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Israel Is Losing America — and Netanyahu Is Part of the Reason

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to accept responsibility for Oct. 7. Now he wants us to believe he has no responsibility for the collapse of American support for Israel. “I think there’s been a change because of the proliferation of social media, and the fact that sovereign countries have manipulated with bot farms and other things,” Netanyahu said.

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—the very period in which American attitudes toward Israel have deteriorated. He cannot plausibly take credit for Israel’s diplomatic and political successes while assigning responsibility for its failures to TikTok.

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—and even Republicans. Gallup’s 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%.

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—favorability fell 12 points among older Republicans and 15 points among white evangelicals. Among every other group Pew measured, favorability was below 50%.

A Marquette University poll offered an even more ominous warning about Israel’s future support: 58% of Republicans, 65% of independents, and 84% of Democrats ages 18–29 viewed Israel unfavorably.

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’s actions in Gaza had affected their attitudes. One-third said those actions had made them view Israel more negatively. Among 18–22-year-olds, the figure was 52%; among college graduates, 42%; among those with professional or graduate degrees, 55%; and among Democrats, 58%.

A long list of Israeli policies has alienated portions of the American public: the judicial overhaul, settlement expansion, settler violence, aspects of the IDF’s 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........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)