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The new purity test: shame anyone who supports Israel

On the right, Israel supporters are smeared as disloyal and anti-American. On the left, they are smeared as racist or anti-human-rights. Different politics, same demand: make Jews prove they belong.

About 8 min read

Support Israel on the new right and you can be called America Last. Support Israel in progressive spaces and you can be called racist. The costumes differ. The demand is familiar: explain why your Jewish attachment is allowed.

This is not about protecting every Israeli policy from criticism. It is about a social trap in American politics: Israel support becomes proof that you are either insufficiently patriotic or insufficiently moral.

TL;DR

The right-wing version says: if you support Israel, you are not really America First. You are loyal to a foreign country, manipulated by neocons, captured by donors, or part of a subversive fifth column pushing America into wars.

The left-wing version says: if you support Israel, you are not really progressive. You are racist, colonialist, apartheid-adjacent, complicit in genocide, or too morally compromised to join the coalition.

Both versions can begin from legitimate political concerns. Foreign policy should serve American interests. Human rights should apply to Palestinians. But both versions become dangerous when they turn support for Israel itself into a loyalty test or a character defect.

Two purity tests, same pressure

Right-wing shame

"You care about Israel more than America. You are America Last. You are a foreign-policy puppet. You are serving another nation."

The old trope underneath: dual loyalty and hidden control.

Left-wing shame

"You support Israel, so you are racist. You are colonialist. You support apartheid. You are outside the moral community."

The old trap underneath: collective guilt and political excommunication.

These are not identical claims. The right tends to use patriotism and sovereignty. The left tends to use equality and human rights. But when the target is a Jewish person, Jewish organization, or ordinary American with a connection to Israel, both can become a demand for disavowal.

The blunt version is the old dual-loyalty charge: Jews, Zionists, or pro-Israel Americans are said to be more loyal to Israel than to the United States. The IHRA working definition of antisemitism used by the U.S. State Department names this as a contemporary example: accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to alleged Jewish priorities worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.

Recent reporting shows how this has moved in from the edges of the right. NPR reported that support for Israel among U.S. conservatives is cracking as isolationism and antisemitism change the tone, and described Tucker Carlson's interview with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. NPR noted that Fuentes promoted ideas including that American Jews are more faithful to Israel than to the United States.

"Opposition to Israel on the right isn't new, but younger conservatives appear to be rapidly moving away from supporting the close U.S. relationship with the country."

(NPR, November 2025)

A serious America First argument can ask whether any foreign aid, arms sale, alliance, or war serves American interests. That is normal policy debate. The antisemitic turn is when "is this policy good for America?" becomes "the Jews are not really American," or "Israel supporters are a fifth column."

The difference matters. You can oppose aid to Israel without accusing Jewish Americans of subversion. You can oppose a war without saying the war was manufactured by Israel or Jews. You can criticize lobbying without treating Jewish political participation as uniquely sinister.

The left-wing version: not moral enough

On the left, the shaming usually uses a different vocabulary: racism, colonialism, apartheid, genocide, human rights, indigenous sovereignty. Some of that vocabulary can describe real arguments about Israeli policy. The problem starts when it becomes a blanket rule that anyone who supports Israel's existence, or has a Zionist identity, is morally unfit for progressive spaces.

The Sunrise DC episode is a clean example. The Forward reported that the D.C. chapter of the Sunrise Movement declined to participate in a voting-rights rally because three pro-Israel Jewish groups were included: the Jewish Council on Public Affairs, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. The rally was about voting rights, not Israel.

The national Sunrise Movement later called the local chapter's stance unacceptable and antisemitic, according to Jewish Telegraphic Agency reporting. The local group apologized for singling out Jewish groups while maintaining its opposition to Zionism.

Campus reporting shows the same pattern. The ADL's report on anti-Israel activism on U.S. campuses described the vilification of Zionism and ostracization of Zionists as a common phenomenon in some campus spaces, including cases where Zionists were denigrated as inherently racist or deemed unfit for participation in campus community.

What both sides erase

The right-wing purity test erases the fact that Americans can support an ally for American reasons, moral reasons, religious reasons, strategic reasons, family reasons, or Jewish reasons without ceasing to be American.

The left-wing purity test erases the fact that many Jews experience connection to Israel as part of identity, memory, peoplehood, family, fear, refuge, language, religion, and history, not as a blank check for every Israeli government. Pew Research Center found that eight-in-ten U.S. Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them, while also finding wide criticism of Israeli leadership and policy among American Jews.

"Eight-in-ten U.S. Jews say caring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them."

(Pew Research Center, Jewish Americans in 2020)

That is why the social demand is so corrosive. It does not only say, "change your policy view." It says, "detach from a major part of how many Jews understand themselves, or accept that you are disloyal on the right and immoral on the left."

What should be fair game

Aid packages, military decisions, settlements, occupation, war conduct, Palestinian rights, lobbying, congressional votes, and diplomatic strategy.

Debate these hard. Evidence belongs here.

What crosses the line

Treating Israel supporters as traitors, fifth columnists, racists by identity, foreign agents, or people who must be excluded from unrelated civic spaces.

That is social punishment, not analysis.

A better test

If someone supports Israel, ask real questions. Do not ask them to perform ideological self-erasure.

  • Which Israeli policies do you support, oppose, or want changed?
  • Do you support equal civil rights for Jews and non-Jews?
  • Do you support Palestinian human rights and political self-determination?
  • Do you oppose collective punishment of civilians?
  • Do you oppose antisemitic tropes about Jewish control, dual loyalty, or Jewish responsibility for wars?
  • Do you apply the same moral rules to every country and every people?

Those questions leave room for real disagreement. They also refuse the cheap shortcut. Nobody should get to call themselves principled by replacing policy questions with a character indictment.

Selected sources

Sources below include definition frameworks, polling, reporting on right-wing Israel politics, progressive coalition exclusion, and campus climate.