There is a growing foreign political right that has begun to talk as if it owns the State of Israel. As if they have adopted a lost orphan and are taking it home to raise as one of their own: this scares me.

Evangelical political machines and the American culture-war media do not speak for me, and they do not speak for most Israelis. They speak for a fight in another nation’s primary, and when we sign up for that, we are taking sides and alienating supporters. There is no reason for us to assume that the right is better for Israel or any proof they have made Israel safer. I would argue they have made things considerably worse — because they fuel conflict and otherness.

When the Israeli flag is rented to support the American right’s fight for power, Israel becomes a costume: MAGA abroad, “the right” at home. That is not how a state that still needs friends on more than one side of an ocean should talk.

Israel was built as a labor-Zionist project — messy, argumentative, and left of the podcasts that now claim it. I am an Israeli, I am a Zionist, but I am not your girl. And I doubt Golda or Ben Gurion would agree with you about much of anything.

Capitalism has a role in the Israel that exists. High-tech, trade, and private industry are not the enemy. At the same time, socialist tools that actually worked at integrating and absorbing people are not the enemy either.

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