America’s New Anti-Israel Left-Right Consensus |
Fifteen years ago, both major American political parties treated Israel as a strategic asset in the Middle East. Gallup’s 2011 surveys showed clear majorities sympathizing more with Israelis than with Palestinians across Democratic and Republican ranks. By February 2026, that foundation had cracked. Gallup found that only 36 percent of Americans sympathized more with Israelis, while 41 percent sympathized more with Palestinians. Among Americans aged 35 to 54, the split was starker: 28 percent for Israelis versus 46 percent for Palestinians. Among Democrats, sympathy for Israelis had fallen to just 17 percent, while 65 percent sympathized more with Palestinians. Republicans remained at 70 percent sympathy for Israelis, yet the broader erosion has already affected aid debates, diplomatic posture, and policy consistency.
The left’s shift accelerated after the 2018 election of Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Their embrace of rejectionist slogans and dual-loyalty tropes moved anti-Zionist positions from activist margins into congressional debate, campus organizing, and elite media language.
Doha catalyzed this turn by becoming the largest foreign source of funding to American higher education, pouring more than $6 billion in disclosed gifts and contracts into top-tier universities over the past 15 years. In 2025 alone, the U.S. Department of Education identified Qatar as the largest foreign source of reportable gifts and contracts to American universities, exceeding $1.1 billion.
Between 2016 and 2025, the emirate also spent nearly $250 million through Foreign Agents Registration Act-registered lobbying and public relations firms. These expenditures coincided with the spread of frameworks that recast Israel as a colonial actor and reduced the Democratic willingness to approve security assistance without conditions.
Qatari influence operations reveal their contradictions most clearly when........