President Joe Biden and then-Israel’s caretaker Prime Minister Yair Lapid on July 14, 2022. Photo by MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh April 28, 2024

Yair Lapid, Israel’s opposition leader, expressed his concern that Israel may shift from being a political asset to a liability if President Joe Biden does not win reelection this year. This comes amid mass protests on college campuses across the country and growing discontent among liberal Democrats and young voters about Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas. 

“If President Biden loses the election, a lot of people in the Democratic Party are going to say it’s because of Israel, or at least this is going to be one of the claims,” Lapid said in a podcast interview with The New York Times, published online on Saturday. “And then Israel, instead of being an electoral value or an advantage, has become a liability, which is horrible.” Lapid called Biden’s stalwart support of Israel “heartwarming.” 

Israel has been at the center of protests at Columbia University in New York last week, which inspired a wave of demonstrations and encampments at dozens of other universities across the nation. Those protests have led to more than 600 arrests and the cancellation of commencement at the University of Southern California.

U.S.-Israeli relations have deteriorated precipitously in recent weeks over the war in Gaza, with Biden issuing an ultimatum to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to do better to protect Palestinian civilians and increase humanitarian aid into Gaza. The change in tone follows a series of successful campaigns to encourage Democratic primary voters frustrated with Biden’s failure to pressure Israel for a ceasefire to cast “uncommitted” or blank ballots. However, the president’s increasing criticism of Israel has not led to electoral gains, especially among young progressive voters and Arab-American constituents.

A CNN poll published Sunday found that 81% of young voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war. Among total voters who said they would vote for Biden in November, a majority – 54% — approved of his handling of the war in Gaza. The poll, conducted online and via phone with a margin of error of plus/minus 3.4 points, showed former President Donald Trump leading Biden by six points — 49% to 43% — in a head-to-head matchup. 

In his interview with the Times on the newly-launched podcast, The Interview, Lapid said college students lack knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, giving the “cynical radical Islamic movement” the opportunity to influence them. But he also laid blame on the Israeli government, who he said “doesn’t understand or doesn’t seem to care about its primary duty to make this easier for those who support us in the United States to be supportive.”

He cited a lack of action against extremist settlers in the occupied West Bank and a flawed public relations campaign to explain the goals of the war and the high toll of Palestinian casualties. The army “is doing its best to avoid this,” Lapid said. “And yet the government is not saying so out loud, because they’re afraid of some ignorant, populist voices that might say they are soft on handling the war. This is just outrageous to me.” 

Lapid, who was the interim prime minister of Israel for six months in 2022, hosted Biden when Biden traveled for the first time in his presidency to Israel in July 2022. Lapid has been lagging in public opinion polls as an alternative behind Benny Gantz, the head of the National Unity party, who joined the government following Oct. 7 and serves as a senior war cabinet minister. Lapid said he didn’t join the emergency unity government because he refused to legitimize Netanyahu’s premiership at a time when most Israelis see him as responsible for the failure to protect Israel’s citizens in the south.

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