Podcast: Tevi Troy on How Republican Administrations Argue about Israel

Podcast: Tevi Troy

Is the Trump administration pro-Israel? There’s a great deal of evidence to believe it is. It’s given Israel the armaments and rhetorical support it needs to fight on until total victory in Gaza. It has targeted the Houthis in Yemen. It has a record of taking action—economic, diplomatic, and military—against Iran and so has a degree of credibility in countering Israel’s greatest external threat. The president has put champions of the U.S.-Israel relationship in key roles: the secretary of state, the national security advisor, and the secretary of defense are all on the record advocating even closer relations between Washington and Jerusalem. President Trump invited the Israeli prime minister for an extensive, private meeting in the Oval Office, the first such meeting of his second term. The Republican convention last year was perhaps the greatest single spectacle of American Zionism aired in prime time.

And yet, there are some who see in the Trump administration an equal measure of signs and portents that it will not strengthen but weaken the U.S.-Israel relationship. There is a current of isolationism within the administration and among its key supporters, combined with a strategic concept that weighs American investment in the confrontation with China against American investment in the Middle East. In senior and subcabinet appointments, as well as in the Trump coalition’s media environment, these voices have a significant presence as well. In addition, there has been a welling up of genuinely anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist passions and enmities from rightwing social media and from Trump-aligned populist figures with large online followings.