Joe

I started off pretty pro-Israel. The first crack came when Netanyahu wouldn't let the United States send Ukraine two Iron Dome batteries the U.S. Army had bought and paid for, because Israel holds a veto over transfers of the system to third countries. His explanation included the fact that Israeli pilots fly "right next to Russian pilots" over Syria. That made me pause. Four months later, after October 7, those same batteries went to Israel. Since then, my view of Israel has grown progressively darker. By the time the UN was warning that famine in northern Gaza was imminent, I opposed Israel's continued military campaign. When Netanyahu talked Trump into dragging us into a war with Iran, I started seeing the Israeli state, as currently constituted, as sinister. And the massive, continuing campaign by pro-Israel money against Abdul El-Sayed, more than $30 million to stop him in the primary and fresh spending now that he's the nominee, has radicalized me against any defense relationship with Israel going forward. Plenty of my fellow Americans seem to have traveled the same road. Six in ten now view Israel unfavorably, up from 42 percent in 2022. And this year, for the first time since Gallup started asking in 2001, Americans don't sympathize more with the Israelis than with the Palestinians. None of this has anything to do with Judaism or with how I feel about Jews. To suggest otherwise is to defame my character, and I resent and reject the suggestion. Everything I've listed is an action, and every one of them deserves my ire if I have any commitment to my stated principles at all.