** 3/16/26 - Ron Brownstein - Netanyahu Won Trump, But He’s Losing America.............
Buzz Sawyer
almost exclusively cultivating the American right. “Netanyahu decided 20 years
To win his first election as prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu recruited Arthur
Finkelstein, a legendary strategist among the Republican far right. Once in office,
Netanyahu commissioned a study by a group of US neoconservatives that urged
both “a clean break” from the Palestinian peace process and the overthrow of Saddam
Hussein in Iraq. Netanyahu clashed so vehemently with Democratic President Bill Clinton
over his push for a two-state peace agreement that Clinton famously left his first meeting
with the Israeli leader angrily declaring “who’s the f---ing superpower here?”
Ronald Brownstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He is a CNN analyst and the author or editor of seven books.
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
President Donald Trump’s choice to launch a joint military campaign with Israel against Iran represents the crowning achievement of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decades-long campaign to court the Republican Party’s most conservative elements. But like the attack on Iran itself, that may prove a short-term success with heavy long-term costs.
Over Netanyahu’s three decades at the center of Israeli politics, support for Israel has plummeted among rank-and-file Democrats in America, which has liberated a new generation of party leaders to forcefully criticize Israel. Now, the Iran war threatens to widen an incipient generational divide within the GOP.
On the ideological fringes of both parties, criticism of Israel does bleed into overt antisemitism — and the war is already elevating the risk of attacks on Jewish institutions. But it is wishful thinking to assert, as conservative Jewish leaders often do, that antisemitism is the principal force eroding Israel’s standing with the American public. It is Israel’s own choices, primarily under Netanyahu, that bear that responsibility.
Some conflict was inevitable between a US Democratic Party (and an American Jewish community) grounded in the left and an Israeli electorate that has mostly moved right since the 1990s. But Netanyahu has systematically widened that divide by consistently and almost exclusively cultivating the American right. “Netanyahu decided 20 years ago that evangelical Christians, conservative Jews and the Republicans were his natural constituency, and he’s given up. He doesn’t care about the rest,” says Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and former top State Department adviser on the Middle East.
To win his first election as prime minister in 1996, Netanyahu recruited Arthur Finkelstein, a legendary strategist among the Republican far right. Once in office, Netanyahu commissioned a study by a group of US neoconservatives that urged both “a clean break” from the Palestinian peace process and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Netanyahu clashed so vehemently with Democratic President Bill Clinton over his push for a two-state peace agreement that Clinton famously left his first meeting with the Israeli leader angrily declaring “who’s the f---ing superpower here?”
Netanyahu’s relations were equally stormy with President Barack Obama. Netanyahu, by then in his second stint as prime minister, mounted a sustained public campaign against Obama’s attempt to reach a negotiated agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. In 2015, Netanyahu starkly violated diplomatic protocol when he accepted, without consulting the White House, an invitation from House Republicans to address a joint session of Congress — where he again denounced the emerging nuclear deal.
President Joe Biden took office reflecting the protective instinct of an older generation of Democrats toward Israel. After the horrific Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack, Biden pursued a “hug Bibi” strategy of seeking to influence the Israeli prime minister by staying close to him, while resisting the growing Democratic Party backlash against the ferocity of Israel’s response in Gaza. That approach left Biden with the worst of all worlds. His support of Netanyahu alienated liberal and Arab-American voters, but he could (or would) not compel the Israeli leader to end the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s relationship with Trump has had its own bumps, but they have come together to unleash an unprecedented military assault against Iran and its proxies. The debate over whether Netanyahu led Trump into war or vice versa misses the larger point: Biden and Obama both rejected similar entreaties from the Israeli Prime Minister, as former Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently told Bloomberg Television. Trump always had the option of just saying no.
Trump’s decision to proceed comes when Israel’s political support in the US is at its lowest in decades. In polling by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs published in January, the share of Americans expressing favorable views toward Israel has fallen significantly since the 1970s. And in February, Gallup recorded a striking milestone. For the first time in its polling on this subject, which dates back to 2002, more Americans said they sympathized with the Palestinians than with Israel.
Israel’s support has declined most among Democrats, especially younger ones. In 2002, three times as many Democrats said they sympathized with Israel as the Palestinians; that has now more than flipped, with nearly four times as many Democrats sympathizing with the Palestinians. Among younger Democrats, the gap is nearly seven-to-one, according to detailed results provided by Gallup. Similarly, in a Quinnipiac University poll conducted earlier this month, about seven-in-ten Democrats younger than 50, and six-in-ten older than 50, said the US was “too supportive” of Israel, according to results provided by the pollster..
But cracks are also emerging in Israel’s standing with younger Republicans. In Gallup polling, Republicans aged 18-34 side with Israel over the Palestinians by only about two-to-one (52%-25%), compared to eight-to-one among younger Republicans in 2008 and 10-to-one among Republicans 55 and older today. In the Quinnipiac survey, 37% of Republicans younger than 50 said the US was “too supportive” of Israel — four times the share of older Republicans.
If costs from the Iran war continue rising — particularly if it contributes to a midterm wipe-out for Republicans — it’s easy to imagine more GOP voters joining the handful of prominent MAGA media commentators now loudly questioning the US alliance with Israel.
There is virtually no chance the next Democratic president will support Israel as unreservedly as Biden did. Given these trends in the GOP electorate, the more relevant question is whether the next Republican president will partner with Israel as closely as Trump has. As Miller notes, over Israel’s first 50 years, bipartisan US political support was “the adhesive” that secured its “extraordinary partnership” with the US. Netanyahu long ago decided he didn’t need strong ties with both American political parties. The result may be that Israel ends up with stable backing from neither.