The historically inseparable bond between the United States and Israel is showing signs of a terminal fracture as support for Tel Aviv wanes in Congress and among the American public.
First published in Deník N.. The United States and Israel are bound by history, security interests and billions of American dollars.. In contemporary geopolitical relations, the countries have been seen as an inseparable pair, but support for Tel Aviv is weakening – on the American street and in Congress.. A fringe trend is beginning to shape the political mainstream as well as Israel’s strategy.. US senator Bernie Sanders began collecting senators’ votes in the Senate
against American military aid to Israel in 2023.. He lost.. The whole thing was repeated in 2024.. He lost.. Then again several times in 2025.. He lost those as well.. When, two weeks ago, the US Senate was deciding whether to at least suspend deliveries of American bulldozers that the Israeli army uses to demolish civilian buildings in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank, it was already the seventh initiative by the socialist
senator and de facto leader of the leftwing of the US Democrats, seeking to choke off supplies of weapons and military matériel to Washington’s traditional ally in the Middle East.. Sanders again failed, and Israel will therefore receive the promised bulldozers.. This time, however, Sanders (himself Jewish) lost with great elegance and moral superiority.. In the first attempt in January 2024, only 11 Democratic senators voted with Sanders.. Their protest was essentially a marginal affair,
a kind of folkl dance on the left of the American political spectrum.. Last year, 27 senators raised their hands, figuratively speaking, to limit arms supplies to Israel.. The balance began to tip.. This year, the number of Democratic senators wishing to stop or limit military aid to Israel climbed to 40.. “On the issue of military support for Israel, I am now the leader in the Democratic Party,” 84‑year‑old Sanders could boast, joined by
big names of the Democratic establishment such as Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker.. “With Chuck (the leader of the Democratic senators in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, editor’s note), only six other Democratic senators voted against my proposal.” Eleven votes were still missing to halt deliveries of the demolition equipment – the seven already mentioned on the Democratic side and four more that would have had to come from the so‑far uniformly voting Republicans.. The shift
in opinion is tangible and is not a mere coincidence.. Nor is it the result of a reaction to the ongoing war with Iran.. The US really is beginning to turn its back on its traditional ally.. Support for a stance until recently considered extreme is, in fact, a reflection of a longer‑term trend that cannot be ignored either in Washington or in Tel Aviv.. “In Israel, everyone knows that the United States is now
governed by the last generation of politicians who support the Jewish state unconditionally.. From here on, it will only get worse and worse,” said former Fox News host and newly-minted influential critic of Trump’s war making in the Middle East, Tucker Carlson, in a recent interview with the editor‑in‑chief of The Economist weekly.. The conservative influencer and podcaster espouses many controversial positions, but on this particular point his claim is not baseless.. The current Israeli
leadership is, after all, also preparing for the notional end of the “toxic relationship”, as some commentators describe the ties between the countries.. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu now claims that dependence on US assistance, thanks to which Israel’s military capabilities are where they are today, will fall to zero within 10 years.. Israel’s effort to transform itself from a US freeloader into a partner, however casually it is being served up to the public, has
not come out of the blue either.. Antipathy growing on both left and right It is enough simply to look at opinion polling data.. This February, still before the outbreak of the war with Iran that soon spread across the Middle East, the latest Gallup survey dominated US media headlines.. The top line was that, for the first time in the history of the question being asked, dating back to 2001, more Americans now sympathise
with the Palestinians than with the inhabitants of the State of Israel.. The balance is specifically 41 percent sympathising with the Palestinians versus 36 percent of Americans inclined towards Israel.. For context, 20 years ago, according to the same agency, roughly 60 percent of US residents sympathised with Israelis, while empathetic attitudes towards the Palestinians remained below 20 percent.. Gallup is not the only agency signalling a fundamental cooling of Americans’ attitudes towards the Jewish
state.. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center published on 7 April this year (thus already in the midst of full‑scale war), 60 percent of adult Americans now view Israel negatively.. This represents a seven‑point increase compared with last year, but an almost 20‑point rise compared with 2022.. Over the past four years, the share of respondents who directly declare a very negative attitude towards Israel has also tripled – to 29 percent..
The trend is not uniform; it reflects both the political orientation and the age of those surveyed.. Among Democrats, or voters who vote for Democrats more often than for Republicans, aversion to the Jewish state stands at 80 percent – which, coincidentally mirrors the number of Democratic senators who, in the vote mentioned at the beginning, sided with Sanders and against the bulldozers.. Among Republicans, and voters who vote for Republicans more often than for
Democrats, antipathy towards Israel reaches “only” 41 percent, and Israel still enjoys tangible support – 58 percent of Americans on the rightwing side of the political spectrum feel sympathy for it.. The picture looks different, however, when we turn to Americans under 50 years old – that is, to an America whose importance for the future is greater.. In this segment of the population, fully 70 percent of respondents now take a dim view of
Israel.. On the leftwing side of the spectrum, that figure is 84 percent, but even the younger part of the right does not look at Israel with much affection.. A total of 57 percent of Republican voters, or those who vote for Republicans more often than for Democrats, feel a lack of sympathy towards the Jewish state.. For context, in the older age group over 50, the same antipathy is felt by only 24 percent
of Americans on the right side of the spectrum.. Historic partnership but new order At this point, it is worth recalling that this is a fundamental transformation of a previously settled situation.. In recent decades, the US has stood firmly on Israel’s side across the political spectrum.. There have always been differences between Democrats and Republicans, and it can be said that the right was somewhat more unshakeable in its positions.. In general, however, especially
since the end of the Cold War, Israel has been systematically, and regardless of who happened to sit in the White House or control Congress, in an enviable position unmatched by any other US ally.. “Israel does not have a special relationship with the United States (like, for example, the United Kingdom); it has an exceptional relationship with it,” wrote the US magazine Foreign Affairs in December last year.. Andrew Miller’s essay then describes the
coexistence above all as a relationship in which Washington has, for decades, essentially offered Tel Aviv a blank cheque.. The United States used to support Israel, but at the same time did not hesitate to criticise it or even threaten it with sanctions and with cutting off key military and economic aid.. That changed after the end of the Cold War, when the feeling prevailed that unconditional support for Israel could give the Jewish state
the confidence needed to make concessions essential to the Middle East peace process.. The turning point came under Bill Clinton, who “offered virtually unconditional rhetorical and material support,” wrote the former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Biden administration in the article.. “Administrations avoided public displays of disagreement between the two states, even standard US statements criticising settlement construction were watered down, and the word ‘occupation’ disappeared from the American lexicon,” he continued ..
Americans, it is said, operated on the conviction that Israelis themselves knew best what they needed and what they should do, and that the interests of the United States and Israel were essentially identical.. US politicians also believed that if it ever came to the crunch, Israel would ultimately take the interests of its dominant partner into account.. This generous approach to the Jewish democracy could in turn rely on a widely-shared consensus within the
American public.. The result was not great.. The moral hazard of unconditional support “Unconditional support led inexorably to moral hazard on both sides.. Israel had no reason to adapt to US interests or concerns, because rejecting them cost it nothing,” Miller wrote, describing a Jewish state that, thanks in part to American backing, turned into a hegemon of the Middle East which, confident of the helping hand of the world’s number‑one superpower, slipped into ever
more radical positions without having to think about how they would be received outside Israel itself.. Israel has, quite simply, changed fundamentally in recent decades: from a threatened country it has become a state that no one in the Middle East can match, and which does not have to fear losing the undying support of the US.. This very transformation, however, is clearly reflected in American public opinion and helps explain why support for the
Jewish state decreases more or less in direct proportion to the decreasing age of the voters surveyed.. On Israel’s side still stand those who remember its earlier, vulnerable and insecure form as a country surrounded by enemies with numerical and material superiority.. The younger generations, by contrast, increasingly perceive the Jewish state in its new guise as strong, wealthy and technologically-advanced, defending its interests with growing aggressiveness, sometimes, according to the International Criminal Court (ICC)
or the International Court of Justice (ICJ), beyond the bounds of international law – or beyond the public’s sense of justice.. On the side of the US Democratic party, the ethnic composition of its voters also plays a role: Arab-Americans identify with the left significantly more often.. The fact that Israeli politics has long been dominated by the ‘father’ of nationalist populism, Benjamin Netanyahu, and that the ideological orientation of Israeli governments is shifting into
ever more extreme conservative and nationalist positions does nothing to ease the antipathy of more liberal‑minded voters.. But the US right is no longer united in its stance towards the traditional ally either.. Within Trump’s MAGA movement, an antisemitic current embodied by influencers such as Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes is gaining strength.. It intertwines in various ways with the feeling that Israel managed to manipulate Donald Trump onto its side and entangle America, despite
the current president’s pre‑election promises, in a military conflict in the Middle East.. Some former figures of nationalist populism (such as the aforementioned Carlson) have turned into sharp critics of the United States’ open‑ended and unlimited support for Israel.. In their eyes, the slogan “America First” has morphed into “Israel First”, while the interests of the two vastly unequal states have long since ceased to simply overlap.. A puzzle for US politicians How quickly will
such a transformation be reflected in practical politics?. How long will it take before Israel loses its unconditional support from the US?. When will Sanders manage to get his way and Israel fail to receive the requested bulldozers?. There is no simple answer to that.. The development described is more a gradual transformation than a dramatic reversal, and for politicians it represents more of a puzzle than a guide on how to easily and quickly
earn voters’ favour.. A good example of groping around in uncharted territory is California governor Gavin Newsom.. One of the most prominent figures in the Democratic party, with an undisguised ambition to run in the next presidential election, he first steered into the waters of criticism of Israel this year.. In March, while promoting his own memoir, Newsom called Israel “an apartheid state” that was dragging the United States in a direction that was not
in its interest.. “It makes me sick, because the current Israeli leadership is taking us down a path where we no longer even have the option of taking anything into account,” said the current favourite for future Democratic presidential primaries.. Three weeks later, however, he shifted into reverse.. In an interview on the Politico website, he said he regretted his harsh words and that he had uttered them in response to a piece by New
York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.. Friedman argued that apartheid was a state towards which Israel was only now heading under current prime minister Netanyahu – and Newsom himself reportedly was also merely describing the dangers of future developments.
US Israel relations, Middle East policy, American politics, foreign aid, political shift, international diplomacy