Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, Israel President Issac Herzog, second from left, at the reinterment of the remains of Shimon and Rivka Herzl, Theodor Herzl’s grandparents. (Photo by Gobi Gideon \/ GPO)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
While antisemitism, the media, and propaganda certainly played a role, it is impossible to evade the reality that Netanyahu has governed Israel for most of the last 19 years\u2014the very period in which American attitudes toward Israel have deteriorated. He cannot plausibly take credit for Israel\u2019s diplomatic and political successes while assigning responsibility for its failures to TikTok.<\/p>\n
And the decline is too broad to dismiss as the work of leftists and bots. Support has fallen among the young, Blacks, Hispanics, Catholics, evangelicals, independents, Democrats\u2014and even Republicans. Gallup\u2019s long-term polling illustrates a dramatic reversal: after decades in which Americans sympathized far more with Israel than with the Palestinians, its latest survey found Palestinians ahead, 41% to 36%.<\/p>\n
The erosion among Democrats and independents is catastrophic, but Republicans are not immune. Pew found that only two constituencies still had majority-favorable views of Israel: Republicans over 50 and white evangelicals. Even they are moving away\u2014favorability fell 12 points among older Republicans and 15 points among white evangelicals. Among every other group Pew measured, favorability was below 50%.<\/p>\n
A Marquette University poll offered an even more ominous warning about Israel\u2019s future support: 58% of Republicans, 65% of independents, and 84% of Democrats ages 18\u201329 viewed Israel unfavorably.<\/p>\n
Pollsters rarely ask enough questions to determine precisely why Americans have changed their views of Israel, so attributing the decline to particular policies necessarily involves some inference. One revealing exception was the Yale Youth Poll, which asked respondents whether Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza had affected their attitudes. One-third said those actions had made them view Israel more negatively. Among 18\u201322-year-olds, the figure was 52%; among college graduates, 42%; among those with professional or graduate degrees, 55%; and among Democrats, 58%.<\/p>\n
A long list of Israeli policies has alienated portions of the American public: the judicial overhaul, settlement expansion, settler violence, aspects of the IDF\u2019s conduct, the carnage in Gaza, the absence of a credible peace process, opposition to a two-state solution, and the perception that Israel dragged the United States into war with Iran.<\/p>\n
Some of those criticisms are unfair. Israel\u2019s security dilemmas are often ignored. Many actions are magnified or distorted by hostile media and propagandists. But Israel does not get to choose which facts Americans see or which images shape their opinions.<\/p>\n
That is especially true of Gaza. Hamas deliberately embeds itself among civilians and bears responsibility for starting the war and using its own population as human shields. Those facts matter. But they have not prevented Americans from seeing devastated neighborhoods and thousands of dead civilians. As CNN analyst Van Jones observed, many young Americans have come to know Israel primarily through images of Palestinians being killed. Explanations of Hamas\u2019s tactics may be accurate, but for many viewers, they cannot compete with the images on their screens.<\/p>\n
Policy is only part of the story. Netanyahu himself has become a liability.<\/p>\n
He antagonized Democrats by going to Congress to campaign publicly against President Barack Obama\u2019s signature foreign-policy initiative. His treatment of Obama contrasted sharply with his conspicuous deference to Donald Trump, reinforcing the perception among Democrats that Israel had become a partisan cause. Then, when Joe Biden defied progressive critics to provide Israel extraordinary military and diplomatic support after October 7, Netanyahu repeatedly attacked the administration that was supplying the weapons and diplomatic protection Israel desperately needed. Meanwhile, extremist ministers in his own government repeatedly supplied Israel\u2019s critics with incendiary quotations and behavior that Netanyahu was unwilling or unable to restrain.<\/p>\n
The polling suggests Americans increasingly associate those policies with Netanyahu personally. His Gallup favorability rating peaked at 48% in 2017 and subsequently fell to 29%, while a majority came to view him unfavorably. The decisive break occurred after Oct. 2023.<\/p>\n
Other surveys tell much the same story: Harvard\/Harris measured Netanyahu at 24% favorable; Quinnipiac at 20%; AP\/NORC at 20%; and Economist\/YouGov at 22%. The last found 54% viewing him unfavorably. In the AP\/NORC survey, 59% of Jews had an unfavorable opinion of Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
There remains a huge partisan divide. Gallup found 67% of Republicans viewed Netanyahu favorably, compared with only 19% of independents and 9% of Democrats. That may comfort Netanyahu\u2019s admirers. It should alarm anyone concerned about the long-term U.S.-Israel relationship. Israel cannot afford to be popular only with one American political party.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu once impressed American audiences with his erudite explanation of Israel\u2019s case. Today, he too often appears defensive and repetitive, burdened by corruption allegations and seemingly incapable of acknowledging mistakes.<\/p>\n
Israelis and Americans have complained about Israel\u2019s terrible public relations for decades. After barely funding hasbara, the government has only recently decided to invest significant dollars, but the issue is only partially the lack of a coherent and effective communications strategy. The bigger problem is Israeli policy. As Shimon Peres observed: \u201cIf you have a good policy, you do not need public relations, and if you have a bad policy, public relations will not help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consider the messages Americans have received in just the last week. Israel rejected the Trump administration\u2019s Gaza peace plan. Whatever the legitimate objections\u2014and there are legitimate objections\u2014the headline reinforced the existing perception that Netanyahu opposes any political resolution with the Palestinians.<\/p>\n
Then Defense Minister Israel Katz declared that Israel was \u201cdestroying all the houses\u201d where the IDF operated in southern Lebanon and said Israel intended to maintain a permanent presence there, prompting the State Department to say his remarks were inconsistent with commitments Israel had made in negotiations with Lebanon. Again, whatever the security rationale, the political message reaching Americans was simple: Israel was saying no to peace and yes to occupation.<\/p>\n
Reports of settler attacks in the West Bank appear almost weekly. Some omit crucial context; others are inaccurate or deliberately inflammatory. But they reinforce the belief that settlements are an obstacle to peace and that Netanyahu\u2019s government tolerates violence against Palestinians. The latest incident was serious enough that U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee\u2014a staunch ally\u2014called the settlers involved \u201cterrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such incidents add fuel to the fire that already is raging out of control, and critics on the right and left are happy to fan the flames. Former Obama and Biden officials routinely attack Israeli policies in the press. On the right, Tucker Carlson and other isolationists have mainstreamed conspiracy theories about Israel once confined to the political fringe. Administration figures hostile toward Israel have repeatedly leaked stories to the Washington Post and New York Times. The latest was a report suggesting that Israeli intelligence fabricated an Iranian plot to assassinate the president when he left Turkey to incite Trump to resume the war.<\/p>\n
Trump has not helped matters by publicly criticizing Netanyahu, calling him \u201cfucking crazy\u201d and \u201ca very difficult guy,\u201d while suggesting that the Israeli prime minister has been insufficiently grateful for U.S. support. He reportedly told Netanyahu, \u201cEverybody hates you now\u201d and \u201cEverybody hates Israel\u201d after Israeli actions in Lebanon that Trump insisted \u201cshould not have happened.\u201d On another occasion, Trump complained that \u201cIsrael\u2019s fighting Hezbollah too long and too many people are being killed,\u201d and specifically condemned Israeli strikes on apartment buildings housing civilians in Lebanon, describing one attack as \u201cvicious.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vice President JD Vance has also lashed out at Israeli critics of the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, telling Netanyahu\u2019s cabinet members that \u201canyone in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in,\u201d pointedly reminding them that two-thirds of Israel\u2019s defensive weapons were paid for with \u201cAmerican tax dollars\u201d and that Trump is \u201cthe only powerful ally\u201d Israel has left. He also has promoted antisemitic conspiracies and tropes when he told podcaster Joe Rogan that Jeffrey Epstein \u201cclearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence\u201d \u2014 a claim for which no evidence exists \u2014 and accused figures inside the Israeli government of covertly working to sabotage his Iran diplomacy through a \u201cforeign influence campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
Golda Meir famously expressed Israel\u2019s ultimate priority: \u201cIf we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we\u2019d rather be alive and have the bad image.\u201d<\/p>\n
For decades, Israel managed both to defend itself and to maintain broad sympathy among Americans. The environment is unquestionably more hostile today, but that does not make restoring support impossible.<\/p>\n
However, blaming external variables for Israel\u2019s collapse in American public opinion is a formula for further deterioration of the relationship. Israel is losing not merely progressives who may never have been sympathetic to it, but young people, independents, Catholics, and even Republicans and evangelicals who once formed the foundation of its American support.<\/p>\n
No bot farm accomplished that on its own.<\/p>\n
Israel needs better public diplomacy, but that cannot sell policies Americans abhor or rehabilitate a prime minister they intensely dislike. The evidence points to the need for both different policies and new leadership.<\/p>\n
Israeli voters will render their own verdict soon enough, and Americans shouldn\u2019t expect their approval to carry much weight. Security concerns will always outweigh popularity.<\/p>\n
But Israelis should have no illusions that their choice will have no impact abroad.<\/p>\n
Mitchell Bard, Ph.D, is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and a foreign policy analyst who lectures frequently on U.S.-Middle East policy. <\/em><\/p>\n
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