Americans’ identification with Israel is deeply rooted in American political culture. Since the turn of the millennium, sympathy for Israel has grown to new heights. At the same time the debate over how to handle the Arab-Israeli conflict has become increasingly divisive, and these divisions increasingly line up with the major political, ideological, and religious divides in America. This is the “Israel paradox” in American political culture. The paradoxical growth of both support for Israel and controversy surrounding its policies actually share some common foundations. The consequences of widespread identification with Israel are not confined to support for the Jewish state. Rather, identification with Israel means that what Israel does and what is done to Israel carries with it an unusually high degree of symbolic meaning for Americans. Consequently, more is symbolically at stake in the Arab-Israeli conflict than in other conflicts around the world.