Disclaimer: I have no idea. All of this is just based on my own capacity for bullshitting my way through the topic. That being said, here's what I think:
But does it, though? Like, speaking purely from an amoral, realpolitik perspective, Israel is actually... really unhelpful to US interests. For most Arab states, the point that sticks in the craw of aligning with the USA (which they generally do reluctantly anyway) is the continued support of Israel
Yeah but they keep things unstable. Think of, like, if a bunch of aliens came to the US and took over Kansas, and they arbitrarily enslaved everyone in Missouri, and every so often there was a war, and we just couldn't get rid of them. Would it make us more effective, or less effective, on the world stage? I mean even if we knew that the Russians were allied with the aliens, or something, we'd hate the Russians for it, but the bottom line is we'd be significantly distracted with them to the detriment of our ability to organize and get shit done. The Russians would benefit a lot even if it made us hate them.
It is not a perfect analogy by any means. But you get what I'm saying hopefully. I think it keeps things chaotic and fractured, more so than if Israel didn't exist or just kept to itself. I think whatever we do, the Arab world is unlikely to start cooperating with us fully, especially since "cooperating with us" in our eyes is usually pretty exploitative. The US government isn't really bothered by positive or negative feedback from the rest of the world.
And that is, namely, the utilization of unlimited dark money and a massive and successful popular propaganda arm amongst voters.
I think that used to be true. Around the 1980s when a lot of our Israel policy crystallized into its modern form, there were still a lot of literal holocaust survivors running around, people in general in the US were a lot more tribal in their mentality and politics, and so even a whiff of not supporting Israel was a death sentence domestically. I feel like what you're talking about is a huge part of how our Israel policy got to be the way it is, but I feel like it's just not that way anymore. I feel like people's mentality and the blocs that do or don't support things are just radically differently structured now. Again I base this on nothing but my own bullshit, so you're free to disagree with me.
If we want to change this state of affairs, we have to start with public opinion - and only then can we meaningfully change policy.
I think that's happening. Israel has done plenty of real fucked up things from time to time for decades now and it feels like the backlash now is a lot more loud and sustained than it was. Maybe it'll produce some results in how the US government deals with them; I hope so.