Three Democratic presidents—Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson—laid the foundations of the U.S.-Israel alliance; even as late as the Clinton years, the Democratic party seemed the natural address for many supporters of Israel. Now the alliance appears to be broken, or at least in serious jeopardy. In explaining how so much has changed, Jonathan Tobin looks back to two major turning points:

The first serious indication of trouble between Israel and the Democrats arose during the Jimmy Carter administration (1977–1981). . . . Carter’s four years in office featured near-constant strife with Israel and the Likud government led by Menachem Begin, who took office in 1977. . . . Though Begin’s supposed intransigence was blamed for the trouble—an intransigence belied by the [Camp David] accords that were Carter’s only foreign-policy success—the real issue was Carter’s sub-rosa hostility toward Israel, a factor that would not be fully understood until [after] he left office. . . .

[A few years] later came what appears in retrospect to have been a watershed moment for Israel and American liberals. The 1982 invasion of Lebanon was designed to remove the PLO state-within-a-state on Israel’s northern border—but the effort led to a sea change in the American media’s coverage of Israel. It was no longer portrayed as a lone democratic nation victimized by a plethora of hostile states but as an invading aggressor. This change had an enormous impact on the way American liberals, including many liberal Jews, viewed Israel.

Many Americans had fallen in love with a pioneer Israel governed by the socialist Labor party and represented by the romance of the agricultural and social collective known as the kibbutz. For liberal Democrats, the full-throated nationalism of Begin’s Likud party proved disquieting, as Likud’s voting base was made up not of Jews of European origin like them but of Sephardi Jews to whom they felt little connection. . . . Begin was demonized in the press and disdained by Jewish liberals following the lead of disgusted Ashkenazi Israelis astonished to find themselves out of power for the first time.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”