A fracture long buried within America’s right wing has now surfaced: the neoconservatives, who since the 2000s have made unconditional support for Israel the cornerstone of their political identity, are facing off against the MAGA faction, which rose under the banner of “America First” and now asks why US interests and values should be sacrificed for Tel Aviv’s policies. Willingly or not, these two camps are colliding. The recent war of words, from Netanyahu’s interview to the sharp reactions of leading populist conservatives, was more than a media skirmish. It revealed a deeper fracture in how Americans define their national interest and what “MAGA” really means. Netanyahu openly declared that his American right-wing critics “are not MAGA,” a claim that quickly drew fire from figures like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Steve Bannon. What emerged was a clear intellectual rift: “America First” does not automatically mean a blank check for Israel.

This rift is not only about party identity. It strikes at the coherence of America’s foreign policy ideals. If the United States still claims to uphold an “American-led liberal order” rooted in human rights, the rule of law, protection of state sovereignty, and free trade, can it simultaneously ignore the findings of the most credible human rights organizations regarding Israel? Three major watchdogs, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, and Amnesty International, have issued detailed reports describing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians as a system of apartheid. These are not political slogans but legal assessments grounded in field evidence. At the level of international law, the legitimacy crisis has deepened. On 26 January 2024, the International Court of Justice ordered provisional measures against Israel, followed on 24 May by an explicit demand to halt operations in Rafah, not as proof of final crimes, but as a warning that rights protected under the Genocide Convention were........

© Middle East Monitor