Above photo: US-70 in Burke County, North Carolina following Hurricane Helene, on September 27, 2024. North Carolina Department of Transportation/Flickr.
This week, the Trump administration reversed its decision to link disaster relief funds with loyalty pledges to Israel.
Originally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had published a statement declaring that states and cities had to certify that they wouldn’t boycott Israeli companies in order to qualify for disaster relief.
Under DHS’s standard terms and conditions it reads, “Recipients must comply with all applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws material to the government’s payment decisions” and adds:
Discriminatory prohibited boycott means refusing to deal, cutting commercial relations, or otherwise limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies or with companies doing business in or with Israel or authorized by, licensed by, or organized under the laws of Israel to do business.
The story quickly made the rounds on social media, prompting it to remove the statement from its website.
Predictably, the government is denying that this was ever a policy. “FEMA grants remain governed by existing law and policy and not political litmus tests,” insisted DHS Spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin in a statement.
When questioned about the issue by Axios, another DHS spokesperson told the website that, “There is no FEMA requirement tied to Israel… no states have lost funding, and no new conditions have been imposed.”
The spokesperson added, “FEMA grants remain governed by existing law and policy and not political litmus tests. DHS will enforce all anti-discrimination laws and policies, including as it relates to the BDS movement, which is expressly grounded in antisemitism. Those who engage in racial discrimination should not receive a single dollar of federal funding.”
Those sentences make it sound like there is a FEMA requirement tied to Israel, and they seemingly invalidate the first part of the statement, but I digress.
A conditional Israel loyalty oath would not actually be altogether shocking.
Trump has threatened to hold up disaster funds to California over the politics of Governor Gavin Newsom, and the administration has cut funding to universities over pro-Palestine activism.
After Hurricane Harvey hit Texas in 2017, the city of Dickinson required all relief applicants to include a written promise that they wouldn’t boycott Israel.
Dickinson officials said that the requirement stemmed from anti-BDS law signed by Governor Greg Abbott shortly before the hurricane hit.
“Please don’t crucify the messenger, the City of Dickinson is only following State law,” the city told Mondoweiss at the time.
After some inevitable backlash, Dickinson’s city council passed a motion to reverse the order, but the move only applied to individual residents. In other words, businesses could have hypothetically been denied aid if they chose to boycott a foreign country.
The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) put out a statement on the recent FEMA controversy on social media.
“Trump was elected on an ‘America First’ platform but turned out to be even more ‘Israel First’ than his predecessors,” posted the group. “While the BDS movement calls for upholding state obligations and human rights for all, including Palestinians, the now backtracked measure put shielding Israel’s genocidal regime above the rights and interests of ordinary Americans.”
“Instead of ending its partnership in Israel’s genocide and Nazi-like starvation of millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the Trump regime tried to strongarm disaster-hit Americans into pledging loyalty to Israel,” the statement continues. “The US government isn’t just complicit in genocide—it’s willing to let its own people suffer for it. This isn’t leadership. It’s servitude to Israel and mega-corruption in its worst forms.”
MAGA and Israel
The FEMA development wasn’t only criticized by left-wing supporters of Palestine. It also faced backlash from staunch conservatives and supporters of the Trump administration’s overall agenda.
Does the pro-Israel crowd have anything to worry about here?
Last month, the Financial Times reported that Trump warned a donor about the base turning on the country.
“My people are starting to hate Israel,” Trump told an unnamed Jewish donor, who was said to be “prominent.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), one of the most prominent members of the MAGA movement, recently declared that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and asserted that the Republican Party was beginning to lose touch with its base.
The numbers don’t exactly bear this out, in contrast to Democratic voters, who have completely flipped on the issue.
The most recent polling we have comes from Gallup. Just 8% of Democrats said that they support Israel’s actions in Gaza. 25% of Independents said the same. Among Republicans, it’s 71%. That’s actually up from last September, when 66% of GOP voters said they backed Israel.
However, when you break it down by age, the future of the Republican party is beginning to turn on Israel too.
A new Economist/YouGov survey found that, between 2022 and now, Republicans aged 18-49 have shifted from 35% having an unfavorable view of Israel to 50% having an unfavorable view.
“The age gap may reflect the influence of social-media images of suffering in Gaza, seen by younger voters, in contrast with the pro-Israel staple on conservative cable television channels such as Fox News,” explains a recent post on The Economist’s website. “The changing views of self-identified conservatives must be understood in context: opinion polls show that support for Israel is declining across America. Disenchantment is most acute among Democrats. A majority of those calling themselves ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal’ are now more likely to express sympathy for Palestine than for Israel.”
In recent weeks, we’ve seen Democrats shifting their rhetoric and criticizing Israel more over the starvation crisis in Gaza. Beyond Marjorie Taylor Greene, we haven’t seen a similar move from GOP lawmakers.
This week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) placed a handwritten note in the Western Wall in Jerusalem, visited multiple illegal settlements, and met with Netanyahu.
“Our prayer is that America will always stand with Israel,” he told reporters.
