Why are American Jews so Democratic if Republicans are so pro-Israel?

[Indy Texas]

In America, Jews disproportionately tend to...

(1) Have college degrees
(2) Live in urban areas

Those things, particularly when taken together, make it extremely unlikely that someone is going to vote Republican.

If Republicans really want to win a larger share of the Jewish vote, they should start a campaign to discourage young Jews from attending college and convince them to go live in places like Huntington, WV and Cape Girardeau, MO. Over time, they will "assimilate" to their new surroundings (of course, they will also probably stop identifying as Jewish).

[Indy Texas]

The Republicans weren't consistently "the party of Israel" before 9/11.

The issue wasn't positioned as front and center back then, but if you were very pro-Israel, you wouldn't be dissuaded from voting Republican because you felt they weren't sufficiently pro-Israel.

The closest you ever got to that was George H. W. Bush's first term, and he underwent a dramatic course correction as he geared up for reelection, in no small part to try to placate the increasingly powerful evangelicals in his party.

There were people like Paul Findley and Charles Percy who expressed skepticism about the US-Israel relationship, but they never exercised any real influence on that issue.