Don’t Let JD Vance and MAGA Falsely Claim the Mantle of the ‘Tough on Israel’ Party
Democrats who can’t tell the truth about Israel risk losing the authenticity arms race, writes a former U.S. intel analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Something’s got to be wrong when JD Vance starts making sense. Last week, while defending his boss’s Iran dealmaking, the vice president cautioned against conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and delivered a sharper dressing-down of the Israeli government than I’ve heard from nearly any politician on either side of the aisle:
“Over the past three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars … anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
Refreshing, uncommon clarity for any politician – that should not make you forget Vance’s servile cheerleading for the war his boss just launched alongside Israel and his sympathy for neo-Nazis at home and abroad.
Hearing tough talk on Israel from Vance, the presumptive 2028 Republican nominee, I had a frightening premonition: Vance and other younger Republicans claiming the anti-war, tough-on-Israel lane and winning over voters frustrated with Democrats’ perceived incoherence on both issues.
Pro-Palestinian voters shouldn’t trust Vance’s new talking points, but Democrats should be asking themselves why Vance can even pretend to be on the right side of U.S.-Israel policy, and what they can do about it.