Israel is America's most cherished ally. We stand with Israel because her cause is our cause, her values are our values, and her fight is our fight. We stand with Israel because we believe in right over wrong, in good over evil, and in liberty over tyranny. We stand with Israel because that's what Americans have always done, from our country's earliest days.
Conservatives believe that America's culture is rooted in a deep Judeo-Christian tradition, with the Bible as its source. Today, America is blessed to have the great nation of Israel as an ally in a region of enormous strategic importance. Israel is an oasis of democracy in a desert of despotism that was dominated until very recently by countries hostile to our interests as well as our faith. And Israel is blessed to have America as an ally because it has been surrounded by so many enemies for so long, both nearby and across the world.
Israel's Arab neighbors invaded in 1967 and 1973. For decades, Islamic radicals funded by Iran and others have attacked it with rockets and terrorism. At the United Nations, countries cast fraudulent votes to condemn it for defending itself and even for existing. The ancient hatred of antisemitism never seems to go away, and the Jewish people have faced extermination repeatedly. On October 7, 2023, terrorists of Hamas launched a brutal invasion from Gaza, rampaging through Israel with the bloodthirsty goal of slaughtering as many Jewish men, women, and children as possible. They murdered 1,200 people. It was the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust, when the Nazis killed six million Jews.
In this day and age, conservatives have a special responsibility to stand with Israel because so many others in the United States have forsaken the cause of the Jewish state. Left-wing progressives have abandoned Israel, denouncing its actions to protect itself from destruction and tolerating and even applauding the antisemitic hoodlums who threaten Jews on American campuses and elsewhere. Many right-wing populists have also turned against Israel because of their imprudent devotion to isolationism as well as for senseless and darker reasons.
When I entered Congress in 2001, support for Israel was broad and bipartisan. Votes to support Israel were almost unanimous. None of it was controversial. That's because Americans have always seen our story in the story of the Jews. It is the story of an exodus, a journey from persecution to freedom—a story that shows the power of faith and the promise of hope.
America's first settlers considered themselves Pilgrims, sent by Providence to build a new Promised Land. The songs and stories of the people of Israel were their anthems. Our Founding Fathers looked to the wisdom of the Hebrew Bible for direction, guidance, and inspiration. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia displays the words of Leviticus 25:10: "Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land and unto the Inhabitants thereof."
George Washington welcomed Jews in the United States, sending a letter to synagogue leaders in Newport, Rhode Island: "The United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance," he wrote in 1790. "May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants." Then Washington quoted the Bible verse that he may have cited more often than any other, from Micah 4:4: "Everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid."
John Adams, our second president, wrote to Thomas Jefferson, our third president: "I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation." Even the slaves in their shackles drew hope from the Hebrew Bible, and especially from the tale of resistance, escape, and freedom in Exodus. For African Americans, "Go Down Moses" was both a spiritual song and an inspiring plea to "let my people go."
Across the generations, Americans have supported the aspiration of Jews to claim their own new birth of freedom by returning to the land of their forefathers. They persisted through an exile of two thousand years—the longest of any people, anywhere—plus conquests and expulsions as well as inquisitions and pogroms. They held fast to a promise that "even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back." They endured the Holocaust, which consumed the lives of so many and that challenges the faith of so many still. Just three years after walking beneath that shadow of death, however, the Jewish people rose up from the ashes to reclaim a Jewish future and to rebuild the Jewish state of Israel.
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Conservatives know Israelis want peace, and that Israelis need no lectures on the price of war. The people of Israel know the terrible price of war all too well. They live in the world's most volatile and violent region. They must defend themselves constantly. If they lay down their arms, they will lose their nation. Their first defeat will be their final war. The Israelis need allies who will back them with concrete actions in support of the Jewish nation as America has always done.
The United States was the first country in the world to recognize the Jewish state of Israel, in 1948. Americans have remained friends of the Israelis, but for years one presidential administration after another refused to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. This was the result of a geopolitical decision not to antagonize Palestinians and their patrons in the Arab states, with the hope of ending conflict in a turbulent region. American politicians often pledged to recognize Jerusalem as the capital, usually when they campaigned for the votes of American Jews during an election season. Once in power, however, they always put off the decision, citing extenuating circumstances that may have seemed reasonable at any given moment, but over time amounted to a long series of promises made and promises broken.
The Trump-Pence administration changed everything. To his undying credit, President Trump ignored the warnings of a foreign policy establishment that never had managed to secure peace. We acknowledged Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv in 2018. Knowing that facts are the only foundation for a just and lasting peace, we embraced the fact that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish state and always will be and rejected the fiction that it is not.
We also recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syrian aggressors during the Six-Day War of 1967. The Syrians had used the elevated position of the Golan Heights to bombard Israeli villages with artillery shells. Israel took control of the area and ever since has maintained control of it as a matter of national defense. The United States became the first country in the world to support Israel's claim of ownership and should be prepared to recognize Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria when the time comes.
Bold moves by the Trump administration not only rejected the failed strategy of appeasement, but they delivered the most important opportunity for peace in at least a generation. They gave rise to the remarkable Abraham Accords, a set of treaties that normalized relations between Israel and the Arab nations of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Sudan in 2020. Named for the Hebrew prophet Abraham, who is revered by Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the accords expanded trade, investment, military cooperation, and more. They also provided a bulwark against Iran, whose nuclear ambitions have unsettled the entire Middle East, prompting many Arab nations to realize that Israel is better to have as an ally than as an enemy.
Before the adoption of the accords, only two Arab nations had recognized the sovereignty of Israel: Egypt and Jordan. By tripling this number, Trump and our top negotiators, David Friedman and Jared Kushner, accomplished what many so-called experts thought was impossible. Today, the Abraham Accords are building blocks of peace that offer Arab states a chance to leave behind their traditional enmity and move forward in friendship with Israel. The United States must do everything in its power to strengthen and expand the Abraham Accords.
Many left-wing progressives have chosen this moment of hope to give up on Israel. The Biden administration even banned officials in its Department of State from referring to the Abraham Accords by their proper name. This was an act of naked partisanship—a refusal to acknowledge a Trump-Pence triumph—and an outgrowth of the Democratic Party's growing commitment to radical secularism. At first, Democrats let their secularism slide into a suspicion of religious faith and freedom. Ultimately, it descended into religious bigotry and a toleration of rank antisemitism.
This was not always the case. During my years in Congress, given my long-standing support for Israel, I enjoyed strong working relationships with many of the leading Jewish Democrats in Washington. I will never forget the day in 2007 when the late congressman Tom Lantos of California came to my office with his wife, Annette. Tom was the only Holocaust survivor ever to serve in the Congress and he asked for my support to form the Bipartisan Task Force for Combatting Anti-Semitism. I readily agreed and will always consider it a high honor to have established a beachhead against hate in the People's House. Sadly, the progressive left has let the once monolithic support for Israel in the Democratic Party erode to only a fragment of what it once was.
This progressive shift against Israel broke into public view in 2012 at the Democratic National Convention, where a draft version of the party platform had removed a statement calling for the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Party leaders tried to reinstate it, in a move that required two-thirds support from the convention delegates. When the convention chairman called for a vote, shouts of "no" overwhelmed the voices of "yes." On the third attempt, the chairman simply declared "the ayes have it," even though they clearly did not. As boos erupted from the delegates, Americans saw that the Democrat base had turned against Israel.
Progressive anger toward Israel continued to mount, and it exploded into view following the Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023. Many Democrats blamed the victims for the massacre. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota boycotted the president of Israel's address to Congress. Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington called Israel "a racist state." Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan accused Israel, which is the only democracy in the Middle East, of "committing the crime of apartheid." At no point did President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, or any other Democrat leaders speak out. They refused to issue reprimands, punishments, or even a halfhearted warning directed at the antisemites in the halls of Congress.
Nor did they condemn the campus progressives who targeted Jewish students with harassment and violence. Instead, they remained silent as an old and relentless prejudice took hold at many elite colleges and universities. This hatred has a history. In the 1950s, many schools embraced antisemitism, admitting few Jewish students and hiring few Jewish professors because they worried that Jews, who often came from families that valued education, would take up too many spots in classrooms and faculty lounges and crowd out people of other backgrounds. Over time, this vile practice disappeared, but antisemitic prejudice did not. Campus progressives have tried to punish Israel through the BDS movement, which stands for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. Academic organizations and graduate-student unions routinely denounce Israel and even refuse to work with individual Israeli scholars. Yet they have not bothered to denounce the nations with the world's worst records on human rights, such as China and Qatar. Colleges and universities in fact accept multimillion-dollar donations from the regimes in these countries.
After the Hamas attacks in 2023, progressive administrators at many colleges and universities surrendered their campuses to protesters and rioters who harassed Jewish students and tried to disguise their antisemitism as nothing more than criticisms of Israeli policies. When congressional Republicans held hearings on these outrageous events, they asked Ivy League presidents a simple question: Would calls for the genocide of Jews violate the codes of conduct at their universities? The leaders of Harvard and Penn could not bring themselves to say that they would. They insisted that it depended on the circumstances, apparently because they thought that advocacy of mass killings of Jewish people at certain times and places was perfectly fine. In the ensuing controversy, they lost their jobs, though the progressive left maintains its iron grip on higher education—and its radical professors can always be counted on to utter ritual denunciations of the Jewish state.
Fortunately, with the advent of the second Trump administration, the federal government took decisive action to confront antisemitic bigotry on college and university campuses, withholding federal funding and initiating investigations by the Department of Justice. While this resulted in significant admissions by schools such as Columbia and Harvard, the work must be ongoing until the scourge of antisemitism is driven from every institution of higher learning once and for all.
As anti-Israel and even antisemitic sentiment has taken hold on the progressive left, many right-wing populists have become isolationists who criticize U.S. support for Israel and even indulge in age-old conspiracies grounded in antisemitism. Chief among those voices is Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who was fired following the $787 million settlement of a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems following the 2020 election. Carlson has condemned U.S. support for Israel and in 2024 he platformed a Holocaust denier who called Winston Churchill the "chief villain of the Second World War." During an interview with the avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes on his show in 2025, Carlson actually denounced American conservatives who support Israel, saying that Christian Zionism is a "heresy" and that non-Jewish Republicans who support Israel are "seized by this brain virus."
He and other populists have also questioned U.S. military support for Israel. Carlson even predicted that Trump's strike on Iranian nuclear facilities would "end his presidency." His fellow right-wing populist, podcaster Steve Bannon, warned that a U.S. strike on Iran would start "the Third World War." The result was quite the opposite: Israel and America demonstrated strength and won the peace. Trump's decision to bomb was a bold move that made the world safer and eased tensions throughout the Middle East. It diminished Iran's ability to threaten its neighbors. The action even helped secure the release of Israelis whom Hamas had held hostage for two years. Carlson and Bannon were wrong and allowed their anti-Israel and isolationist views to cloud their judgment. Fortunately, in that instance, Trump ignored them. Conservatives should recognize open hostility to U.S. support for Israel for what it is and reject these voices in shaping our movement or our party.
In addition to rejecting anti-Israel sentiment, conservatives must reject antisemitism of any form in our nation. Sadly, many right-wing populists are not simply wrong about geopolitics. Many also traffic in antisemitism. Fringe figures such as Fuentes and Candace Owens have attracted followings for their podcasts and social media posts by spewing filth. These and other so-called influencers on the right deliver diatribes full of hateful dog whistles, spin conspiracy theories about Jewish influence, and interview guests who question the reality and enormity of the Holocaust. They often hide behind the claim that they are merely "asking questions." They are in fact utterly incurious, always seeming to know in advance the answers they want to hear and amplify. Just as National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. expelled antisemites from the conservative movement in the 1960s, today's conservatives must reject the new voices of antisemitism today. There is no room in the conservative movement for opponents of U.S. support for Israel, and there is no place in America for antisemitic rhetoric and bigotry.
The United States must remain engaged with Israel and never compromise its safety and security. Radical Islamic terrorism knows no borders as it targets America, Israel, and other nations. It respects no creed as it steals the lives of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. And it understands no reality other than brute force.
America must continue to provide Israel with the means to defend itself and its people. Peace in the Middle East begins with Israeli strength. When Israel is strong, old enemies can start over and become partners. Familiar foes can find new ground for cooperation. And the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael can come together as never before. While at times it may be hard to see, Jews and Muslims have more that unites them than divides them—not only in common threats, but in the common hope for a future of prosperity and peace, and in the common ancestry of a monotheistic belief that runs throughout these lands. Through engagement with Israel and its neighbors, the United States must seek to restore the rich splendor of religious diversity across the Middle East, so that all faiths may once again flourish in the lands where they were born.
Nearly four thousand years ago, a man left his home in Ur of the Chaldeans and traveled to Israel. He ruled no empire, wore no crown, commanded no army, performed no miracles, and delivered no prophecies. Yet to him was promised "descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky." Today, Jews, Christians, and Muslims—more than half the population of the earth, and nearly all the people of the Middle East—claim Abraham as their forefather in faith. In the Old City of Jerusalem, we see the followers of these three great religions living out their beliefs. At the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, Christian children receive the gift of grace, in baptism. At the Western Wall, Jewish boys celebrate their bar mitzvahs. And at the Haram al-Sharif, young Muslims bow their heads in prayer. All who hope for freedom and a brighter future should cast their eyes to Jerusalem and marvel at what they behold.
Throughout the history of our nation, generations of Americans have claimed God's promise in Genesis to the people of Israel and all who cherish her: "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse." For the sake of our cherished ally and the future blessing of the United States, if the world knows nothing else, let the world know this: America stands with Israel.
Mike Pence was vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021 and is the founder of Advancing American Freedom. This article is an excerpt from his new book, What Conservatives Believe: Rediscovering the Conservative Conscience (Center Street).
