances both American interests and the cause of civilization itself.
