Israelis protest against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, opposing the attacks on Gaza and the current government’s war policies in West Jerusalem, on June 13, 2026. Photo by Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images

Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson June 24, 2026

No one has done more damage to Israel than the people who claim to love it the most.

As this week’s shocking election news demonstrates, the extremism of Benjamin Netanyahu, his far-right coalition partners, and his fundamentalist Amen corner in the United States has destroyed the bipartisan support for Israel that has been in place since the Kennedy administration. Israel’s most ardent defenders have become some of its worst enemies.

The change is not just taking place on the Socialist Left or Nationalist Right. And it is not a result of antisemitism, propaganda or misinformation, although all of those play a role. It is the result of years of Israeli actions that have alienated nearly half of the Democratic party, a quarter of the Republican party, and liberal Zionists in both camps.

There are now millions, perhaps tens of millions, of liberals and centrists who may still support the existence of a Jewish state, but who are morally repulsed by the destruction of Gaza and the slow-motion ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, and millions of progressives who, wrongly but not without reason, now lump Zionism in with racism and sexism as ideologies that offend their core values.

Israel has even alienated conservatives and America-Firsters who can’t understand why aid to Israel is treated differently from all other foreign aid or foreign policy programs. Yes, many of them believe in, and spread, antisemitic conspiracy theories. But many others have legitimate questions about Israel’s and AIPAC’s influence on American foreign policy, most recently the Iran war, which America and Israel have lost. These Americans include, most recently, the Vice President of the United States, who publicly rebuked Israel as no American leader has done since the 1950s, noting that Israel has lost the support of almost every other country in the world, and was now in danger of losing American support as well.

And for what? For what bowl of porridge did Israel sell its birthright as a member of the civilized world? For nationalist pipe-dreams of Gaza wiped off the map? For keeping Bibi’s coalition alive so he doesn’t go to jail for bribery? For messianic dreams of Greater Israel? For the most hawkish possible interpretation of Israel’s legitimate security needs? For revenge?

To be sure, Bibi, his ultra-nationalist coalition, and AIPAC are not responsible for all of this. But they are responsible for most of it. Had Israel conducted the war in Gaza differently and not killed over 70,000 people; had Bibi not persuaded Trump to join a fruitless and costly war with Iran; and had AIPAC not insisted on absolute, unquestioned support for Israel no matter what, we would not be where we are today. Of course, the hard left and some parts of the hard right would still be opposed to Israel’s existence, often for illegitimate reasons. But they wouldn’t have attracted so much support from others, including the voters which handed the progressive Left three election wins in New York this week.

Maybe some of those voters are bamboozled or bigoted, but surely not all or even most of them.

Israel’s standing has deteriorated so much that it’s even possible to imagine a presidential race (probably 2032 rather than 2028) between two candidates who reject the current America-Israel relationship: an AOC-type progressive on the Left and a Tucker-Carlson-type nationalist on the Right. It’s hard to think of a worse failure of political strategy.

You can’t blame this all on double standards, antisemitism, effective online propagandizing, or groupthink on the left. Of course, all of these exist, as I myself have written about many times. But at some point, we have to face the facts that the hard-right Israeli government’s policies are the primary cause of these rapid and radical changes.

Nor are they part of some timeless, causeless Jew-hatred that will never go away. Sure, some percentage of Americans (on both sides of the aisle) are, in Hillary Clinton’s words, deplorable. But they are a small minority. There are many more of us who may not use terms like Anti-Zionist, genocide, or colonialism, but who see that the Israel we may once have loved has devolved into a cruel, hyper-nationalist state whose actions are antithetical to liberal moral values.

We are horrified by what we saw in Gaza, even as we were also horrified by Hamas’ murderous attacks of October 7. We are dismayed by the failed misadventure in Iran, even as we despise the theocratic regime that has funded terrorism for decades. We are too left-wing for AIPAC, not left-wing-enough for the Bernie Left segment of the Democratic Party. Among non-Orthodox American Jews, I would venture to say that we are the conflicted majority.

Which is why, uncharacteristically for me, I want to end on a note of tempered, tentative optimism, for three reasons.

First, there is an Israeli election coming up. And while the Bennett/Lapid coalition is still to the Right of many American Jews, it is also sane, competent, and not beholden to actual genociders like Bezalel Smotrich, who sullied the recent Israel March by treading his blood-stained feet in it. Bibi’s complete failure to achieve even a decent deal with Iran has greatly weakened him. Normal, non-left-wing Israelis are exhausted by the endless wars which do not bring security. And many normal, non-left-wing Israelis are horrified by what they see in the West Bank, where, unlike Gaza, there is not an implacable terrorist enemy holding Israelis hostage, but where there are frequent, state-tolerated pogroms against innocent Palestinian people, as former prime minister Ehud Olmert has compellingly written about. There is, at last, some hope for Israeli democracy.

Second, as reflected in the February 2026 JFNA survey of American Jews’ attitudes toward Zionism, progressives’ antipathy to Zionism is, in large part, a misunderstanding — what Mimi Kravetz aptly called “the ‘Zionism’ gap.” In that poll, only 37% of respondents identified as Zionist, but 88% said that they believed Israel has a right to exist as a democratic, Jewish state — which is, itself, the classic definition of Zionism. Meanwhile, 80% of Jews who identified as anti-Zionist said that Zionism means “supporting whatever actions Israel takes,” which is definitely not what Zionism means, as evidenced by the polls about the upcoming election.

I have suggested that much of this gap is due to the difference between Zionism in theory and Zionism in recent practice. But whatever the cause, the point is that “anti-Zionism” is not nearly as strong as anti-Zionists, or many worried Zionists, say that it is. A large majority of supposed anti-Zionists and non-Zionists are really just anti-Bibi, anti-genocide (as they understand the term), and anti-oppression of Palestinians. As I am as well.

This means that, if there is a new government and new policies in Israel, there is hope for change, which is my third reason for qualified optimism.

Ironically, for that to happen, the best hopes for improving Israel’s standing in the world are some of the very constituencies and populations that AIPAC and the Israeli Right have seen as their enemies: Standing Together and their new political party Makom Le-Kulanu, the New Israel Fund, T’ruah, J Street, Rabbis for Human Rights, Smol Emuni, Peace Now, denominational bodies like Arza and Merkaz, New Jewish Narrative, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and many others.

The path of the Right has led to a dead end. Bibi and his American allies have tarnished the Israeli ‘brand’ to the point where even taking money from AIPAC is a deal-breaker in numerous Democratic Party elections. The real debate among the liberal half of the country is now between liberal Zionists (and quasi-Zionists) like those I’ve listed above, and non-antisemitic anti-Zionists and post-Zionists who argue that Israel’s hyper-nationalism, Jewish supremacy, and war crimes are not an aberration from Zionism but an inevitable expression of it; that there can be no Jewish self-determination in the land of Israel without the oppression and displacement of Palestinians; and that the only way forward is a non-Jewish state for all its citizens. (I am omitting from this discussion Palestinian genociders like Hamas, and its supporters overseas.)

I think the latter view is both incorrect and unrealistic, not least because there are at least five million Israeli Jews who will not surrender a Jewish state. I think that coexistence is the only way, whether that takes the form of two states, or a confederation of two states, or some other political arrangement. But I also admit that the Netanyahu government’s actions over the last five years provide ample evidence for the anti-Zionist view. Who knows, maybe it is too late for a democratic Israel, or maybe the term is a contradiction in terms.

But I do know this: The moral corruption of Israel has destroyed the alliances that kept it safe for decades. No amount of tough talk from Bibi and Smotrich, no guns or bombs will enable a small pariah state to endure forever. The old logic has ended. But there is hope for a better one.

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