Why We Care About Israel

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, June 18, 2025

 

Over the last week or so, a number of people have asked me why America should be so concerned with Israel. Often, the question is rhetorical or in bad faith. But quite a few folks have been sincere. One way I can tell: They tend to go on at great length about how they’re not antisemitic and generally wish Israel well, before they get to their version of the question of why Israel takes up so much time and energy in American politics and foreign policy. Sometimes they phrase the question in ways I dislike or frame it in terms I disagree with, but the basic question remains a fair one: “Why should we care?”

 

Now, there are more than a few ways to answer this question. And I don’t think any one answer has to be persuasive to everybody or anybody. Some Christians have a theological commitment to supporting Israel. If you’re not one of those Christians, there’s no reason for you to care about that argument. Other people place a lot of importance on the fact that Israel is a democracy and ally (which provides incalculably valuable intelligence in a part of the world where we need it). I put a lot of stock in those arguments—I’m for taking the side of democracies everywhere, not necessarily militarily but at a minimum rhetorically—but there are plenty of people who really don’t care whether we’re friends with democracies and there are some people who think the cost of allying with Israel isn’t worth the benefits.

 

But there are other reasons to root for Israel. Some people just love Israel for her enemies. If you don’t particularly like Muslim fanaticism or antisemitism, that may be enough. Also, a lot of anti-Israel passion is a subset of anti-American politics. This argument can be scaled up to a civilizational one: Israel is an outpost of Western Civilization, and therefore, we in the West should defend it from those opposed to the West. Other folks buy the basic Zionist argument that says Jews won’t be safe without their own country, demonstrated by the Holocaust. There’s also the argument that Israel is a hugely important hub of innovation—“Startup Nation” and all that. I should at least mention there’s a really basic argument of good versus evil. The stated view of many of Israel’s most implacable enemies is that Jews just need to be destroyed (the Houthi motto is “God is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse Be Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam!”). A lot of Americans just don’t like that.

 

All of these arguments can be stacked atop one or all of the others. You can give greater or lesser weight to some of them and dismiss others entirely. In short, there is no one reason to support Israel, but a menu of them. Just as there is no one reason to dislike Israel or want to cut it loose.

 

I do not for a moment want to diminish, never mind dismiss, any of the arguments for supporting Israel. But I think all of these overthink the question a bit. Indeed, I think that for a lot of people, they’re a secondary rationalization rather than the actual reason America takes Israel’s side.

 

There are two more basic reasons why Israel takes up so much of America’s political headspace.

 

The first is that Israel is simply popular, and politicians like to be on the popular side of an issue. The people who dislike Israel work very hard to make Israel unpopular to change this fact. And a lot of normal Americans who generally like Israel but also don’t like the drama end up asking, “Why do we have to care so much?” That question is a sign that the anti-Israel folks are making progress.

 

But the second reason is the most overlooked or dismissed one: Israel is in danger.

 

Where the action is.

 

When I was a kid, my big brother got very sick. He spent a lot of time with doctors and was in the hospital off and on. My parents were worried. I worried about my brother a lot. But, being a kid, I also felt neglected because he was getting all the attention. At one point, I complained about it. I later felt shame about that feeling, but I also understand that it’s a very basic human thing.

 

But the point is, Josh got so much more of my parents’ attention because he was in danger. I was fine, he wasn’t.

 

To make the point more explicit, think of movies and TV shows in which a family member gets kidnapped, goes missing, or is diagnosed with cancer. That crisis takes precedence over everything else. Why? Because that’s where the emergency is.

 

Reporters tend not to cover the planes that land safely, the 100-car pileups that don’t happen, the forests that don’t catch fire. We don’t replace the lightbulbs that work. Firemen don’t rush to the house that isn’t on fire.

 

I’m sorry to belabor the point, but I think it’s a hugely important one. In foreign policy, attention follows action or the threat of action. Why do we care about Ukraine more than Uruguay? Because Ukraine was brutally invaded by an American foe. Why do we spend so much time talking about Taiwan? Because China wants to gobble it up. 

 

My point is that before we get to all the philosophical, moral, cultural, and national security stuff, the most basic and most obvious reason we spend a lot of time on Israel is that Israel is an ally that has been under threat for a very long time, basically since its founding.

 

In other words, the reason it seems like Israel’s friends are “obsessed with defending Israel” has more to do with the fact that Israel’s enemies are obsessed with destroying it.

 

It’s a bit like the argument one often hears about how concern for Israel is so misplaced because it’s the most militarily powerful nation in the region. This, too, gets the causality backward. It’s the most militarily powerful nation in the region because, historically, much of the region has sought to destroy it. If you’re going into a saloon where 10 guys want you dead, you’re going to be better armed and equipped than they are. If no one wanted you dead, you might go into the saloon unarmed.

 

In 1948, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and other Arab forces declared war on Israel to keep it from becoming a nation. In 1967, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan (with backing from other Arab states) tried to destroy it again. Six years later, Egypt and Syria— with the help of others —gave it another shot. Since then, non-state terrorist groups have waged unconventional war against Israel quite a lot, most recently on October 7, 2023. Over the course of this history, these groups and their backers—particularly Iran but also Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Soviet Union, and others—rhetorically insisted that Israel shouldn’t exist or that the terrorist groups dedicated to that proposition deserved material and moral support.

 

If something similar had been going on with regard to, say, the United Kingdom, American politics would be disproportionately concerned with whether we should be supporting the U.K. People would be flying the Union Jack and saying, “I stand with the British.” There might even be a lobbying group like AIPAC, dedicated to galvanizing support for the U.K. A lot—though not all—of the arguments marshaled in Israel’s defense would be adapted to that cause instead.

 

Conversely, if Israel’s neighbors made peace with Israel, we wouldn’t be spending much time talking about the need to stand by Israel. This may sound incredibly obvious once you think about it. But that’s sort of the problem. The effort to destroy Israel has been such a constant fixture of geopolitics for nearly 80 years that it’s considered normal. And what is normal often becomes invisible.

 

If you’re sick and tired of hearing about Israel, there are really only two options. America and its allies can abandon it to its enemies and, eventually, it will go away. Not everyone who hates Israel—or hates American support for it—actually wants that. They think that a humbled and pared-back Israel can survive on its own. I think they’re wrong. But my only point is that not everyone who roots against Israel and chants “globalize the intifada” or “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” intends the absolute erasure of Israel (though many of them are perfectly comfortable with the erasure of Israel as a distinctly Jewish nation). But the people who really mean that stuff really mean that stuff. And if they have their way, there won’t be an Israel anymore, and therefore, we won’t have to debate our support for it. No one debates whether we should support South Vietnam anymore because South Vietnam isn’t a country anymore. You don’t hear “Free Tibet” much these days, because it’s pretty clear Tibet is, tragically, a lost cause. 

 

The other option is for Israel—and by extension America—to win this argument on Israel’s terms. Israel becomes a normal country in a region at peace with the idea that it’s not going anywhere. 

 

This is why Israel endures as such a fixation, because both outcomes remain possible. The same applies to Ukraine and Taiwan. If Russia absorbs Ukraine, we’ll eventually stop arguing about support for Ukraine, too. The argument will then move to the next nations in peril, probably the Baltic nations or maybe, one day, Poland.

 

Now, this is where all of those other arguments kick in. Is Israel (or Ukraine, Taiwan, et al) worth the effort? What does the effort actually look like? As a prudential matter, I’m against American “boots on the ground” in any of these places. Fortunately, that’s not in the cards, despite what a lot of fearmongers claim. Am I against American boots on the ground in any circumstance or hypothetical? Of course not. But those are questions to be addressed when necessary.

 

But I’m also in favor of standing with allies, democracies, outposts of Western Civilization, etc.

 

Ultimately, this boils down to a question of will. Are we willing to stand by friends with shared values and shared interests, even when it is hard? Are we willing, as a question of national honor and national interest, to stand by our commitments? My answer is yes. Not necessarily at any cost, but certainly when the costs are worth the benefits.

 

But my real desire is for this to no longer be a controversial question. I want to get to a place where asking “Should we support Israel?” sounds as weird as saying “Should we support Switzerland or Belgium?” And that can only happen when Israel is no longer in danger of no longer existing.