U.S. support for Israel used to go without question. "You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin," Steven Rosen, a top American Israel Public Affairs Committee official, joked to a reporter at The New Yorker over dinner in the early 2000s.
Israel enjoyed guaranteed access to American-made weapons, and it enjoyed the largest disbursement of U.S. taxpayer aid since World War II to pay for those weapons. (U.S. aid has covered 70 percent of the war in Gaza, according to the Israeli newspaper Calcalist.) When push came to shove, the U.S. military was even willing to step in directly to fight Israel's wars.
But the consensus is no longer automatic. The Israeli army's conduct towards Palestinian civilians after the Hamas attack of October 2023, and the Israeli leadership's decision to strike Syria and Iran while the U.S. was trying to negotiate with both countries, has led to unprecedented debates in Congress over support for the Middle Eastern republic.
