Hours after Democrats retook both houses of Congress, Israeli experts told JNS they see the growing anti-Israel cohort in American politics as a lasting trend — not a pendulum blip that corrects next cycle.
Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Foreign Affairs, told JNS the shift "shows greater signs of permanence than temporary quality." He pointed to Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-Mich.) joining Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani as evidence that what was once fringe language about "colonialism" and "apartheid" has "moved into the center of American politics" and into the U.S. Senate.
Eytan Gilboa of Bar-Ilan and Reichman Universities told JNS the political shift away from Israel support "will continue," citing Jewish exit-poll patterns and splits in Michigan and New York. Martin Sherman of the Israel Institute for Strategic Studies said Israel "cannot continue to rely on the United States as its sole strategic prop" and urged a multi-billion-dollar public-diplomacy investment. Former ambassadors Danny Ayalon and Mark Regev both called the trend real — and urged organized pushback rather than wishful waiting.
The experts' consensus, as framed by JNS: the midterm map did not invent the problem. It mainstreamed it.
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