At what point do citizens become responsible for the actions of their government?

As a dual American and Israeli citizen, I have found myself living with this question on two fronts.

When Trump was first elected in 2016, he lost the popular vote. Many Americans did not support him. Voter turnout was low, and it was possible to argue that the outcome did not fully reflect the will of the people. I struggled with whether the American people were responsible. My conclusion, at the time, was that they were at least in part. Not because they all supported him, but because too many either supported him or chose not to oppose him. In a democracy, indifference is not neutral. It is a form of participation.

Then came 2020. Americans made a different choice and Trump lost. A correction was made, and that mattered. Democracies make mistakes, but in 2020 America corrected itself.

Then came 2024, and the same choice was presented again. This time Trump was elected with a majority of the vote. It is hard to argue now that the outcome is accidental or circumstantial. A pattern is not a mistake.

Israel, for me, has felt different so far.

Netanyahu’s return to power nearly four years ago was the product of a fragmented political system where small shifts could easily have produced a different result. For instance, had the Israeli Arab voters came out in their usual numbers or had the left wing parties been better organized, the election would have easily had a different outcome. Because of that, I have not held the Israeli people broadly responsible for the actions of their government. But Israel now faces elections again. The outcome is genuinely uncertain. Netanyahu may well lose. If he does, that changes the argument entirely. A people who choose differently when given the chance cannot be held accountable for what came before. But if Israel votes him back in, I will be one of the first to condemn the country I love. Repeated outcomes are not accidents. And where people have real alternatives but consistently reach for the same one, that choice eventually belongs to them.

This leads to a more uncomfortable question: what do you do when you fundamentally disagree with the direction of your country? There are really only three options ; stay and fight, disengage, or leave. Most just disengage.

Deborah and I have taken the last path, and now twice. We left the United States after 2016. We left Israel before the war of October 7, 2023. We now live in Lecce, a city we love, in a country we respect, but one we do not fully feel part of.

Leaving the United States was not a difficult choice for me. Leaving Israel was. I loved living there. But at this point in my life, I wanted a degree of peace for Deborah and for me. I felt there was little I could do to influence what was happening.

While I do not feel Italian, I feel at peace here. I still worry about my family and friends in the United States and in Israel. That worry doesn’t go away. But what happens in those countries now belongs to the people who stayed. And what they choose to do next is on them.