Elliott Abrams on Israel, Anti-Zionism, China, AI, and Public Service

​Elliot Abrams is a veteran American diplomat and senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served in prominent, wide-ranging foreign policy roles under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. In this conversation, Abrams reflects on the future of Israel and the Palestinians, contemporary anti-Zionism and its inseparability from rising anti-Semitism, the growing split on the American right over Israel, and how the United States should confront a powerful but fragile China amid an emerging AI-driven strategic rivalry. Abrams also offers candid, practical advice for students aspiring to public service, and how those in diplomatic careers withstand political cycles. Drawing on his years of experience, he contrasts the pace, influence, and pressures of each, and closes by recommending literature for better understanding moral and strategic foundations of American leadership. This is his second time on the blog.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Introduction
BW: Mr. Abrams, thank you for speaking with me.
The last time we spoke, we discussed the moral dimensions of U.S. foreign policy and the balance between realism and democratic ideals. Since then, the world has continued to change, especially with respect to great-power competition and democratic backsliding. I’d love to revisit some of those themes in light of current challenges.
Thank you again for joining me on The Pathway Blog.
EA: Happy to do it.

On the Two-State Solution
BW: Over the past few years—and even before that—you’ve emphasized your belief in the improbability of a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians, from your writings at the Council on Foreign Relations to various podcasts and interviews.
For readers who may not be familiar with your position, why do you believe a two-state solution is unlikely, and what alternative do you propose?
EA: I believe the nature of Palestinian nationalism is the fundamental problem. It has never fundamentally been about creating a Palestinian state; it has been about destroying the Jewish state.
We can go back a hundred years. Take the Peel Commission report in London in 1937. That inquiry grew out of controversy over what should happen to the Palestine Mandate, which had been given to the British after the First World War. The Peel Commission recommended partition into two states—one Arab, one Jewish. The Jews said yes, and the Arabs said no.
In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 181, which again proposed partition: a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish state, by the way, was quite small. Again, the Jews said yes, the Arabs said no, and immediately declared war and invaded.
You can trace this through Camp David, where President Bill Clinton tried to get Yasser Arafat to accept an offer from Ehud Barak. Later, Ehud Olmert tried to get Mahmoud Abbas to agree to an incredibly generous offer. The Palestinians did not accept these proposals.
And I think the reason is that the kind of Palestinian state that would result from such negotiations would not satisfy Palestinian nationalism. The only thing that seems likely to do so is the destruction of the state of Israel and a Palestine that encompasses all of what used to be the Palestine Mandate. That is not going to happen.
There is still no real evidence of majority support among Palestinians for a two-state solution that accepts a permanent Jewish state. You can look at public-opinion polls over the decades, including today; majorities consistently reject it. That’s the first fundamental reason I don’t think a two-state solution has happened or will happen.
Second, Israelis have just been through a terrible crisis after October 7, 2023. We see them now working to create buffer zones around Gaza and in the north, near Lebanon, to prevent Hezbollah and forces in Syria from threatening Israeli civilians.
How likely is it that Israelis—including Israelis on the left—are going to accept a Palestinian state that, for geographical reasons, could be an even more dangerous threat? A Palestinian state in the West Bank would be in the hills overlooking Ben-Gurion Airport and the entire coastal plain, where Israel’s major cities are, as well as Jerusalem.
So I think such a state would be too dangerous, and there’s no reason to believe that a new, weak, independent Palestinian state could prevent a Hamas takeover. That would not only threaten Israel; it would threaten Jordan as well.
So what are the alternatives? For the moment, I don’t think there is an alternative to the current situation—and by “for the moment,” I don’t mean just this month. I mean for years: five, ten, even twenty-five years.
In the end, I do think partition is the right idea: a Jewish entity and a Muslim Arab entity. The question is, what is the nature of that Arab, Palestinian entity? Is it a full sovereign state?
If you look at it realistically, it would be a state without a real economy—no serious exports, no port, no airport, and no security force capable of preventing terrorists from taking over. It seems logical to me that even when that entity is created, it would have to be in a federation or confederation with one of two countries: Israel or Jordan.
To me, the logic suggests a confederation with a Muslim Arab, largely Palestinian state—Jordan—rather than with the Jewish state. That’s my long-run vision: perhaps ten or twenty years from now. We don’t know how the world will change, but I think that’s the logical progression.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism
BW: I was revisiting your 2016 op-ed titled “Anti-Zionism Is the Anti-Semitism of Our Time.” Today, it has become increasingly common among pro-Palestinian advocates to argue that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are distinct—that opposing Zionism doesn’t equate to prejudice against Jews, and that claims to the contrary distract from Israel’s alleged wrongdoing.
What would you say to those who make that argument?
EA: I’d say they should open their eyes, because what we’re seeing today really refutes that argument. What we’re seeing is a mixture of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.
We are not seeing people simply criticize this or that Israeli tactic or policy. We’re seeing, in various places, Jews attacked in the streets—whether in Brooklyn, or London, or Sydney, Australia. When people attack a synagogue, or an individual who appears to be an Orthodox Jew walking down the street, that’s not anti-Zionism. That’s pure anti-Semitism.
I’d also go back to a standard that Natan Sharansky proposed: if the standards you use to judge Israel are imposed on no other country in the world, that’s a sign of anti-Semitism.
If you march in the street because there are deaths in Gaza, okay. Have you ever marched because China is murdering Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang? Have you ever marched about genocide in Sudan? If you’ve never applied the same standards elsewhere—if you don’t care about any of that, but you want to accuse one country and only one country in the world, Israel, of “genocide”—then you’re an anti-Semite.
You don’t need a complicated philosophical argument. We can see it with our own eyes.

The Right, Israel, and Tucker Carlson
BW: Mr. Abrams, as you well know, the political right has become increasingly divided over Israel. We have figures like Ben Shapiro and other neoconservatives who are staunchly supportive of Israel, while others—such as Tucker Carlson and the so-called “Groypers”—are firmly opposed to U.S. support for Israel, with some even suggesting that Israel controls Donald Trump and America.
How do you interpret this divide, and where do you see the future of the Republican Party on this issue?
EA: That’s a big and important question.
First, we should say that criticizing Israeli government policy is not anti-Semitism. Many Israelis criticize their own government at any given time, and many American Jews do as well. So criticism of Israel is not automatically anti-Zionism or anti-Semitism.
However, if you look at someone like Tucker Carlson, what he’s doing is not just anti-Zionism; it’s anti-Semitism.
I say that because of the pattern we see. One week he attacks Israel, and the week before or after he brings on a "phony" historian who claims Hitler was not responsible for the Second World War and never meant to kill Jews—that Churchill is the real villain. Now we’re seeing a pattern, and it’s really not fundamentally about Israel; it’s about Jews.
That was months ago. More recently, he had on an avowed anti-Semite, Nick Fuentes. Again, that’s a pattern.
Anti-Semitism existed long before there was a state of Israel, obviously, and it exists today both on the far left and the far right.
One key question is this: when we see a diminution of support for Israel in the United States—among Christians, among Jews, among Republicans and Democrats—is that all anti-Semitism? My answer is no. A lot of it is a reaction to war in general and a misunderstanding of the nature of this particular war. That’s not necessarily anti-Semitism.
But there is real anti-Semitism, on both extremes. And you and I are speaking in mid-November, at a moment when there’s been a very visible debate about this on the Republican side. I think that debate is a good thing, because we’ve seen people indicate what they think and which side they’re on.
We’ve seen people like Senator Ted Cruz issue strong denunciations of anti-Semitism on the right, and others have done the same. I think this battle will be lost by the anti-Semites.
I asked one senator—I won’t name him—who comes from a border state: when you’re denounced by Tucker Carlson, do you get phone calls and mail from home, from your state, from people who’ve been persuaded by him and are denouncing you on those grounds? The answer was no.
So I don’t think this kind of vicious anti-Semitism that Carlson is now purveying on his show is selling very well.
I do worry about the declining levels of support for Israel we’ve seen over the last few years, especially among people under about 30 or 35. But that’s a different problem from classic anti-Semitism. I worry about the anti-Semitism we are seeing, but I believe it will ultimately be defeated in both parties.

Balancing Competition and Coexistence with China
BW: Last time, you said that the defining challenge for my generation would be confronting a militarily powerful but economically interdependent China.
How should the United States balance competition and coexistence with China without repeating Cold War mistakes or abandoning democratic allies in the process?
EA: There’s no magic formula.
In the Cold War, the formula was “containment”: we would try to prevent the Soviet Union from expanding its influence and alliances around the world, in the belief that its internal contradictions would eventually cause it to collapse. It took a long time—from 1917 to 1991—but that’s what happened.
President Reagan was absolutely persuaded this would happen. He probably thought it would take much longer than it did. He left office in January 1989; the Soviet Union collapsed less than three years later. If you’d asked him, “Will this happen in two years?” he would have said no—maybe twenty years. But he believed it was coming.
In the case of China, many fundamentals are the same: maintaining American military strength; maintaining American alliances in Europe, in the Middle East, and particularly in Asia; and maintaining our support for liberty and human rights.
We did support human rights during the Cold War, but there were many occasions when we didn’t. There’s a famous line attributed to Franklin Roosevelt about Anastasio Somoza, the dictator of Nicaragua: “He’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” We did too much of that—too much turning a blind eye to repression.
A good example is Iran. I think the people of Iran are very much on our side against the ayatollahs, and we should be saying far more about freedom for the Iranian people.
So with China, I’d say fundamentally the same: not every country that’s worried about China and wants to be friendly with us is a democracy—Vietnam is a good example—but most are: Taiwan, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and others.
In the long run, I think we will have the Chinese people on our side too. Since roughly 1850, Chinese thinkers have been trying to figure out how to modernize. They got rid of the colonial powers. They have obviously figured out the economic part to a significant extent, but they have not figured out the political part. China today remains a vicious dictatorship of the Communist Party, and the contradictions are starting to show.
The population has begun to decline, partly because of the one-child policy they had for decades. They can’t get people to have enough children to reach the replacement rate of 2.1, and they don’t take immigrants. India has already surpassed China in population, and the gap will grow.
We see other strains in their economy. Their model was essentially to produce much, much more than they could consume—keep the Chinese people essentially poor—and let foreigners consume and pay. That model is starting to break down. You can attribute part of that to President Trump, but you see it in Europe as well. The idea that China would be the workshop of the world and nobody else would produce anything—that’s not acceptable to Europeans either, who don’t want their own manufacturing hollowed out.
So I think we’ve seen “peak China” economically. I don’t think we’ve seen “peak China” militarily, because they keep building.
Our job is to maintain our principles—our support for freedom—maintain our military strength, and maintain our alliances.

AI as a “New Cold War”
BW: On this note of Cold War strategy: The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday describing the AI rivalry between the U.S. and China as a new Cold War for technological supremacy.
You’ve spent your career navigating contests defined by power, belief, and legitimacy. Do you think this AI rivalry will transform how nations exercise power—not just how they compete for it? And if so, are our existing institutions of diplomacy and deterrence equipped for that kind of conflict?
EA: I may be old-fashioned here, but I don’t think AI changes the fundamentals.
Once upon a time, nations competed with armies and navies—that was true for thousands of years. Then air power came along, but it didn’t change the basic nature of war. Then came nuclear weapons. You could argue they’ve prevented a great Third World War, but they certainly have not prevented massive conflicts. We lost roughly 50,000 men in Korea and another 50,000 in Vietnam, and we’ve been involved in a number of other wars—Afghanistan, Iraq, and so on. The Russians, who have nuclear weapons, are currently fighting a ground war in Ukraine.
The weaponry changes. Once it was air power; now it’s drones. AI will change the way wars are fought—for example, by permitting much better targeting—but I don’t think it changes the fundamentals.
In this century, in the great strategic struggle between the U.S. and China, AI is critical as an economic factor, and it will probably be critical on the military side as well. But that doesn’t mean the basic nature of interstate conflict has changed.
Weapons always change. We won World War II largely because of the American industrial base that had been developed in the century leading up to it. Later, when nuclear weapons came along, the industrial base became somewhat less central, because countries with little industrial capacity could still acquire nuclear weapons.
To me, AI is the most recent—and in some ways perhaps the most powerful—new tool. But it’s not a weapon in itself; it changes the effectiveness of weapons that already exist. It will certainly affect how we acquire and use intelligence about our adversaries. But at the most fundamental level, it doesn’t change the underlying dynamics of interstate relations, especially hostile ones.

Skills for Public Service in an Age of Cynicism
BW: I want to turn to advice for students. You closed our last interview by encouraging young people to “get involved.”
What specific skills or habits distinguish those who rise to positions of real influence in government today—especially in an era dominated by social media and growing public cynicism?
EA: Let me mention something at the beginning that people sometimes overlook: luck. It’s a factor in everyone’s life.
You may be ready for a senior government position at precisely the time when the party you’re affiliated with is out of power for four, eight, twelve, even sixteen years. Then you won’t get the position you otherwise might have, and there’s no way to control that—elections determine it.
That said, there are things you can control. One is energy. Some people simply have more energy and are more hardworking. That’s true for students, and it’s true for government employees and officials.
Some people get up earlier and go to sleep later. Some spend more time studying, reading, working, writing. Government jobs are demanding in that sense. When I worked in the White House—eight years under George W. Bush—I got up at 4:30 each day, was in the office by 6:00, and stayed about twelve hours, Monday through Friday. If you can’t or don’t want to do that, many positions just aren’t going to be open to you.
Second, the ability to write and speak clearly and concisely. I have the impression that a smaller percentage of college students today meet that standard than fifty or a hundred years ago.
What do I mean? If you cannot speak for a paragraph—about the war in Gaza, about China, or even about the baseball World Series—without using the word “like” in every sentence, you’re not speaking clearly. And people listening will think: if you can’t speak logically, cogently, effectively, carefully, maybe you don’t think that way either.
I meet lots of people who seem quite smart, in their mid-twenties, who can’t do this. Their sentences are filled with “so I’m like” and “then she’s like” and “I wasn’t really so interested, like, in…” I’m sorry, but you’re not going to get ahead if you can’t stop doing that.
There’s a parallel in reading and writing. People who teach at universities tell me there’s much less reading, and that students react negatively when they’re assigned a lot of it. If you don’t read a lot, it’s unlikely you’ll write well. And writing well is critical in most important government jobs.
Take someone working on the National Security Council staff. The president is going to speak with the president of Egypt in ninety minutes. You have thirty minutes to write a memo that says: here are the major issues, here’s what he might raise, and here’s what you might want to raise. That assumes you have the knowledge, but you also need to do something with it.
You have to be able to put that knowledge into a clear, concise memo—on a screen and then on paper—for the president. You must be able to write it quickly and coherently.
There’s a related concept called the “elevator briefing.” If you work for a senator or a cabinet member, they may say, “Come with me. I’ve got a CNN interview in five minutes. Brief me in the elevator.” You have to be able to do that—think clearly and speak clearly, on the spot.
So I’d say: energy; and then reading, writing, and speaking.
One of the best ways to learn those skills is to write. When students at places like Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service or Harvard’s Kennedy School ask me how to start a career, one of the things I tell them is: start writing.
We live in an environment where it’s relatively easy to get published. There are so many Substacks and websites—some run by students—that if you write something good, it can find an audience. It’s an excellent way to train yourself to think clearly and write clearly.
And later, when you want a job, the person hiring you is likely to ask, “Who is she? Who is he? What have they done?” If the answer is, “Here are a bunch of articles and analyses this person has written,” you have a much better chance of getting that job.

Careers, Parties, and the Role of Luck
BW: That’s all incredible advice. I was especially struck by what you said about luck, because it’s something people don't emphasize enough when talking about careers in politics.
For those who spend years investing in a particular party or policy world and then find that their party simply isn’t the one in power, what do they do? What paths do you see people in that position pursue?
EA: You have to make a decision at a reasonably young age—during or just after college—about whether you want foreign affairs to be your full-time career.
When I taught at Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, the advice I gave was this: if you want to do foreign affairs full-time and don’t want your career to depend on luck and party control, then join the civil service in some part of the government—be a civilian at the Defense Department, join the CIA, join the Foreign Service, something like that. Then you know you’ll be working on foreign policy your whole career.
The downside is that you’re joining a big bureaucracy, and you may not like that.
If you don’t want to do that, then you need to figure out how you’re going to make a living between political appointments. If you’re aligned with one party, you go in when they go in—but they’ll be out about half the time. What do you do then?
I often urge people coming out of college: if you can get a job as an intern or research assistant in Congress, especially on foreign-policy issues, do that for a couple of years. But then get a career going in something like law or finance—traditionally those have been the main routes.
Today, that might mean going to business school or law school, and then working at a place like J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, or at a law firm. That way, you can serve in government when your party is in power, and when you come out, you have a profession to return to.

Working at the State Department vs. the NSC
BW: As we wrap up, I’d like to ask more about your time at the State Department, since that’s where I'm hoping to start my own career at the moment.
What were your biggest takeaways from your time there, and how did that experience compare to other positions you’ve held in government?
EA: I loved working at the State Department. I was there for about ten years.
The downside is that it’s a big bureaucracy. You have lots of meetings that take up too much time, and you have to clear things with what can seem like an endless number of offices. There are real frustrations that come from working in a building with several thousand people.
But I found many talented and dedicated people there—in the Foreign Service, in the civil service, and among political appointees. Over time, as people rotate through different posts, you see them overseas, you see them in Washington; it’s a rich professional community.
I also worked on Capitol Hill, which is very different, and at the National Security Council. The key difference between State and the NSC is that in most administrations—perhaps less so in the Trump years—you’re simply much closer to the president at the NSC.
You’re not just writing memos or making points at meetings. You’re right there where the decisions are made. You’re one or two steps away from the president. When I was doing this, between me and the president was the national security adviser. If the president was talking about the Middle East, if he had a guest from the Middle East, if he was traveling to the Middle East, I was there.
That’s immensely exciting, and you have a real chance to influence the president and the policies he carries out in a very direct way. At the State Department, your influence is more indirect, though still important. And the pace at the White House is simply tougher: the hours are longer, and the strain is greater.
When there’s a national or foreign-policy crisis, the shock is felt immediately in the White House. It’s felt at the State Department too, but often in a less immediate way.

Recommended Reading
BW: Finally, when we last spoke, you recommended Peter Rodman’s Presidential Command. As is customary with this blog, I’d like to end by asking if there are any new books, essays, or thinkers you’d suggest to young readers who want to understand the moral and strategic dimensions of American leadership.
EA: It’s always worth reading Present at the Creation, Dean Acheson’s memoir of his time as Secretary of State in the Truman administration. It’s beautifully written, and it’s a fascinating account of the diplomacy at the end of World War II and the start of the Cold War—the creation of the world order we’ve essentially lived in since then.
Why don’t I stick with that one for the moment.
BW: Wonderful. Mr. Abrams, thank you again for taking the time to speak with me. Your advice is truly invaluable, especially for someone like me who’s hoping to work at the State Department—hopefully even as soon as this coming summer, when I’m applying for State Department internships. I look forward to reaching back out and letting you know how it goes.
EA: Good. It was very good to speak with you again.
BW: Great to speak with you as well. Have a great day.
EA: You too.