A generational shift is under way in the relationship between the United States and Israel. Tensions were already palpable because of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Benjamin Netanyahu’s role in pushing Donald Trump to join a counterproductive war against Iran was the last straw.

Stopping unconditional US support for Israel would certainly be important for curbing US complicity in Israeli war crimes. It may also be the best thing for Israel if it is to have any hope of avoiding the dangerous dead end of relentless military escalation. And it is a prerequisite for Palestinians to have any prospect of escaping Israel’s endless occupation.

The relationship between the two countries was not always as close as in recent decades. At Israel’s founding in 1948, Washington was supportive but with a certain reserve. President Harry Truman refused to send weapons to the new state. In 1957, president Dwight Eisenhower forced Israel to withdraw from the Sinai.

But things changed when neighboring states attacked Israel in 1967 and 1973. Israel also benefited from portraying itself during the cold war as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Middle East.

For many years, it became impossible to question Israel in discussions with most US officials. When in 2021 Human Rights Watch issued a report on Israel’s apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territory, it was widely welcomed around the world but landed in Washington like a lead balloon.

That extreme deference was visible even as Israel committed genocide. President Joe Biden stopped delivering the 2,000lb bombs that Israel used to indiscriminately decimate Palestinian neighborhoods but kept billions flowing in other military aid and arms sales. Rather than condition military assistance on an end to Israel’s starvation strategy in Gaza, he organized an expensive and ineffective effort to deliver food on a makeshift floating pier. The starvation worsened.

Biden was behind the times. Israeli atrocities in Gaza were alienating a growing percentage of the Democratic party and even younger Christian evangelicals. Christian evangelicals, far more than Jews, comprise Israel’s base within the Republican party.

A Pew poll in April showed that 60% of American adults have a negative view of Israel, up 7% since last year and 20% since 2022. Among Democrats and Democratically inclined independents (which include most American Jews), a striking 80% have an........

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