Unconditional support for Netanyahu may have an expiry date

A majority of Americans disapprove of the IDF’s actions in Gaza and, for the first time, more support the Palestinians than Israel. Neither party has yet figured out how to respond.

The Israel question is reshuffling the pack of cards of US politics. It has created a fault line in the two parties that is both generational and shaped by the media. Those most hostile to the Israeli government tend to be young and get their news from social media and YouTube. Its defenders are older and influenced by more traditional propaganda – from Fox News to the New York Times – which has been purveyed by Democratic as well as Republican leaders for decades.

The US Congress illustrates this bipartisan consensus to an almost comical degree. For example, on 2 February 2021 the Senate voted overwhelmingly – 97 to 3 – to keep the US embassy in Israel in Jerusalem. Like that of almost every other nation, it had previously been in Tel Aviv, but President Donald Trump had decided to relocate it four years earlier, breaking with international law and the position of all his predecessors of the past 70 years.

‘Everybody knows I love Israel’

But in February 2021, in keeping with the Israeli government’s wishes, the Democrats, newly returned to power, opted not to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv. On this point at least, the Democratic president Joe Biden maintained the policy of his predecessor, however much he loathed him. A few years earlier he had begun a speech in Washington marking Israel’s national day by declaring, ‘My name is Joe Biden and everybody knows I love Israel.’

Since then, that sort of passion has waned in his own camp. One key moment was particularly noteworthy. In a debate in June for New York’s Democratic mayoral candidates, Zohran Mamdani and his rivals were posed a question that felt designed to trip him up: ‘Where would you choose to make your first foreign trip as mayor?’ Everyone knew the ‘right’ answer. ‘The Holy Land,’ Adrienne Adams said. That was of course the expected response.

The clear favourite in the race, former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, expanded on it: ‘Given the (…)

Full article: 4 793 words.

Serge Halimi

Serge Halimi is advisor to Le Monde diplomatique’s editorial director.

(3) John J Mearsheimer and Stephen M Walt, The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York and Penguin, London, 2007.

(4) Perry Anderson, American Foreign Policy and its Thinkers, Verso, London, 2015.

(7) Boris Johnson, Unleashed, William Collins, London, 2024.

(8) Paul Findley used his enforced retirement to write a book detailing his misadventure: They Dare to Speak Out: People and Institutions Confront Israel’s Lobby, Lawrence Hill, New York, 1983.

(10) Andrew Cockburn, ‘Playing Dead’, Harper’s Magazine, New York, August 2025.