As public opinion shifts, governments turn protest into policy, and Jews abroad become unwilling proxies for Israel, the question is no longer whether Israel faces criticism — but whether it is losing its strategic atmosphere.

Mental Divorce from Israel?

When Israel Loses the Room

Something has changed. It is no longer enough to call it a public relations problem.

Israel is not merely facing criticism. It is losing the room. Not everywhere, not among everyone, and not always for the same reasons. But the pattern is now too broad and too consistent to dismiss as hostile propaganda, campus hysteria, European hypocrisy, or routine diplomatic theater. Public opinion is shifting. Governments are shifting. Street politics is shifting. And in the dangerous space between legitimate criticism of Israeli policy and hostility toward Jews, a very old mechanism is becoming visible again.

The first fact is public opinion.

In April 2026, Pew Research Center reported that 60 percent of American adults held an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent in 2025 and 42 percent in 2022. Only 37 percent held a favorable view. Pew also found that 59 percent of Americans had little or no confidence in Benjamin Netanyahu to do the right thing in world affairs. Among adults under fifty, negative views now prevail across both major American parties.

Gallup’s figures are even more symbolically damaging. For the first time since Gallup began its annual measurement in 2001, Americans’ sympathies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer clearly favor Israelis over Palestinians. Independents now sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, 41 percent to 30 percent. Democrats do so by an overwhelming 65 percent to 17 percent. Even among Republicans, sympathy for Israelis has fallen to its lowest level since 2004.

This is the real alarm. Israel can survive criticism from Europe, hostility from the United Nations, and moral theater from regimes with very selective memories. But the erosion of its position in the United States is different. The United States has not been just another ally. It has been Israel’s strategic atmosphere: military, diplomatic, cultural, evangelical, congressional, Jewish, academic, financial, and symbolic. When the American atmosphere changes, Israel does not simply lose approval. It loses depth.

Globally, the picture is even bleaker. Pew’s 2025 survey across 24 countries found that in 20 of them, around half or more of adults held an unfavorable view of Israel. In Australia, Greece, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey, unfavorable views reached roughly three quarters or more. Israelis themselves seem to sense the shift: 58 percent of Israelis told Pew that their country was not too respected or not at all respected internationally.

One must be precise here. A decline in sympathy for Israel is not the same thing as antisemitism. Criticism of Israeli policy is legitimate. Opposition to settlement expansion is legitimate. Moral outrage over civilian suffering in Gaza is legitimate. No democratic state has a right to demand immunity from judgment. Israel is a country, not a sacred object.

Yet the line between anti-Israel politics and anti-Jewish pressure is increasingly being crossed in practice.

In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 6,274 antisemitic incidents in 2025. That was a 33 percent decrease from 2024, but still the third-highest annual total since ADL began tracking in 1979. More disturbing, physical assaults reached a record level: 203 incidents, up 4 percent from 2024. Assaults involving deadly weapons increased by 39 percent. Three people were murdered in antisemitic........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)