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Israel’s relationship with the US has never been worse. It’s also never been better
Let’s not sugarcoat it: American support for Israel has taken a nosedive since Oct. 7, 2023.
The question two years later is: How can Israel avoid a complete crash?
Recent polls show the most dire numbers. Americans’ sympathy for Israelis dropped to 46% by February 2025 — the lowest in 25 years of Gallup tracking. Israel received its lowest rating ever in Chicago Council of Global Affairs polling, which dates back to 1978: 61% of Americans said Israel is playing a negative role in resolving Middle East challenges.
The numbers are worst where it matters most — among the younger generations, who will lead the United States and set policy in the future. Only 9% of those aged 18 to 34 approve of Israel’s military actions in Gaza, according to a Brookings Institution poll. That’s compared to 49% in the 55 and older age group.
What I think: The tremendous outpouring of support American Jews received after Oct. 7 hasn’t disappeared. Instead, it’s been obscured by deep misgivings about the way Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has conducted the war in Gaza. And after two years of conflict, there’s finally a real opportunity to remake the region — and enable that support to flourish once again.
The most dramatic shift occurred among Democrats, who now sympathize with Palestinians over Israelis by nearly a 3-to-1 ratio. Just 33% of Democrats view Israel favorably — a 30-point plummet over a span of three years. While party leaders still express strong support for Israel, if not for its current government, negative sentiment is surging among younger Democrats. At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last year, the party’s youth wing passed a resolution calling Israel’s military campaign in Gaza a genocide.
But even more strikingly, the generational gap among Republicans is dramatic and widening.
For years, Republicans have tried to peel off Jewish voters by claiming theirs is the true pro-Israel party. Over the last two years, that claim collapsed in their young wing. Since 2022, young Republicans aged 18 to 49 went from 35% having an unfavorable view of Israel to, today, 50% having one, according to an August survey, while such views among Republicans older than 50 went up only marginally, from 19% to 23%.
Numbers like these, or the sentiments behind them, were behind a now-famous memo that the late Charlie Kirk wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, warning that Israel faced a “5-alarm fire” over conservative support.
Or, as a recent headline in Politico summed it up:“An entire generation of Americans is turning on Israel.”
At first, sympathy
That trend began long before the Oct. 7 attack. Decades of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank, repeated Israeli incursions into Gaza that resulted in high numbers of civilian casualties, university curriculums that framed Israel as a colonizer, and Israel’s demographic and political move to the right have all played a part.
But still, the post-Oct. 7 numbers represent a tremendous reversal.
In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas-led attacks, 71% of Americans said they felt a lot of sympathy for Israelis, and 96% expressed at least some. In a country as divided as the U.S., those are extraordinary numbers.
Israel’s long military campaign changed that. As it dragged on, claiming more than 64,000 Palestinian lives — about 20,000 of whom Israel claims are Hamas fighters — leveling more than 75% of Gaza’s buildings, and causing widespread hunger, support began to evaporate.
The fall-off was accelerated by online media campaigns, some of which, according to the American government and Israeli intelligence sources, were funded and operated by Iran and Qatar. (Israel has also funded online social media influencer campaigns, to try to improve its global image.) Social media, where young people get their news and form their opinions, became another battlefield in the war — and one Israel has been losing.
American Jews mirror their neighbors
As is so often the case, American Jews reflect the sentiments of the society around them.
A just-released Washington Post poll found that 61% of American Jews say Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza. Almost 4 in 10 say Israel is guilty of genocide against Palestinians.
Only 36% of Jews aged 18 to 34 say they feel emotionally attached to Israel, compared to 68% of those over 65. Among younger Jews, half said Israel is committing genocide, compared with about a third of older respondents.
The numbers have been reflected by sometimes surprising public statements. Last month, Rabbi Ismar Schorch, former chancellor of the Conservative Jewish Theological Seminary, called Israel’s Gaza War “a moral stain” on Judaism itself.
In August, 80 Modern Orthodox rabbis wrote an open letter demanding moral clarity on the humanitarian disaster of food scarcity in Gaza.
“Hamas’s sins and crimes do not relieve the government of Israel of its obligations to make whatever efforts are necessary to prevent mass starvation,” they wrote. “Orthodox Jewry, as some of Israel’s most devoted supporters, bears a unique moral responsibility. We must affirm that Judaism’s vision of justice and compassion extends to all human beings.”
Some of Israel’s supporters have argued that these numbers prove Americans only like Israel until it starts defending itself. Spend a few minutes on Jewish online forums and inevitably up pops the Golda Meir quote, “If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”
But that sentiment is harder to justify when scores of Israel’s former officials, two of its former prime ministers, and hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets themselves are saying the war has gone on too long, and been too cruel.
Has Israel lost the U.S.?
Dire as those statements and numbers might seem, buried within the statistics are some reasons for hope.
Polls show that what Americans really take issue with is Israel’s military campaign. Overall approval of Israel’s military action in Gaza fell to 32% by July 2025, down from initial support of 50% in November 2023 — including that near rock-bottom 9% support for Israel’s military action among young people.
In other words, the Israel that Americans are rejecting in those polls is the Israel executing a military and political project that, until recently, seemed bent on obliterating Gaza. But there’s a whole other Israel out there, and it’s a powerful one.
It’s the Israel of protest marches, which have seen tens of thousands of Israelis rally, week after week, against a government that does not reflect their values. It’s the Israel of the dozens of Arab and Jewish NGOs fighting for coexistence.
President Donald Trump’s new peace plan, which will put an end to the war, offers the beginning of a way back to that better Israel. Netanyahu has accepted the plan, which not only calls for an end to the war and for the hostages to be freed, but for a longer diplomatic horizon that calls for “reconciliation and coexistence” between Israelis and Palestinians. Hamas has taken the first steps toward signing onto it, as well, by for the first time agreeing to release all the remaining hostages.
If Trump and his successors can hold the Israelis and Palestinians to their word, the possibilities open to an Israel-Saudi Arabia peace and the integration of Israel into the Middle East. When the Arabs accept Israel, it will be that much harder for a Barnard sophomore to reject it.
Israel can retain the U.S. as its greatest ally, and the American public as its greatest friend, if it marginalizes its own hardliners and takes the opening Trump has offered. These are big ifs, pipe dreams perhaps. But two years after Oct. 7, we are closer now than ever to seeing them come true.
The post Israel’s relationship with the US has never been worse. It’s also never been better appeared first on The Forward.
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US Officials Tell i24NEWS Israeli Concerns About Gaza Board of Peace Are ‘Unfounded’
FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Donald Trump is interviewed by Reuters White House correspondent Steve Holland (not pictured) during an exclusive interview in the Oval Office in the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein/File Photo
i24 News – Amid the criticism in Israel over the composition of the “Board of Peace” and the bodies set to govern the Gaza Strip, as well as concerns that Hamas could continue to threaten Israel under the new plan, officials in Washington suggest these concerns are unfounded, i24NEWS understands.
A Senior US official tells i24NEWS: “Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt were instrumental in achieving the ceasefire, securing the return of the living hostages, and bringing back the deceased. They have co-signed commitments that Hamas will follow through on its part of the plan, and the Board of Peace will work with them to ensure compliance.”
The underlying message is clear: President Trump will make the calls, and the US will ensure full implementation of all objectives of the plan, first and foremost the demilitarization of Gaza, regardless of the positions or hostile statements towards Israel coming from Turkey and Qatar.
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One Person Killed, 14 Hurt in Blast in Iranian Port of Bandar Abbas, Iranian Media Reports
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Iranian shores and Port of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz, December 10, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
At least one person was killed and 14 injured in an explosion in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, a local official told Iranian news agencies, but the cause of the blast was not known.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that social media reports alleging that a Revolutionary Guard navy commander had been targeted in the explosion were “completely false.”
Iranian media said the blast was under investigation but provided no further information. Iranian authorities could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Separately, four people were killed after a gas explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to state-run Tehran Times. No further information was immediately available.
Two Israeli officials told Reuters that Israel was not involved in Saturday’s blasts, which come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests and over the country’s nuclear program.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US President Donald Trump said on January 22 an “armada” was heading toward Iran. Multiple sources said on Friday that Trump was weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused US, Israeli and European leaders of exploiting Iran’s economic problems, inciting unrest and providing people with the means to “tear the nation apart.”
Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
The port suffered a major explosion last April that killed dozens and injured over 1,000 people. An investigative committee at the time blamed the blast on shortcomings in adherence to principles of civil defense and security.
Iran has been rocked by nationwide protests that erupted in December over economic hardship and have posed one of the toughest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers.
At least 5,000 people were killed in the protests, including 500 members of the security forces, an Iranian official told Reuters.
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How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a New Jersey synagogue turned violent in October, the Trump administration took an unusual step — using a federal law typically aimed at protecting abortion clinics to sue the demonstrators.
Now, federal authorities are attempting to deploy the same law against journalists as well as protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s at times violent crackdown in Minneapolis.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, a local journalist, and two protesters were arrested after attending a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Justice Department officials said Friday. Protesters alleged the pastor at Cities Church worked for ICE.
The federal law they are accused of violating, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, prohibits the use of force or intimidation to interfere with reproductive health care clinics and houses of worship.
But in the three decades since its passage in 1994, the law had almost entirely been deployed against anti-abortion protesters causing disruptions at clinics.
That changed in September of last year, when the Trump administration cited the FACE Act to sue pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.
It was the first time the Department of Justice had used the law against demonstrators outside a house of worship, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, said at the time.
The novel legal strategy — initially advanced by Jewish advocacy groups to fight antisemitism — is now front and center in what First Amendment advocates are describing as an attack on freedom of the press.
“I intend to identify and find every single person in that mob that interrupted that church service in that house of God and bring them to justice,” Dhillon told Newsmax last week. “And that includes so-called ‘journalists.’”
How the law has been used
The FACE Act has traditionally been used to prosecute protesters who interfere with patients entering abortion clinics. Conservative activists have long criticized the law as violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, and the Trump administration even issued a memo earlier this month saying the Justice Department should limit enforcement of the law.
But in September, the Trump administration applied the FACE Act in a new way: suing the New Jersey protesters at Congregation Ohr Torah.
They had disrupted an event at the Orthodox shul that promoted real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank, blowing plastic horns in people’s ears and chanting “globalize the intifada,” a complaint alleges.
Two pro-Israel demonstrators were charged by local law enforcement with aggravated assault, including a local dentist, Moshe Glick, who police said bashed a protester in the head with a metal flashlight, sending him to the hospital. Glick said he had acted in self defense, protecting a fellow congregant who had been tackled by a protester.
The event soon became a national flashpoint, with Glick’s lawyer alleging the prosecution had been “an attempt to criminalize Jewish self-defense.” Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick earlier this month.
The Trump administration sued the pro-Palestinian protesters under the FACE Act, seeking to ban them from protesting outside houses of worship and asking that they each pay thousands of dollars in fines.
At the time, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS he applauded the Trump administration “for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all people of faith, who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment.”
Diament did not respond to the Forward’s email asking whether he supported the use of the FACE Act against the Minneapolis journalists and protesters.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a pro-Israel group that says it uses legal tools to counter antisemitism, did not express concern over the use of the FACE Act in the Minnesota arrests — and emphasized the necessity of protecting religious spaces from interference.
“The idea that ‘you can worship’ means nothing if a mob can make it unsafe or impossible,” Goldfeder wrote in a statement to the Forward. “So if you apply it consistently: to protect a church in Minnesota, a synagogue in New Jersey, a mosque in Detroit, what you are actually protecting is pluralism itself.”
Goldfeder has also attempted to use the FACE Act against protesters at a synagogue, citing the law in a July 2024 complaint against demonstrators who had converged on an event promoting Israel real estate at Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. That clash descended into violence.
The Trump administration Justice Department subsequently filed a statement of interest supporting that case, arguing that what constituted “physical obstruction” at a house of worship under the FACE Act could be interpreted broadly.
Now, similar legal reasoning may apply to journalists covering the Sunday church protest in Minneapolis. Press freedom groups have expressed deep alarm over the arrests, arguing that the journalists were there to document, not disrupt.
The arrests are “the latest example of the administration coming up with far-fetched ‘gotcha’ legal theories to send a message to journalists to tread cautiously,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Because the government is looking for any way to target them.”
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