The great unraveling: How Israel is losing America

Not long ago, questioning America’s unconditional support for Israel was seen as political suicide. For US lawmakers, presidential hopefuls and advocacy groups alike, the relationship was beyond scrutiny — a sacred fixture of American foreign policy. That era is over.

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, American public opinion has undergone one of the most dramatic realignments in the history of US-Israel relations. The shift is historic, measurable and accelerating — and it is rewriting the rules of one of Washington’s most entrenched political arrangements.

The numbers tell a stark story. American approval of Israel’s military conduct has fallen to a record low of 32 percent. Among Americans under 35, it stands at just 9 percent. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has given Israel its lowest favorability rating in nearly five decades of polling — a score of 50 on a 0 to 100 scale, the worst since the council began tracking the relationship in 1978.

This collapse did not happen in a vacuum. Immediately after the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, American sentiment tilted — however tentatively — toward Israel. In those early days, Israel was widely cast as the victim, with broad public sympathy for its right to respond. A Gallup poll conducted in the weeks that followed found 50 percent of Americans approved of Israel’s military response in Gaza, with 45 percent opposed. That narrow margin concealed a fault line that would crack open dramatically over the next two years.

Footage of the carnage reached people worldwide and no amount of official messaging could contain it

Osama Al-Sharif

What changed? In a word: visibility. While legacy media largely adhered to the Israeli government’s framing of the war — downplaying or ignoring evidence of mass civilian casualties, the destruction of hospitals, schools and universities, and the systematic targeting of civilian infrastructure — social media told a different story. Footage of the carnage reached hundreds of millions of people worldwide and no amount of official messaging could contain it. The gap between what governments said and what ordinary people saw became impossible to bridge.

The generational dimension of this shift is particularly striking — and particularly consequential for Israel. Only about one in 10 adults under 35 approves of Israel’s military conduct in Gaza, compared with roughly half of those aged 55 and older.

The pattern holds on Iran: just 15 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 approved of Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear program, versus 55 percent of those aged 55 and over. Even among Republicans — long Israel’s most reliable political base — the ground is moving. The most recent Pew Research Center data, from last month, shows that 57 percent of Republicans aged 18 to 49 now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 50 percent the previous year. Older Republicans remain strongly supportive but the direction of travel is unmistakable.

Crucially, Brookings Institution research suggests this is not purely a youth phenomenon. Older Democrats have shifted more than any other age group, pointing to a broader realignment on the American left that goes well beyond generational politics.

For decades, Israel managed its relationship with American power primarily through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the pro-Israel lobby founded in 1954 that became arguably the most influential foreign policy advocacy organization in Washington. AIPAC channeled millions of dollars into congressional and presidential races, cultivated allies across the evangelical community and university campuses, and enforced a bipartisan consensus that made criticism of Israel all but politically toxic.

That grip is loosening. A growing cohort of Democrats has publicly refused AIPAC invitations or pledged to reject its money: Reps. Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders, led the way. But the rebellion has spread well beyond the progressive flank. Sens. Cory Booker and Josh Shapiro — both considered serious contenders for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination — have announced they will no longer accept AIPAC funding. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has offered similar assurances. A year ago, such positions from mainstream Democrats would have been unthinkable. Today, they are becoming a credential.

What is emerging is a cross-ideological convergence of people united by opposition to unconditional US support for Israel

Osama Al-Sharif

The fracturing even extends into “Make America Great Again” territory. Prominent former Trump allies Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have openly accused the president of betraying his movement by allowing Israel to draw the US into the Iran conflict. Even Robert Kagan, the neoconservative intellectual who co-founded the Project for the New American Century, has warned that the conflict risks ending “in a very disastrous way for Israel” as regional power shifts away from Washington and Tel Aviv toward Tehran.

Israel is reportedly spending millions on social media campaigns to arrest the trend. Few analysts believe it will work. The forces driving the shift are structural, not rhetorical: a younger generation shaped by different information ecosystems, a Democratic Party whose base has moved decisively leftward on foreign policy, and a populist right increasingly skeptical of foreign entanglements and globalist commitments alike.

What is emerging is something without modern precedent in American politics: a cross-ideological convergence of left-wing progressives and right-wing populists, united by opposition to unconditional US support for Israel. The old bipartisan consensus that AIPAC once enforced with near-total impunity is in pieces.

One figure has been particularly blamed for accelerating the decline in Israel’s image: Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a recent CNN poll, the Israeli prime minister faces a profound trust deficit among the American public. Those expressing no confidence in him stand at 59 percent, up from 42 percent. The erosion cuts across party lines: 81 percent of older Democrats say they have no confidence in him and — tellingly — 58 percent of younger Republicans say the same.

For Israel, the political consequences of that collapse may prove as consequential, and as lasting, as the wars that caused it. For decades, Israel took blind American support — a cornerstone of both its national security and its expansionist agenda — entirely for granted. It may yet discover what it means to be on the wrong side of that assumption: isolated, exposed and regarded by the world’s most powerful nation not as its closest ally but as a liability.

• Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. X: @plato010