POLITICO, April 2026
Not so long ago, intra-MAGA debates over Israel were confined to subterranean meeting rooms, where conservative conference attendees hash out internecine disagreements. That was the scene, at any rate, in early September, when the intellectual vanguard of the MAGA movement gathered at a D.C. hotel for the fifth annual National Conservatism Conference. On the first day of the conference, two months before the right was convulsed by a bitter public fight over criticisms of Israel and antisemitism, I joined a hundred conference-goers in a basement room for a panel titled “America and the Israel-Iran War: A Debate.” But everyone in the room knew that the issue was a proxy for a deeper question that has since consumed the right: Whether the Republican Party should end its decades-long alliance with Israel.
First to take the podium was Max Abrahms, a right-leaning counterterrorism expert from Northeastern University, who defended the strikes on Iran and denounced the “MAGA isolationist realists” eager to turn their back on the Jewish state. He was followed by Curt Mills, editor of The American Conservative. “Why are these our wars? Why are Israel’s endless problems America’s liabilities?” Mills asked. “Why should we accept ‘America First’ — asterisk Israel?”
