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Why the MAGA movement is turning against Israel
There is growing opposition to Israel from within Donald Trump's MAGA base, where once solid support for the American-Israeli alliance is fracturing
11.08.2025
By Giorgio Cafiero*
Source:https://www.newarab.com/analysis/why-maga-movement-turning-against-israel
“You can bring it on. I am totally ready for this, and this is a fight that I will fight, and I will give it my all, and I can guarantee you, you’re going to lose because America is fed up.”
With those words, US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene recently directed her ire at American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.
Her accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza - and her demand that AIPAC register as a foreign lobby - marks more than just a personal confrontation.
It signals a deeper political shift: a growing opposition to Israel from within US President Donald Trump’s MAGA base, where once-solid support for the American-Israeli alliance is fracturing.
In July, for example, Steve Bannon, the former Trump chief strategist and driver of America’s far right, said on his podcast that among those under 30 in the MAGA movement, there is “very little support for Israel”.
Polling seems to confirm this, with only 32% of US adults supporting Israel’s military actions in Gaza, according to Gallup, a record low since the war began. Among those aged 18-34 of all political parties, that number falls to just 9%.
Several factors explain Israel’s declining support among MAGA supporters, but chief among them is the brutal transparency of modern warfare in the age of social media.
Since October 2023, the world has been subjected to an unfiltered, real-time chronicle of the Gaza genocide. Unlike previous conflicts, the horrifying reality has been livestreamed, tweeted, and broadcast to the entire world - raw and uncensored.
The images emerging from the besieged enclave are nothing short of harrowing: lifeless bodies of children pulled from rubble, hospitals in ruins, neighbourhoods reduced to ash.
For many within the MAGA base, who traditionally stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel out of ideological alignment or evangelical prophecy, these scenes have catalysed a re-evaluation.
What was once seen by most Americans as a noble ally defending itself from “Islamic extremism” is now viewed by a growing number of US citizens as a powerful nation unleashing disproportionate force on a captive population.
“The images of children being intentionally starved by Israel as part of its Gaza policy shock everyone's consciences, regardless of whether they're conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy (CIP), in an interview with The New Arab.
A revolt against elites and elitism
At its core, Trump’s MAGA base must be understood within the broader context of American politics and society. This populist movement largely grew out of frustrations and disillusionment of the white working class.
Beneath the slogans and spectacle lies a deeper, more profound current: a collective revolt against the entrenched power of America’s political, cultural, and economic elites.
For many within this base, the movement gives voice to a long-simmering resentment - born of decades of perceived neglect, economic displacement, cultural alienation, and the erosion of traditional values - toward a ruling class that is seen as indifferent at best, and hostile at worst, to their struggles and identity.
Dr Nader Hashemi, director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, told TNA that support for Israel is deeply entwined with the American political establishment, spanning both major parties.
Given that the MAGA base is an “anti-establishment movement that has lost faith in American institutions and American democracy,” many within it perceive the issue of Israel as being “connected to those members of the political parties on both sides of the aisle where Israel has very strong support among those members of Congress”.
Referring to reports that the White House had suggested states boycotting Israel should be denied federal disaster relief, Dr Hashemi observed that this development “speaks to the core of the issue” fuelling resentment toward Israel among segments of Trump’s right-wing populist base.
“People don’t understand within the MAGA movement why there is such deference and support for Israel at the senior elite levels in the United States even to the extent where if a state has boycotted Israel for its human rights record it would be denied financial support when a natural disaster hits,” he added.
Among Trump supporters, there is a widespread belief that the United States allocates an excessive number of resources to foreign aid programs. This view reflects a desire to prioritise domestic issues over foreign spending.
Within this context, Israel stands out as the largest single recipient of US foreign aid by a significant margin, which has become a focal point of criticism and debate among this constituency.
“They see a wealthy country getting US taxpayer handouts and feel ripped off,” noted Duss.
No to wars and military entanglements abroad
Contributing to MAGA opposition is a widespread view of foreign entanglements as costly distractions from urgent domestic crises.
Those within this pro-Trump populist movement question, with increasing intensity, why Washington continues to invest blood and treasure in overseas conflicts when infrastructure crumbles, cities decay, and economic hardship persists at home.
This worldview stands in stark contrast to the vision espoused by Israel’s most vocal defenders in the United States, particularly the neo-conservatives, who champion the aggressive projection of American military power abroad.
For them, maintaining a dominant presence in the Middle East and other regions is central to securing American interests and upholding a US-led global order.
But to many in the MAGA movement, such interventions feel like a betrayal: a use of taxpayer money and military lives in service of foreign priorities that offer little tangible return to ordinary Americans.
That disconnect has become one of the most fundamental sources of tension fuelling MAGA's scepticism, and in many cases, outright opposition, toward Israel and the bipartisan coalition in Congress that supports it.
It’s not just about Israel per se - it’s about a broader disillusionment with the entire premise of America’s global role, particularly in the Middle East, where decades of war have left many Americans along many parts of the political spectrum questioning what was ever gained.
“It's important to recognise that we're dealing with a constituency that is traditionally very supportive of Israel, in all respects. But they are also America Firsters and in significant part support Trump because he promised to keep the US out of additional ‘forever wars’, particularly in the Middle East,” Mouin Rabbani, a political analyst and co-editor of Jadaliyya, told TNA.
“From their perspective, they are turning against Israel because they see it as a foreign state that is manipulating the US into launching Middle East wars on its behalf that are not required by US national security interests.”
According to Rabbani, “the straw that broke the camel's back” was not the Gaza genocide, but the recent war against Iran.
Sina Toossi, senior non-resident fellow at CIP, agrees with this assessment. “This erosion of support...reflects a deeper scepticism toward foreign commitments that don’t clearly serve US interests,” he said in a TNA interview.
“For decades, Israel assumed US backing was untouchable. The growing discontent on both sides of the political spectrum shows that assumption is no longer bulletproof.”
American plutocracy
A majority of Americans oppose continued arms transfers to Israel, yet the White House and Congress remain largely unaligned with this public sentiment. At the heart of this disconnect is a crisis with American democracy.
Lacking in the United States is a fully functioning representative democracy. What exists is something far closer to a plutocracy, a system in which political power is disproportionately shaped and wielded by the wealthy.
This distortion stems largely from the absence of robust, enforceable campaign finance regulations. In a system where money speaks louder than votes, those with the deepest pockets can exert outsized influence over electoral outcomes.
With enough money, nearly any election can be swayed - or even bought - through advertising, messaging, and ground operations.
This structural reality helps explain the persistent and troubling disconnect between the preferences of ordinary voters and the policy decisions of their elected officials.
This disconnect goes beyond Israel and affects a broad range of issues. Time and again, there is a divergence between public opinion in a given district and the legislative behaviour of the representative sent to Washington.
The underlying dynamic is simple: elected officials are more responsive to the interests of their top donors than to the will of their constituents. Rather than functioning as direct conduits for the people’s voice, many lawmakers operate as intermediaries for the elite financial interests underwriting their campaigns.
“As the saying goes, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ I think that’s what’s going on,” Dr Hashemi told TNA.
In such a system, democratic accountability is not only weakened - it is, in many cases, fundamentally undermined.
“The US is a plutocracy with voting rights, which means its politicians are bought and sold on the open market. This makes the political class very resistant to changes in public opinion and essentially a tool of their donors,” noted Rabbani.
“The donor class is overwhelmingly pro-Israeli, and often fanatically so. That equation remains unchanged, and it is only candidates who do not rely on the donor class who are able to promote change,” he added.
Will MAGA pressure change Trump's Israel policy?
Should more Republican lawmakers follow in Greene’s footsteps, and voices within the MAGA movement grow increasingly vocal in their opposition to US support for Israel, experts are divided on whether such a shift within the base could ultimately influence Donald Trump to recalibrate his administration’s approach to the Israel-Palestine question.
Dr Hashemi points to the reality that Trump’s staunch support for Israel is largely driven by the backing he receives from powerful private and special interest groups - most notably, right-wing pro-Israel donors such as Miriam Adelson and other wealthy figures in the business world.
Given the weight of these financial and political alliances, he does not expect that rising opposition to Israel within the MAGA base will be sufficient to prompt a significant shift in the White House’s foreign policy toward Israel.
“Trump, like other politicians in the United States, responds to and makes policy based on special interest groups and private interest groups who are financing his campaign,” Dr Hashemi told TNA.
However, Rabbani believes that the erosion of support for Israel within the MAGA movement could potentially prompt a recalibration of US-Israel relations with Trump in the Oval Office.
“Trump is not a hardened ideologue like Biden, and therefore in principle more amenable to pressures from his base, which Biden and Harris contemptuously ignored. He's also very thin-skinned, and one could see him revising policies not for any particular policy reason but because he thinks he has been played or insulted by Israel's leaders, or because he's being mocked as an Israeli proxy by influential supporters,” he said in a TNA interview.
While acknowledging that Trump has pro-Israeli instincts, Rabbani noted that “at the end of the day, he is loyal to no one but himself, his family, and their businesses” and “US foreign policy is also for sale in ways it previously has not been”.
Toossi also expressed some degree of optimism about the MAGA movement’s potential to influence Trump toward taking a more balanced approach to Israel-Palestine.
“Trump is transactional and responsive to his base. If scepticism toward Israel continues to grow among MAGA voters, it could pull him toward a more conditional approach, especially if he sees political advantage in framing Israel as taking US support for granted,” he told TNA.
Yet, Toossi also caveated this point by mentioning that the “pro-Israel donor network remains powerful, so any shift would likely be gradual and framed in ‘deal-making’ terms”.
A turning point in right-wing politics
The erosion of MAGA support for Israel signals more than just a rift within the American Right. It reflects a deeper transformation in the country’s political consciousness - one shaped by disillusionment with endless wars, resentment toward political elites, and a growing scepticism of foreign entanglements that seem detached from the lived realities of ordinary Americans.
Although the traditional pillars of bipartisan support for Israel remain intact at the institutional level - fortified by powerful lobbying groups and deep-pocketed donors - those foundations are showing signs of strain under the weight of shifting grassroots.
Whether this growing dissent within the MAGA movement can meaningfully alter US foreign policy remains uncertain. Trump’s loyalty to his base is tempered by his transactional instincts and longstanding ties to pro-Israel donors.
Still, in an era where public opinion is increasingly difficult to ignore, and where populist forces are rewriting the rules of American politics, the question is no longer whether support for Israel is absolute, but whether it is negotiable.
Ultimately, in that uncertainty lies a potential turning point not just for American-Israeli relations, but for the future of US foreign policy itself.
*Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics
Follow him on X: @GiorgioCafiero
There is growing opposition to Israel from within Donald Trump's MAGA base, where once solid support for the American-
11.08.2025
By Giorgio Cafiero*
Source:https://www.newarab.com/analysis/why-
“You can bring it on. I am totally ready for this, and this is a fight that I will fight, and I will give it my all, and I can guarantee you, you’re going to lose because America is fed up.”
With those words, US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene recently directed her ire at American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most influential pro-
Her accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza -
It signals a deeper political shift: a growing opposition to Israel from within US President Donald Trump’s MAGA base, where once-
In July, for example, Steve Bannon, the former Trump chief strategist and driver of America’s far right, said on his podcast that among those under 30 in the MAGA movement, there is “very little support for Israel”.
Polling seems to confirm this, with only 32% of US adults supporting Israel’s military actions in Gaza, according to Gallup, a record low since the war began. Among those aged 18-
Several factors explain Israel’s declining support among MAGA supporters, but chief among them is the brutal transparency of modern warfare in the age of social media.
Since October 2023, the world has been subjected to an unfiltered, real-
The images emerging from the besieged enclave are nothing short of harrowing: lifeless bodies of children pulled from rubble, hospitals in ruins, neighbourhoods reduced to ash.
For many within the MAGA base, who traditionally stood shoulder-
What was once seen by most Americans as a noble ally defending itself from “Islamic extremism” is now viewed by a growing number of US citizens as a powerful nation unleashing disproportionate force on a captive population.
“The images of children being intentionally starved by Israel as part of its Gaza policy shock everyone's consciences, regardless of whether they're conservative or liberal, Democrat or Republican,” said Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy (CIP), in an interview with The New Arab.
A revolt against elites and elitism
At its core, Trump’s MAGA base must be understood within the broader context of American politics and society. This populist movement largely grew out of frustrations and disillusionment of the white working class.
Beneath the slogans and spectacle lies a deeper, more profound current: a collective revolt against the entrenched power of America’s political, cultural, and economic elites.
For many within this base, the movement gives voice to a long-
Dr Nader Hashemi, director of Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-
Given that the MAGA base is an “anti-
Referring to reports that the White House had suggested states boycotting Israel should be denied federal disaster relief, Dr Hashemi observed that this development “speaks to the core of the issue” fuelling resentment toward Israel among segments of Trump’s right-
“People don’t understand within the MAGA movement why there is such deference and support for Israel at the senior elite levels in the United States even to the extent where if a state has boycotted Israel for its human rights record it would be denied financial support when a natural disaster hits,” he added.
Among Trump supporters, there is a widespread belief that the United States allocates an excessive number of resources to foreign aid programs. This view reflects a desire to prioritise domestic issues over foreign spending.
Within this context, Israel stands out as the largest single recipient of US foreign aid by a significant margin, which has become a focal point of criticism and debate among this constituency.
“They see a wealthy country getting US taxpayer handouts and feel ripped off,” noted Duss.
No to wars and military entanglements abroad
Contributing to MAGA opposition is a widespread view of foreign entanglements as costly distractions from urgent domestic crises.
Those within this pro-
This worldview stands in stark contrast to the vision espoused by Israel’s most vocal defenders in the United States, particularly the neo-
For them, maintaining a dominant presence in the Middle East and other regions is central to securing American interests and upholding a US-
But to many in the MAGA movement, such interventions feel like a betrayal: a use of taxpayer money and military lives in service of foreign priorities that offer little tangible return to ordinary Americans.
That disconnect has become one of the most fundamental sources of tension fuelling MAGA's scepticism, and in many cases, outright opposition, toward Israel and the bipartisan coalition in Congress that supports it.
It’s not just about Israel per se -
“It's important to recognise that we're dealing with a constituency that is traditionally very supportive of Israel, in all respects. But they are also America Firsters and in significant part support Trump because he promised to keep the US out of additional ‘forever wars’, particularly in the Middle East,” Mouin Rabbani, a political analyst and co-
“From their perspective, they are turning against Israel because they see it as a foreign state that is manipulating the US into launching Middle East wars on its behalf that are not required by US national security interests.”
According to Rabbani, “the straw that broke the camel's back” was not the Gaza genocide, but the recent war against Iran.
Sina Toossi, senior non-
“For decades, Israel assumed US backing was untouchable. The growing discontent on both sides of the political spectrum shows that assumption is no longer bulletproof.”
American plutocracy
A majority of Americans oppose continued arms transfers to Israel, yet the White House and Congress remain largely unaligned with this public sentiment. At the heart of this disconnect is a crisis with American democracy.
Lacking in the United States is a fully functioning representative democracy. What exists is something far closer to a plutocracy, a system in which political power is disproportionately shaped and wielded by the wealthy.
This distortion stems largely from the absence of robust, enforceable campaign finance regulations. In a system where money speaks louder than votes, those with the deepest pockets can exert outsized influence over electoral outcomes.
With enough money, nearly any election can be swayed -
This structural reality helps explain the persistent and troubling disconnect between the preferences of ordinary voters and the policy decisions of their elected officials.
This disconnect goes beyond Israel and affects a broad range of issues. Time and again, there is a divergence between public opinion in a given district and the legislative behaviour of the representative sent to Washington.
The underlying dynamic is simple: elected officials are more responsive to the interests of their top donors than to the will of their constituents. Rather than functioning as direct conduits for the people’s voice, many lawmakers operate as intermediaries for the elite financial interests underwriting their campaigns.
“As the saying goes, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ I think that’s what’s going on,” Dr Hashemi told TNA.
In such a system, democratic accountability is not only weakened -
“The US is a plutocracy with voting rights, which means its politicians are bought and sold on the open market. This makes the political class very resistant to changes in public opinion and essentially a tool of their donors,” noted Rabbani.
“The donor class is overwhelmingly pro-
Will MAGA pressure change Trump's Israel policy?
Should more Republican lawmakers follow in Greene’s footsteps, and voices within the MAGA movement grow increasingly vocal in their opposition to US support for Israel, experts are divided on whether such a shift within the base could ultimately influence Donald Trump to recalibrate his administration’s approach to the Israel-
Dr Hashemi points to the reality that Trump’s staunch support for Israel is largely driven by the backing he receives from powerful private and special interest groups -
Given the weight of these financial and political alliances, he does not expect that rising opposition to Israel within the MAGA base will be sufficient to prompt a significant shift in the White House’s foreign policy toward Israel.
“Trump, like other politicians in the United States, responds to and makes policy based on special interest groups and private interest groups who are financing his campaign,” Dr Hashemi told TNA.
However, Rabbani believes that the erosion of support for Israel within the MAGA movement could potentially prompt a recalibration of US-
“Trump is not a hardened ideologue like Biden, and therefore in principle more amenable to pressures from his base, which Biden and Harris contemptuously ignored. He's also very thin-
While acknowledging that Trump has pro-
Toossi also expressed some degree of optimism about the MAGA movement’s potential to influence Trump toward taking a more balanced approach to Israel-
“Trump is transactional and responsive to his base. If scepticism toward Israel continues to grow among MAGA voters, it could pull him toward a more conditional approach, especially if he sees political advantage in framing Israel as taking US support for granted,” he told TNA.
Yet, Toossi also caveated this point by mentioning that the “pro-
A turning point in right-
Although the traditional pillars of bipartisan support for Israel remain intact at the institutional level -
Whether this growing dissent within the MAGA movement can meaningfully alter US foreign policy remains uncertain. Trump’s loyalty to his base is tempered by his transactional instincts and longstanding ties to pro-
Still, in an era where public opinion is increasingly difficult to ignore, and where populist forces are rewriting the rules of American politics, the question is no longer whether support for Israel is absolute, but whether it is negotiable.
Ultimately, in that uncertainty lies a potential turning point not just for American-
*Giorgio Cafiero is the CEO of Gulf State Analytics
Follow him on X: @GiorgioCafiero