The answer: Evangelical Christians

The same reliable voting block that thinks the current president is basically the second coming despite the fact he is an obvious nihilist. They are obsessed with Israel for similarly delusional reasons. I have few things in agreement with Tucker Carlson. But the way he made Mike Huckabee or Ted Cruz squirm on basic questions about Israel was delightful. These people are motivated by little more than blind faith which resembles a cult to any thinking person. Couple this with American anti-democratic compromises (connecticut compromise which allows sparsely populated, evangelical states to get outsize representation) and you have your answer. These small states are also easier to control. AIPAC actually doesn't spend that much money. It turns out to buy a Senator in the middle of nowhere is pretty cheap, and a great ROI. A Senator from Arkansas has the same voting power as a Senator from New York. Of course, for the time being New York is also bought and paid for. That may be changing. Part of the reason primaries in NYC have gotten so much attention in the last month is because of what it portends for a potential primary against Chuck Schumer. While he is not an evangelical, he is a beneficiary of AIPAC.

Since he's not an evangelical and is capable of critical thought he did call for new elections in Israel in a somewhat notable speech in 2024. It was notable as a public criticism of Netanyahu even if it was pretty mild. People of Chuck Schumer's generation who are not evangelicals still have a bias towards Israel because of post WWII guilt. America essentially inherited the power, but also the responsibility of the terminated British empire in WWII's wake. Unlike young progressive Jews who are perfectly capable of recognizing two things can be true - a state can both be Jewish and genocidal - older Americans have a bias to buying into the fiction that Israel is some uniquely vulnerable nation that needs protecting because they have parents that were around to know America largely sat on its hands during the genocide against the Jews in WWII. Americans did not want to get involved until after Pearl Harbor, and even then, anti-semitism was not exactly out of the American mainstream. And there was a time where in the Middle East, Israel was not the obvious regional superpower that it is today. So the American intelligentsia was also largely behind Israel, even if for very different reasons than evangelicals.

But even these Chuck Schumer types have basically been forced to come to terms with the fact that the current Israeli leadership is extremely far right, and frankly, pretty much as nuts (if not more) as people like Mike Huckabee. That's why again, the real answer is the evangelicals. As with Trump, they don't care if a president or a nation careens off course. They believe they are doing what their invisible friend wants. You can't really argue with that type of crazy.

From what I understand the 'current' leadership in Israel-even with how they behave-they are still the most left of all possible options. The ones that could come after it are even more extreme.