For lifelong supporters of Israel like me, its war in Gaza is a gut-check moment.

Like many American Jews, I was brought up believing that Israel was a light on to the nations, that the United States should always support Israel, and that, indeed, support for Israel was inseparable from the Jewish faith. As I grew older, I lost my religious faith but maintained my love of the Jewish state, a vibrant, Western-style democracy in the heart of the Middle East.

I have visited Israel many times over the years and always came away impressed by the resilience of its people, the richness of its culture, the professionalism of its armed forces, the dynamism of its economy and the astonishing success it has enjoyed in one of the world’s toughest neighbourhoods. Who could have imagined that tiny Israel, with almost no natural resources, would have a higher per-capita gross domestic product than Saudi Arabia?

Now I am struggling to reconcile the Israel that I know and love with the country that is inflicting so much suffering on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It will not do to deny, as the Government of Israel does, that its actions have caused countless deaths of innocents. There is no doubt that Israel is responsible for the famine now gripping Gaza, and for attacks that have killed many civilians.

It is true that Hamas started this conflict with its horrific, unprovoked attack on October 7, 2023, and Hamas continues to hold the people of Gaza hostage. It is also true, as Israel’s defenders argue, that if Hamas were to unconditionally surrender, Israel would lift the siege of Gaza.

But Hamas is a death cult, a terrorist organisation that has no regard for the lives of its own people, and that in fact sees Palestinian suffering as a powerful weapon in its propaganda arsenal. Hamas’s inhumanity cannot be an excuse for Israel to lose its own humanity — and thereby to violate the basic principle of international law that an occupying power must protect the civilians under its control.

Like most Americans, I supported Israel’s right to hit back after it was attacked. But the war has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Israel’s military leaders concluded last year that there was nothing more to be accomplished by military operations in Gaza. Yet the Israel Defence Forces continue to pound the rubble. I wince every time I see the photos of starving children in Gaza or read reports of Israeli soldiers firing on starving Gazans desperate for humanitarian aid.

I still hesitate to describe Israel’s action as a “genocide”, even though that is a term increasingly being used by scholars and human rights organisations — even Israeli human rights organisations. But I do know that what I am seeing is wrong. An Israeli army reservist, who served for months in Gaza and now refuses to go back, summed up my own feelings: “Every day people now are killed, and for what?” he told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s no longer a just war.”

But I am also troubled by the turn in international public opinion against the state of Israel. It is perfectly understandable that in a recent Gallup poll, only 32 per cent of Americans back the Gaza war — a new low. I am more concerned that, in a Pew Research Centre poll taken even before the famine, a majority of Americans — 53 per cent — had an unfavourable view of Israel. Among Democrats, that’s 69 per cent. Even half of all Republicans under age 50 say they have an unfavourable view of the Jewish state.

Israel is losing an entire generation of Americans, with Democrats, in particular, turning against the US-Israel alliance. A majority of Senate Democrats just voted to block sales of some weapons to Israel, and leading Democratic activists are suggesting that cutting off aid to Israel should be a litmus test in the party.

I am in favour of pausing arms sales to Israel to force the Netanyahu government to act more humanely in Gaza, but I am opposed to any fundamental rethinking of the US’s long-term alliance with Israel, one of our most dependable and useful allies in the region. I hope — and I know that this is asking for a lot in the present, superheated moment — that Americans can separate the actions of Israel’s government from judgments about the country’s moral and strategic worth.

Please keep in mind that, while Israel acts abominably towards the people of Gaza —and, to a lesser extent, Palestinians in the West Bank — it grants near-equal civil rights to some two million Arab-Israelis, about 20 per cent of the population. Yes, they are discriminated against in the way that minorities have often been in US history. But they can also vote, and Arab representatives sit in the Knesset. They even joined the governing coalition in 2021. It would be unthinkable for Jews in any Arab country to enjoy the political or professional opportunities that Arabs have in the Jewish state.

It goes without saying that Israelis of all persuasions and backgrounds have freedom of speech and the right to protest their government. An increasing range of Israeli voices is now speaking up against the war in Gaza. It is true that many Jewish-Israelis express disturbingly little concern about the fate of the Palestinians; they were traumatised and dehumanised by the events of October 7, much as Americans were after December 7, 1941. But most Israelis still oppose annexing Gaza and distrust Binyamin Netanyahu. And the vast majority — 74 per cent in one recent poll — favours making a deal with Hamas to release the remaining hostages in return for an end to the war.

Netanyahu, presiding over a minority government, is ignoring popular opinion. Instead, he is listening to the extremists in his own cabinet who demand that the war continue until Hamas is eradicated because he needs their support to stay in power. This is reminiscent of the way that Republicans in the United States often cater to their base, even when its views are at odds with the majority.

But supporters of Israel should be able to draw a distinction between the Government and the people. Israel’s actions in Gaza, awful as they are, are not a reason to write off the entire country — any more than US actions in Vietnam or Iraq were a reason to write off the United States. Like many countries, Israel often falls short of its ideals, but that is an argument for changing its behaviour, not condemning the entire country.

I continue to believe that it’s possible to love Israel and to hate its war in Gaza. But, these days, it’s not easy.

• Max Boot is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. A Pulitzer Prize finalist in biography, he is the author, most recently, of The New York Times bestseller Reagan: His Life and Legend, which was named one of the ten best books of 2024