Ian Bremmer on the fragility of U.S. support for Israel

I would say that Biden could not be more supportive of Israel following the October 7th attacks...  But Generation Z, young people in the U.S., support the Palestinian position more strongly than they support Israel.  And you have seen that particularly on college campuses across the country, but also more broadly.  And many on the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  And I'm not just talking about "the Squad" and Rashida Tlaib and AOC.  I'm talking more broadly are increasingly uncomfortable with the extent of the Israeli military strikes against Hamas and the Palestinian civilians in Gaza.  All of the human destruction that we are all witnessing right now.

And President Biden has made it clear to the Israeli war cabinet that the ability that the ability of the United States to continue to provide unconstrained support for Israel is a window that will narrow if the present levels of atrocities continue.  So the conditions for peace are not just about making sure the Palestinians have an opportunity to live; they're also about making sure the Americans can continue to support Israel the way they have here-to-fore.

I think it is not guaranteed that in another four weeks time, the U.S. will still be willing to provide the kind of military equipment - high-tech military equipment and support - that they have provided to Israel historically if Israel continues to fight the war the way they have been fighting it.  Even the United States, Biden and his cabinet and core members of the Senate and the House, are facing that pressure from their own progressive wing.  And that is going to grow over time.

I also think that this is a risk for Biden in 2024 because this war right now is primarily about Gaza and Hamas.  But there are American carrier strike groups in the eastern Med[iterranean] and in the Gulf.  They've already been involved in direct strikes against Iranian Shia proxies in Syria.  There will surely be more of those strikes in the coming weeks.  American servicemen and women have already taken casualties.  Not deaths, not so far, but actually injured troops because of the knock-on impact of the war between Israel and Hamas.  So if it turns out that the United States is directly involved in a Middle Eastern war that Biden has not sold to the American people - he hasn't justified - you go from no wars started under the Trump administration to two wars started under the Biden administration.  Neither of them started by Biden, but both of them the American taxpayers are paying for and one of which the Americans might be taking casualties.  That is a very hard thing to run on if you are President Biden.  And they know it.

It also, the distraction of the Middle East - and President Zelensky has been saying this - has made it harder for people to focus on the contined support for Ukraine, especially given a counteroffensive that has failed.  So you now have these two massive global foreign policy crises, both of which are not looking so great for the United States, as we head into 2024.  I expect that Trump, when he becomes the Republican nominee, and that certainly looks very likely at this point, will make a meal out of that.

~ Ian Bremmer, "Political scientist Ian Bremmer on the Isreali-Palestinian conflict," Big Think, 44:45 mark, November 9, 2023