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Who in America remembers Yitzhak Rabin? It is a safe bet that few under 40 would recall the courageous prime minister of Israel who sought peace with the Palestinians. His 1995 assassination by an Israeli extremist prompted the country’s rightward turn and the dawn of the age of Benjamin Netanyahu. That shows no signs of waning. There should be no mystery as to why younger Americans are as pro-Palestinian today as their forebears were once pro-Israeli. Rabin staked his life on peace. What will posterity say of Netanyahu?
The change in US sentiment is nevertheless stark. Sixty per cent of Americans now view Israel unfavourably, according to Pew. The younger they are, the higher that number. Three-quarters of 18- to 29-year-olds sympathise more with Palestinians than Israelis, according to a separate NBC poll last weekend. As boomers die off, America’s anti-Israeli tilt is likely to harden. Fewer and fewer Americans think of Israel as David standing up to the Arab world’s Goliath. More and more associate it with heavy-handed militarism.
There is even a non-trivial risk that Israel could fall out with President Donald Trump. At some point Trump will strike a deal with Iran’s regime to end Operation Epic Fury. Whatever the contours, Israel is almost certain to be against it. Americans have taken note of Netanyahu’s sway in convincing Trump that it was a good idea to attack Iran in the first place. Pro-Israeli groups have wasted a lot of goodwill accusing those who observe Netanyahu’s influence of spreading antisemitic tropes. That would make antisemites out of millions of Zionist Americans.
To be sure, Trump is solely responsible for embroiling America in this war of whim. But as The New York Times reported, the most prominent voice urging Trump to go ahead was Netanyahu’s. Trump’s own advisers, including Marco Rubio, the secretary of state; JD Vance, the vice-president; John Ratcliffe, the CIA director; and Dan Caine, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, expressed varying degrees of scepticism. Netanyahu was no puppet master pulling the strings. But his Trump persuasion skills were material.
The other dramatic trend against Israel is among Democrats. Forty out of 47 Democratic senators last week voted to block US arms sales to Israel. A few years ago, Democrats eagerly sought money from the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, the country’s most powerful pro-Israeli lobby. AIPAC still styles itself as bipartisan. Democrats are now pledging not to accept what they see as tainted money.
The party’s White House hopefuls are likewise in a bidding war to see who can distance themselves furthest from Israel. The pace is being set by Rahm Emanuel, the former mayor of Chicago, who has pledged to end America’s annual $3.8bn Israel subsidy. It can buy weapons at market value like any other ally, he says. Were Israel to break the rules of war, he adds, America should impose an embargo. Other Democrats are threatening to withhold the sale of defensive weapons, including for Israel’s protective Iron Dome.
Barring Bernie Sanders, such politics would have been unthinkable a few years ago. That Emanuel’s middle name is “Israel” and he was briefly a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces only reinforces the shift. But Netanyahu has made the bed that he may yet have to lie in. When Emanuel was Barack Obama’s chief of staff in 2009, Netanyahu reportedly called him a “self-hating Jew”. Emanuel’s sin was to have opposed new Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Such tactics have laid the ground for today’s backlash. Netanyahu’s feud with Emanuel illustrates the uneven accusations of so-called dual loyalty. Anyone who implies that a prominent Jewish American has ties to both the US and Israel risks being accused of antisemitism by AIPAC and other Netanyahu allies. Yet when a Jewish American figure such as Emanuel has a diverging take on US national interests, they are branded as disloyal or worse. Democrats, including a majority of Jewish senators, are alert to such double standards. Most are also troubled by the misapplication of one of history’s most deadly prejudices. If anything, such overuse increases America’s disenchantment with Israel.
The next act will be Trump’s efforts to find a way out of Epic Fury. It is hard to see how he will get a US-Iran settlement that is much better than what Obama negotiated in 2015. Netanyahu broke precedent by telling Congress that the Iran-US nuclear deal was “very bad”. He also played a role in 2018 in persuading Trump to pull out of it.
Most of Iran’s estimated 440kg in highly enriched uranium — enough for around 10 nuclear weapons — was enriched since then. Trump is aiming for an indefinite suspension of enrichment — against Obama’s 15 years. But if Trump’s framework fails to curb Iran’s ballistic missile programme and to sever Iran’s ties with its regional proxies, Netanyahu will hate it almost as much.
Both the US and Israel, meanwhile, face elections later this year. Netanyahu is too canny to risk a campaign without Trump’s support. But Trump’s self-preservation instinct will probably stop him from risking mass US casualties by sending ground forces into Iran. Netanyahu’s quandary is thus pre-baked. The one thing he can bank on is that whoever comes after Trump is likely to be far less friendly.
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