If you love America and want it to flourish — and most Americans do — it is necessary to understand that America’s most important ally is Israel. Period. Full stop. 

In early October, Pew Research found 56% of Americans supported Israel, which is up sharply from earlier in the year. That earlier drop was during the closing phase of the long offensive by the Israeli Defense Forces against Hamas inside Gaza City — a brutal, extended season of combat mixed with massive infusions into America of Islamist propaganda about imaginary famines in Gaza, especially into the social media feeds of younger Americans. That “information war” had driven support for Israel among Americans to historical lows. As noted, those numbers have rebounded, but that they fell at all should alarm Americans who are realists about the world.

In the 25 months since the invasion of Israel by Hamas and rampaging massacre by the terrorist army from Gaza, the grinding battle of the IDF against the terrorists as well as battles on six other fronts has seen American support for the Jewish state slip. Historically, support for Israel among all Americans has been high: From 2000 to 2019, an average of 59% of Americans expressed more sympathy for Israelis, compared to 17% for Palestinians.

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By 2024, but before October 7, sympathy for Israel had slightly decreased to 56%, while sympathy for Palestinians rose to 26%. Two years of war — and pictures of the destruction of Gaza as Hamas hid within its underground tunnel fortress and booby-trapped buildings — along with IDF artillery and bombs ravaging the area, left Americans deluged with online propaganda about the war. That drove support for Israel below 40%.

Support for Israel is rebounding now and that is great news for both the U.S. and Israel, and for the region and the world.

The reason is simple: Free states must balance the power of the world’s evil regimes — lest the latter overcome the former.

Some Americans might say they support Israel because they are Jewish and support the Jewish state. Some might say they support Israel because they are Christians of a particular sort that views history through the prism of the Judea-Christian understanding of history.

But, every American, regardless of ethnicity or theology, should say they support Israel as a simple matter of American national security. Put simply, Israel is the country most important to America’s long-term strength and position in the world.

America leads “the West,” and has many allies within or adjacent to the West. “The West” is best understood as the collection of nations where the governments are based on the consent of the governed and the rule of law in which any adult citizen is expected to participate, or at least respect.

As the leader of the West, America both protects and depends upon its allies in the assembly of nations of the world. “West-adjacent” nations lack some, or most, of the defining characteristics of America — individual freedoms, including of religion, speech, press, assembly, property and due process of law — but, have some of these features or aspire to and/or are allies of America and the larger West because in the growing global division between tyrannies and free or mostly free states, that state more aligned with the West is to be preferred to one more aligned with the People’s Republic of China — the leading power of the alliance of tyrants which includes Russia, Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

There are very few countries which are not part of one block or the other. The “non-aligned” movement of nations that existed in the shadow of the first Cold War between the United States and its NATO allies in opposition to the U.S.S.R. and the Warsaw Pact countries has slowly, but surely, withered since the PRC, under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping, has thrown off all of its pretense to be committed to any sort of rules-based international order. The “alliance of tyrants” is open and quite powerful.

The rejection by Xi and his fellow tyrants of such rules defines the “anti-West,” so we should not be surprised that Russia invaded Ukraine twice and continues to wage barbaric war there, or that Iran has spent almost 50 years devoted to the destruction of Israel and the construction of a theocratic arc of powers which, while now largely in ruins, remains virulently anti-liberal and piratical, as seen just this weekend with the hijacking of an oil tanker owned by the United Arab Emirates, a country very much part of the alliance of allies gathered around America.

Of all of America’s allies — and there are many, despite frequent disagreements — Israel is the most important to the U.S. because it is the strongest: a nuclear and intelligence superpower committed to the rule of law, with the will and ability to project power across vast distances, and which cooperates closely with the U.S.

The United Kingdom was, for all the 20th century, America’s most important ally, and for nearly half the century the leader of the West as the U.S. grew into that role. Now, it is Israel, and it will likely remain Israel for decades to come.

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The U.K. has fallen on hard times and seems destined for a slow, but not easily reversed decline as a result of the lack of dynamism that comes with an abandonment of free markets and the suffocating embrace of modern bureaucratic rule, as does most of Europe. There are bright spots like Poland. There are countries in the West which seem lost, like Spain. But, while the West still includes most of Europe, Europe needs America to defend it against Russia and behind Russia, China.

America’s allies in the Pacific — Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, Taiwan and more — matter a great deal in standing resolutely against the hegemonic ambitions of the PRC. But, to stand the West’s ground there, we need Israel just as much as we do in the Middle East. Israel is one of the two R&D centers of the West. If we and our allies ever want a “Golden Dome” to protect us from wave after wave of ballistic — and even hypersonic — missiles that we have seen Iran use against Israel and Russia against Ukraine, we need Israel’s Iron Dome technology as well as our own research and development efforts. We need, as well, the intelligence capabilities of Israeli intelligence agencies, especially the Mossad, and the tech marvels that emerge from Israel with the speed and remarkable utility as ours do from Silicon Valley.

Much damage has been done by the propaganda wars waged against Israel. Although it is ignorant to proclaim oneself “anti-Zionist” (one might as well declare themselves anti-Republic of Ireland or anti-India, as Israel, like those countries, emerged in the decolonization movements of the 20th century), knowing that proclamations are ignorant doesn’t make them less effective. Students or activists proclaiming themselves anti-Israel are similarly stupid as to the facts of history, and those dabbling or immersing themselves in antisemitism are simply submitting to evil. 

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“In vain are we loyal citizens,” Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism declared of Jews around the world. Eventually, Herzl and his early Zionist allies concluded, antisemitism is coming for all Jews. Even in those societies that are the most cultured, in those societies where Jews feel they belong the most, Herzl believed, that is where antisemitism will come in its fiercest form.

I learned of this fundamental pessimism about the world on Herzl’s part from a conversation between Israeli journalist and public intellectual Haviv Rettig Gur and Israeli international law expert Dr. Tal Becker. It is a disturbing bit of undeniable history. But, Herzl perhaps also failed to account for the success of his vision: That national self-interest drives nations, that the reborn state he imagined could reach such power and importance as to help lead the West, and that it could become in America’s self-interest and the interest of every state in the West, or countries allied to the West, to realize Israel is just as inseparable from America’s future and America is inseparable from the future of the West.

Hugh Hewitt is host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show,” heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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