16 Franklin Foer argued in an article in “The Atlantic” magazine that Benjamin Netanyahu , who presented himself as an expert on American politics, contributed to shaking and destroying Israel’s standing in America.
The author recounts that in 1982, when Netanyahu was working as a marketing director for a Jerusalem-based furniture company, Israel's ambassador to Washington decided the 32-year-old was in the wrong place. Instead of selling cabinets to Israelis, he should be promoting Israel to Americans.
The ambassador, who had met Netanyahu at a conference a few years earlier, brought him to Washington as his deputy, and Netanyahu quickly became the media face of Israel on American television, and a regular guest on “Nightline” and “Larry King Live,” thanks to his fluent English and the American accent he acquired as a result of being born in the suburbs of Philadelphia.
Netanyahu's mission remained unchanged over the next four decades, and in almost every position he held, his main concern was protecting Israel in America, a mission he never relinquished.
However, Netanyahu's mission remained unchanged over the next four decades, and in almost every position he held: protecting Israel in America. He never relinquished this mission, believing that no one understood America better than he did. Yet, it was also the mission in which Netanyahu, as Israel's longest-serving prime minister, failed miserably.
The author believes that support for Israel has remained, until recently, a bipartisan issue in American politics.
The harsh criticism leveled by moderates in the Democratic Party against Netanyahu's government did not go beyond accusing it of obstructing a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
But in the years following the October 7 attacks and the subsequent Israeli invasion of Gaza, this consensus, which was already waning among Democrats, collapsed.
Two years ago, 19 Democratic senators voted against selling weapons to Israel, and last April, 40 of the 47 senators voted against it, including most of the Democratic presidential candidates. Now, the mayor of the city with the world’s largest Jewish community is an anti-Zionist who campaigned on a promise to arrest Netanyahu. A Columbia University activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations is almost certain to become a member of the next Congress. And leading liberal senators, including Chris Murphy of Connecticut and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, have made criticism of Israel a central theme of their campaigns.
The writer added that this breakdown isn't limited to the two parties. This month, Vice President J.D. Vance, likely the leading Republican presidential candidate in 2028, told podcast host Joe Rogan that financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein "had clear ties to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence," a baseless claim. Vance also accused Israel of conspiring against his diplomacy with Iran.
The writer commented that statements like these would have been enough, a decade ago, to get any Republican who spoke this way expelled from the party. Now, Vance is a candidate to lead it.
He added that Netanyahu's father, Benzion, who believed that Jews could only be safe within the ironclad borders of their state and that antisemitism was an integral part of Jewish diaspora life, was pessimistic in his outlook. Ultimately, it became clear that Jewish history was not limited to the Holocaust, as American politicians vied for the loyalty of the new state.
Netanyahu's early political career seemed to defy his father's pessimism. By 1984, he had become Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, and his frequent television appearances embodied the idea that Americans could be persuaded to support Israel's cause.
The pessimistic view of Netanyahu’s father, that antisemitism is latent, may have returned in the post-October 7th era, but enduring hatred alone does not explain the intensity of this shift. Nor is it the reason why Democrats, who were once supportive of Israel, now see it as a political liability. Similarly, antisemitism is not the primary reason why many Americans perceive Israel as indifferent to the suffering of the Palestinians.
Netanyahu’s choices, rhetoric, and actions have confirmed these perceptions, and every time the damage could have been contained, it got worse.
The writer pointed out that the American-Israeli relationship has witnessed periodic disagreements, but the dispute has remained confined to two governments, without turning it into a partisan issue.
However, Netanyahu brought other motivations to the relationship; he disliked both the Democrats and the liberalism of most American Jews, who prioritized social justice over their Jewish identity. He described them as self--hating Jews.
Netanyahu’s hostility toward the Democrats was evident in his speech on March 3, 2015, before a joint session of Congress, in which he warned against a nuclear agreement with Iran that was being worked on by then-President Barack Obama, even though the latter had shown clear sympathy for Israel in his first election campaign in 2007. After taking office, Obama signed the largest military aid package that America had ever given to any country.
However, almost from the beginning, Netanyahu treated Obama as an adversary to be defeated, lecturing him on Jewish history in the Oval Office in front of cameras, footage the prime minister later used in his election campaign ad.
His mockery of Obama alienated the American left, which had been distancing itself from Israel.
From here, Palestinian activists in universities cleverly succeeded in attracting allies from the left who had never given any thought to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
Netanyahu treated Obama as an adversary to be defeated, lecturing him on Jewish history in the Oval Office in front of cameras.
The author argues that Netanyahu could have halted this drift simply by showing respect for Obama, a symbol of liberalism, and expressing his desire for a just and equitable solution to the Middle East crisis, even if he believed deep down that the Palestinians were uninterested in a settlement. However, by directly attacking a Democratic president and appealing to his opposition, he appeared to be pushing Israel into the partisan divide in America.
Then came President Trump, whom Netanyahu came to regard as “Israel’s greatest friend in the White House.” Netanyahu saw in Trump his golden opportunity. His groveling loyalty to the president went far beyond the mere obsequiousness other foreign leaders had shown themselves. His campaign was plastered with billboards showing the two men shaking hands, a settlement was renamed “Trump Heights,” and his allies announced that a new train station near the Western Wall would be named after Trump. Trump rewarded this loyalty by fulfilling most of Netanyahu’s demands: he moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, withdrew from the nuclear agreement Obama had made with Iran, and refrained from pressuring Netanyahu to negotiate with the Palestinians.
Thus, once Netanyahu linked Israel to Trump, he turned many Americans who had previously disliked one against the other. Netanyahu, however, believed this didn't matter; he assumed that the Democratic Party, rooted in secularism and progressive ideology, would ultimately hate Israel regardless. Prominent Jewish figures, both within the Democratic Party and in national Jewish organizations, warned him that he misunderstood American politics in general and the Democrats in particular, but their warnings were ignored.
As if to confirm their point, the president who succeeded Trump in his first term sacrificed more for Netanyahu than any of his predecessors. After the October 7 attacks, Joe Biden traveled to Israel to show solidarity, then armed and defended it in its counterattack at a high political cost, despite his growing concern that Netanyahu’s goal of eliminating Hamas was unattainable and would result in heavy civilian casualties.
In exchange for Biden’s support, Netanyahu ignored virtually all strategic advice offered by the US administration. In June 2024, he released an English-language video, seemingly aimed at an American audience, accusing the administration of withholding weapons and complaining that Biden was preventing him from winning the war. This accusation was highly exaggerated, as the administration ultimately withheld only one type of bomb, and it made Biden look foolish. While Biden was criticized from the left for defending Netanyahu, Netanyahu attacked him from the right.
The left wing of Biden’s party turned on him, blaming him for the ravages of war, as demonstrated in the 2024 Michigan primary. What began as a revolt against Biden morphed into a revolt against the Democratic Party’s historic support for Israel. Left-wing activists portrayed this support as evidence of the party’s irresponsible old guard. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) became a target, its symbolic importance growing as its influence waned. Gavin Newsom, Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, and Seth Moulton—not exactly pillars of the democratic socialist movement in America—pledged to refuse AIPAC funding. Moderate Democrats concluded that risking a defense of Israel was futile, not only because of the growing hostility within the party base, but also because Netanyahu’s treatment of Biden demonstrated that loyalty would not be reciprocated.
Democratic presidential candidates grasped these new realities and attempted to draw attention to their fledgling candidacies through high-profile confrontations with Israel. This division was further exacerbated by the man who had assured Israelis that no one understood Americans better than he did.
Then Israel launched a war against Iran and its proxies in the name of survival, its stated goal being the elimination of the only Jewish-majority state in the world. But survival has a second front: American public opinion.
Netanyahu fiercely countered the military threats, but he lost on the very battlefield that shaped his career. He came to power by convincing the Americans of the righteousness of his cause, but he ruled as if convincing them was no longer important, indeed futile.
The author believes that Netanyahu never grasped that his past successes were achieved under favorable circumstances: the Cold War, the wars on terror, and decades of American sympathy for the Israeli cause. When those circumstances changed, Netanyahu didn't adjust his argument; instead, he concluded that there was no room for change, as hatred of the Jewish state was deeply entrenched and unchanging.
Netanyahu's legacy is Israel's isolation. Perhaps this was unavoidable, but his failure lay in not trying to avoid this fate.
Under Netanyahu, Israeli public diplomacy has treated every new critic not as someone to be persuaded or corrected, but as an anti-Semite.
His disregard for international public opinion is evident in his choice of cabinet ministers, several of whom are followers of Meir Kahane. He refused to criticize their statements and policies in Gaza and the West Bank, clinging to them because his continued rule depended on their support. He also failed to present a clear plan for Gaza and rejected American attempts at normalization with Saudi Arabia, lest he anger the right wing. Netanyahu rejected the only Saudi request: progress toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.Netanyahu appears to have ruled as if he were powerless to prevent Israel from becoming a pariah state, or to combat the rising hatred directed against the Jewish diaspora.
Ultimately, Israel will come to regret the extent of American political support it has lost under Netanyahu, and not just from the left. Politically independents have become more sympathetic to the Palestinians than to the Israelis, 60% of American adults hold a negative view of Netanyahu's Israel, a majority of Republicans under 45 oppose renewing the military aid package approved by Obama, and support is waning among young evangelicals, once a stronghold of pro-Israel voters. Netanyahu's legacy is Israel's isolation. This may have been unavoidable, but his failure lay in not attempting to avert it.
