In the late 1970’s, Jerry Falwell came up with an idea. He would wrap his brand of evangelicalism in the flag by holding “I Love America” rallies where he would rail against the separation of church and state and uphold “traditional family values.” From the beginning, it wasn’t pretty. At a 1979 “I Love America” rally in Richmond, Virginia, Falwell amused the crowd by saying a Jew “can make more money accidentally than you can on purpose.” When questioned about this, he of course said it was just a joke.

The next year, he organized a meeting at the Blair House between evangelical leaders and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin of the right-wing Likud Party.

At first glance, it would seem to have been an unlikely gathering. On one side of the Blair House drawing room, seated on the antique chairs and nodding politely, were eight evangelical Christian ministers, some of them champions of television time religion. On the other chairs sat Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ephraim Evron, and an aide or two.

“I worship a Jew,” said Rev. Dr. James Kennedy during the half-hour meeting, in the process of explaining the fundamentalists’ affinity for Israel. “I love Him supremely amongst all things . . . Jesus Christ loves you,” he told Begin, who promptly invited them all to visit Israel as his personal guests.

The meeting was arranged by Rev. Jerry Falwell of Lynchburg, Va., and the Israeli Embassy. Falwell, who heads the 16,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church and its broadcast adjunct, the Old Time Gospel Hour, has in years past collected money to plant a forest in Israel, and has visited there three times…

“We are different from the Christians who persecuted Jews in the Middle Ages,” said Rev. Kennedy. “We have ourselves been persecuted.”

For Begin, he saw the advantage if getting some political support from America’s religious right. His political movement was intent on putting settlers in Gaza, the Golan Heights and the West Bank, with the goal of permanent annexation. This was opposed at the time by mainline American churches, as well as the U.S. government.

…both the Zionists and the Evangelists are miffed at the National Council of Churches. Jewish groups have denounced a council executive committee suggestion that the U.S. should talk to the Palestine Liberation Organization, and boycotted meetings the council held this year in the process of developing a Middle East policy.

“The vast majority of quote-unquote Christians in America are evangelical,” Falwell said. “Our members far exceed the more liberal National Council of Churches which is moving toward an anti-Israel position.”

At this point, in 1980, Israel’s history had been dominated by the left-wing Labor Party, and Begin’s Likud Party takeover was still fresh. Their basic take was that mainstream American churches were being suckered by “third-world propaganda influences” into supporting Palestinian rights. Wrapping their arms around anti-Semitic televangelists like Falwell seemed like a good way to counter this, and lessen the pressure from the American government to make compromises.

The religious right had a Southern Baptist president in the White House, but they chose to throw their support to Ronald Reagan in that year’s election. This immediately transformed the Republican Party which had historically been completely non-competitive in the American South but would soon come to dominate there.

But this unholy alliance is now in trouble. As Politico’s Playbook discusses today, the MAGA movement is not reflexively supportive of Israel’s Likud Party and its leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

“It seems that for the under-30-year-old MAGA base, Israel has almost no support, and Netanyahu’s attempt to save himself politically by dragging America in deeper to another Middle East war has turned off a large swath of older MAGA diehards,” Steve Bannon, the influential former White House adviser with a fingertip feel for Trump’s base, tells Playbook.

One result of this is that less than a third of Americans, according to Gallup, now support Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip. And the skepticism is bipartisan. According to Data for Progress, among American New York State Democrats, only four percent have a very favorable opinion of Netanyahu compared to 63 percent who have a very unfavorable opinion. Among Democrats who voted in the New York City mayoral primary and said foreign policy was important in their choice, 78 percent said the U.S. should “reduce support for Israel.”

Needless to say, New York has the largest Jewish population by both numbers and percentage in the United States, so we can rightfully expect support for Israel among Democrats to be higher here than in any other state.

Essentially, there is a growing split in both major American political parties on support for Israel. And, truthfully, there’s a growing split among American Jews, too.

This shouldn’t be surprising, because even in Israel itself, the Jewish population is increasingly split on the treatment of Gazans.

Abhorrence of Israel’s devastating war in Gaza has resonated for months in capitals and in university campuses abroad. Now, a growing number of Israelis are speaking out against what they describe as atrocities carried out in their name in the Palestinian enclave.

Israeli protesters are holding aloft portraits of Palestinian children killed in Gaza. Academics and authors, politicians and retired military leaders are accusing the Israeli government of indiscriminate killing and war crimes.

There’s no question that Netanyahu has enjoyed a spectacular run of victories over Israel’s traditional enemies, so he has a pretty strong baseline of support in Israel, but it’s much weaker than you’d expect. And I think it can erode a lot more, and quickly, if it becomes apparent that his actions have put American support for Israel at long-term risk.