Inside the GOP’s generational divide on Israel
Polling consistently shows that Republicans represent the only voting bloc where support for Israel isn’t low.
Last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) held a private meeting in Washington to address pro-Israel leaders.
Johnson told the crowd about his efforts to bolster support for the country, detailed a recent dinner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and talked about stomping out isolationist sentiment on the right.
“The speaker was very, very direct about the U.S. role with Israel and in the world and understands that there are voices that don’t agree in both parties, on both extremes, and urges us all to be involved in fighting back against those extremes,” Eric Fingerhut, the CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, told Jewish Insider.
Johnson’s effort might seem superfluous to casual observers of U.S. politics. After all, GOP lawmakers aren’t exactly calling for a reassessment of the Israel/U.S. relationship. Most Republicans have effectively cheered on the genocide. Insofar as they’ve acknowledged Palestinian deaths at all, they’ve put the blame squarely on Hamas.
Unlike the Democrats, the GOP didn’t face a public debate about Gaza within its party throughout the 2024 presidential campaign. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) has called for the U.S. to end military aid, and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has referred to Israel’s assault as a genocide but there’s no Republican contingent consistently highlighting Palestinian rights.
Perhaps most importantly, polling consistently shows that Republicans represent the only voting bloc where support for Israel isn’t low.
A Gallup survey from earlier this year found that 83% of Republican voters have a positive view of Israel, compared to just 33% of Democrats. That 50-point gap is easily the largest since Gallup began tracking the data, and three times as large as the 18-point difference between Democratic and Republican voters that existed between 2001 and 2023.
While those statistics look definitive, understanding Johnson’s concerns requires a deeper dive into the numbers. Yes, it’s true that most Republican voters say they support Israel, but a looming crisis for the country can be detected in the cross-tabs.
Take a March 2025 Pew poll as an example. While the survey shows strong support for Israel among GOP voters, it also reveals that more and more younger Republicans are souring on the country.
50% of GOP voters under the age of 50 expressed a negative view of Israel, compared to just 35% in 2022. These numbers line up with a number of recent polls, including an August 2025 University of Maryland Critical Issues survey, which found that just 24% of Republican voters ages 18-34 sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians.
“An Entire Generation of Americans Is Turning on Israel,” declares a recent Politico headline.
Quincy Institute advisor and Responsible Statecraft editorial director Kelley Vlahos says that young Republicans don’t feel the same connection to Israel that their parents and grandparents might have.
“The erosion among younger voters is not unimpressive,” she told Mondoweiss.“They do not have the same instincts, and they are less ideologically shackled. They’re not feeling the same pressure as the Boomer generation.”
Vlahos also cited the increasingly critical views of prominent, conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson, who has criticized Republican politicians over their loyalty to Israel.
“A lot of Republicans are skeptical about issues like sending weapons to Ukraine, but that all goes out the window regarding Israel,” said Vlhaos. “People like Tucker Carlson, who made a sea change in his worldview after supporting the Iraq War, are more consistent than a lot of Republicans.”
The positions of right-wing pundits became a mainstream story in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, as the internet swirled with theories about his killing. Beyond the conspiracy mongering, one can find a fascinating discussion about the influence of Israel.
While Kirk publicly backed Israel and even mocked starving Palestinians throughout his career, some close to him say that he was beginning to question Israel amid alleged pressure from pro-Israel voices like mega-donor Bill Ackman.
Kirk had invited Carlson to give a speech at his Turning Point USA summit last July, in which he said that Americans who serve in the IDF should lose their citizenship and declared that Jeffrey Epstein was likely running “a blackmail operation on behalf” of Israel.
That same month, Kirk told his viewers that “it’s bad for everybody” if any criticism of the Netanyahu government is tagged as antisemitism.
“I’ve been trying to tell [Israel supporters] that there is an earthquake coming on this issue and in the country, and they don’t believe me,” he added.
Mondoweiss senior editor Phil Weiss writes that Israel will enter a “crisis in the U.S. discourse” if it loses Kirk’s base, as it’s already lost young progressives.
“The right-wing awakening is a big problem for the Israel lobby. It has lost traction in the Democratic Party because the base despises Israel, and candidates such as Zohran Mamdani are running against Israeli genocide, and a growing faction of politicians seeks to end military aid to the apartheid country,” writes Weiss.
Johnson’s Capitol Hill meeting was attended by members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The group is reportedly preparing to oppose Massie and Greene in their forthcoming reelection campaigns.
Curt Mills, Executive Director of The American Conservative, told Mondoweissthat these developments have to be understood within the wider context of the Trump movement’s takeover of the Republican Party.
“All the contradictions are being heightened at once,” said Mills. “People like Carlson and [right-wing political strategist Steve] Bannon are not random people. They’re not back-benchers. One of the reasons it’s coming to a head is that the context has changed. Republicans now own this war.”
These rumblings aren’t entirely new. In 1996, after Pat Buchanan (who founded the magazine Mills works for) defeated Bob Dole in the New Hampshire primary, establishment Republicans attacked the candidate over his Israel position. During the 2012 primaries, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul found a groundswell of grassroots support amid calling for Israel aid to be cut.
However, Mills notes that neoconservatives still exert outsized influence within the party and that Trump has attempted to play both sides of the issue, backing Israel while maintaining his relationship with the online right and resisting Netanyahu’s greater designs.
“It’s this uneasy power-sharing arrangement,” says Mills. “I think Trump wants the money from pro-Israel groups, but he also doesn’t want a ground war in Iran.”
Earlier this year, the Washington Post published an article about young Republicans who were attracted to Trump’s isolationist rhetoric, only to become disillusioned with the administration’s devotion to Israel.
“To be ‘America First,’ the Stars and Stripes must come before the Star of David,” Josiah Neumann, a right-wing student Xavier University told the paper. He faulted Fox News for “dehumanizing” Palestinians throughout the genocide.
“Even my parents are a little bit more open to seeing the headlines from Gaza,” he added. “The starvation, the cutting of humanitarian aid in the area, the bombings, until it’s basically just rubble in what were civilian areas. Their heart goes out to those people as well.”
