Politics

Bye-Bye, Neocons



Israeli leaders of all major parties warn of two existential threats to Israel: a U.N. resolution forcing Israel back to the 1967 armistice line, and a nuclear-armed Iran. With Donald Trump’s election both threats have receded into the distance, and the State of Israel is more secure than it has been in its history. Yet American Jews, at least the majority of politically active Jews of high public profile, are miserable. America’s best-known Jewish conservatives—the “neocons”—have burnt their bridges to the incoming administration. It is one of the strangest, and silliest, episodes in Jewish political history.

An estimated 30 percent of American Jews voted for Trump, the highest Jewish vote for a Republican since 1988. Among religious Jews, anecdotal evidence suggests, support for Trump was overwhelming. But most Jewish Republican leaders backed Hillary Clinton or minor candidates in the general election while opposing Trump in terms that often climbed the walls of hysteria.