Except for southern “blue dog” Democrats, Abortion is a relatively “safe” topic to pander to single-issue voters on because the only people hyper-opposed to it are single-issue voters on the other side who were never going to vote liberal anyways. There’s virtually no down-side.
Israel is a more thorny & nuanced issue for Democrats though and not as clear cut. Israel is committing genocide and we shouldn’t be supporting them, but there’s alot of Jewish-American voters in key states, you’ve got AIPAC and a plethora of other Jewish/Israeli lobbies with alot of influence, you’ve got big military contractors who like Israeli money, and then you’ve got bigwigs in the military who see Israel as a strategic partner. Completely dropping support for Israel risks upsetting alot of interests and handing them over to Republicans to be used against Democrats. It’s shitty, but I’m assuming that’s the calculus going on with Democratic leadership.
Also, Israel is much much less reliant on the US for aid than in times past, and I think there’s a fear that if we stop supplying them, somebody else will and then we’ll have absolutely no influence over anything they do. We have much less influence over them than alot of people think. If they saddle up with China or Russia, the gloves come off and I think we’d see it much worse than it is now. As hard as that is to imagine, it can always get worse. And if we let Republicans get control, it will get worse.
Also, Israel is much much less reliant on the US for aid than in times past, and I think there’s a fear that if we stop supplying them, somebody else will and then we’ll have absolutely no influence over anything they do.
It seems like the prevailing narrative tries as hard as it can to bury this fact. Unilaterally withdrawing aid doesn’t magically make Israel stop what they’re doing, they can easily get support elsewhere. All unilaterally withdrawing does is throw away our only real bargaining chip to try and nudge them toward ceasefire.
