On May 2, 1951, David Ben-Gurion paid his first official visit to the United States as Prime Minister of Israel. Historians of Israeli foreign policy generally regard this visit as a defining moment, for it firmly anchored Israel within the democratic Western camp and, above all, helped lay the foundations of Israel’s modern strategic relationship with the United States. In the decades that followed, the relationship grew steadily closer as successive Israeli governments came to regard American support as one of the cornerstones of Israel’s national security.

For decades, support for Israel was one of the few issues that united Democrats and Republicans alike, making it an unusually stable component of American foreign policy.

The special relationship between the two countries rested not only on shared strategic interests but also on broad political and public support across the American spectrum. Beginning in the early 1980s, particularly in the aftermath of the First Lebanon War, however, a widening gap emerged between Israel and its two principal pillars of support in the United States: the American political establishment and the American Jewish community. At first glance, no Israeli leader seemed better positioned to repair that growing divide than Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu’s reputation was no accident. In My Brother’s Keeper, Ari Harow famously described Netanyahu as “Israel’s first American prime minister”, marveling at his flawless English and his remarkable ability to captivate American audiences. Yet one question remains: How did the very leader who appeared uniquely equipped to strengthen Israel’s relationship with the United States preside over a period in which Israel’s relationship with the United States became a source of growing strategic concern? How did Netanyahu become, more than any other Israeli leader, a figure who inspires not merely criticism but, in many quarters, outright hostility in America? The New York Times described him as the man who had made Israel “radioactive”. Former President Joe Biden reportedly referred to him as an “asshole”,........

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