The US-Israel alliance reached a military peak, but its political future is under threat - analysis

The war with Iran that began on February 28 will be remembered as the moment the US-Israel alliance reached its highest point – and its most politically dangerous one. On the battlefield, what we witnessed was unprecedented. For the first time in history, the American and Israeli militaries fought as a single, unified force. American and Israeli F-15s and F-35s flew side by side in simultaneous strike packages. They shared intelligence, relied on the same refueling tankers, and divided up targets inside joint command centers, where Israeli officers adopted English as the primary language of the war.This was not the old model of the alliance, where one side supplied weapons and political backing while the other did the fighting. This was something entirely different.From the first days of the war, the division of labor between CENTCOM and the IDF was clear. The US focused on protecting its regional bases from ballistic missiles and drones, while also targeting the Iranian navy and working to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Israel, meanwhile, concentrated on the regime itself – its institutions, its command structure, its senior leadership, and the missile stockpiles that threatened the Israeli home front.The moment that perhaps best symbolized this partnership was the strike that killed supreme leader Ali Khamenei. According to the account that has since emerged, the CIA obtained precise intelligence from a human source about Khamenei's location. That intelligence was passed to Israel. Israel then launched a massive air operation into Tehran, sending roughly 100 aircraft to strike the compound and eliminate not only Khamenei but also other senior officials around him.Whatever one thinks of the war, it represented a historic moment in the relationship between Washington and Jerusalem. It involved not only intelligence sharing or diplomatic backing. It was a level of trust and battlefield cooperation unlike anything the two countries had ever demonstrated. In some respects, Israel functioned in the role that Britain filled during World War II.But while American and Israeli pilots were flying together over Iran, the public foundation of that alliance inside the US was eroding. America's public support is slippingA pew survey published on April 7 found that 60% of American adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53% just a year earlier. Only 37% said they viewed Israel favorably. That is a stunning figure, considering that for decades Israel has been one of America's closest allies and one of the largest recipients of US military assistance. Even more troubling is the trajectory. Since 2022, favorable views of Israel have fallen by roughly 20 points.The generational breakdown paints an even bleaker picture. Pew found that roughly 70% of respondents under the age of 50 expressed unfavorable views of Israel. Among Democrats, the numbers were even more alarming, with about 80% holding unfavorable opinions. Republicans remain more supportive, but even there, the numbers are not what they once were. Fifty-eight percent reported favorable views, while 41% said they viewed Israel unfavorably.A Gallup poll showed a similar trend right before the war broke out in late February, when for the first time in 25 years of polling, more Americans said they sympathized with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. The margin was not significant, but the trend was impossible to ignore. Support for Israel had dropped sharply in just a year, and the country's favorability was hovering near a historic low.Think about the contrast for a moment. On the one hand, the US and Israel carried out what may have been the most sophisticated and ambitious joint military operation in the history of their alliance. On the other hand, the very public on which that alliance rests is drifting away.That is not something Israel can ignore. Alliances are not sustained just by generals, intelligence sharing, and political friendships. In democracies, they endure because the public supports them and because voters believe they have value. Once that support cracks – especially among young people – the strategic consequences may take time to appear, but they ultimately do.For decades, Israel's strength in the US rested not just on shared values and common enemies, but on bipartisanship. Republicans and Democrats disagreed about many things, but Israel largely remained above the fray.This allowed Israel to assume that whoever was in office and whatever political reality reigned in Washington, the underlying foundation of support remained bipartisan and broad enough to withstand it. Now, with the consensus frayed on both sides of the aisle, that assumption no longer holds.What makes the current moment even more concerning is that Israel's critics are no longer confined to one political camp. The hostility is on both extremes.On the Left, progressive lawmakers like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have for years framed Israel as a colonial aggressor and human rights violator. Their rhetoric, once seen as marginal, has steadily moved into the mainstream of progressive discourse. What used to be the language of the activist fringe is now heard in congressional offices, on university campuses, in major NGOs, and in large parts of the Democratic coalition.But what is newer – and in some ways more dangerous – is the shift in sectors of the Right. Listen to some of the arguments coming from far-right media personalities like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and, at times, even Megyn Kelly, and the overlap is impossible to miss. The language may differ in tone, but the substance is the same: Israel is manipulative, drags America into war, and has interests that are not aligned with America. This is why anyone who cares about the future of the US-Israel relationship has to ask three questions. First, how did we get to the point where the relationship has become so polarizing? Second, can that erosion be reversed? And third, if it cannot, what does that mean for Israeli security, which remains deeply dependent on American support, assistance, and diplomatic backing?One of the difficulties in discussing this issue is that people tend to blame whichever political side they already oppose. For many Israeli centrists, liberal American Jews, and Democratic voters in the US, the culprit is obvious: Benjamin Netanyahu. He is the Israeli prime minister who, in their view, turned Israel to the far-Right, aligned with Kahanists and the ultra-Orthodox, and moved Israel away from the shared values. In addition, these people accuse Netanyahu of politicizing the relationship with Washington, identifying Israel too closely with Trump and the Republican Party, and turning one of the country's most vital strategic assets into a domestic political tool.While this is an exaggeration, there is always a foundation of truth. One recent example came in late January, when Netanyahu declared that Israeli soldiers had “lost their lives” in Gaza because of an “arms embargo” imposed by the Biden administration.That framing was political and designed to serve Netanyahu at home, and shift the blame from his decisions and policies to president Joe Biden. It turned a strategic disagreement between allies into a domestic talking point. By doing so, it treated Israel's most important alliance not as a national asset to be protected, but as a political football to be kicked around for short-term gain.It was not the first time Netanyahu had done this.One of the clearest examples was in 2015, when he traveled to Washington to speak before Congress against the nuclear deal – the JCPOA – that president Barack Obama was promoting. Netanyahu believed the deal was dangerous, and while he was right on the substance, the manner in which he chose to fight it – by publicly aligning with Republican leadership against a sitting Democratic president – was seen by many Americans as blatant interference in US domestic politics.Three years earlier, during the 2012 presidential campaign, Netanyahu hosted Republican candidate Mitt Romney in Jerusalem for a high-profile visit that was widely interpreted as an implicit endorsement. And during Netanyahu's first term as premier, in the late 1990s, his relationship with Bill Clinton was also tense and politically charged.From the perspective of many Democrats – and especially American Jews, whom mostly vote Democratic – Netanyahu long ago became a partisan figure on the opposite side of America's own political divide.There is a counter-narrative, one that resonates deeply with many Israelis, especially on the Right, and cannot be dismissed. According to that view, Netanyahu did not politicize the relationship out of recklessness, but because he believed that defending Israel required standing up even to friendly American presidents when their policies endangered the Jewish state. It is an argument that draws on Golda Meir's famous line: If the choice is between being dead and pitied or alive with a bad image, we would rather be alive and have the bad image.There is truth in this argument since, after all, Israel's leaders are not elected to win editorial-page approval in The New York Times. They are elected to keep the country alive. If an American administration is pursuing a policy that Israeli leaders believe will endanger the country, they have an obligation to speak out.The problem is that this entire conversation is too simplistic. Hinging the relationship on one person such as Netanyahu ignores the demographic and ideological changes reshaping both countries, as well as the complicated history of the US-Israel relationship itself.While US president Harry Truman's immediate recognition of Israel in 1948 was historic, the following two decades were characterized by strategic distance. Washington did not want to alienate the Arab world and refused to sell weapons to Israel during the War of Independence and also during the 1956 Sinai campaign. The US viewed the new state with sympathy, but not as a strategic partner.The change started in 1962, when president John F. Kennedy approved the sale of Hawk anti-aircraft missiles to Israel. Even then, the sale was justified on the grounds that these were defensive weapons. The deeper shift only came after the 1967 Six Day War, when Lyndon Johnson began to see Israel as a valuable regional asset and the US gradually emerged as its chief arms supplier.Then came the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when president Richard Nixon authorized Operation Nickel Grass, the airlift that resupplied Israel with weapons and equipment at a moment of existential danger. It was a pivotal shift in policy that demonstrated Israel's reliance on the US.From Cold War distance to strategic alliance But even that high point was followed by strain. In 1975, president Gerald Ford imposed what became known as a “reassessment,” a diplomatic move designed to pressure Israel into territorial concessions. The 1980s were similarly mixed. President Ronald Reagan elevated strategic cooperation and deepened the military relationship, but tensions flared after Israel's 1981 strike on Iraq's Osirak reactor, and again following the invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The early 1990s brought renewed optimism with the Oslo process, but that too gave way to friction when Netanyahu took office in 1996 and clashed repeatedly with president Clinton.Then came the Obama years, marked by some of the lowest personal chemistry ever seen between an American president and an Israeli prime minister. Yet, from Obama the relationship moved to Trump, and from one of its most strained phases to one of its warmest. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital, moved the US embassy there, recognized Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights, and brokered the Abraham Accords.Most Israelis concluded from this that while the relationship was affected by personalities, it was still stronger than any one person. It was rooted in shared interests and values, as well as genuine friendship. The relationship, people believed, was dynamic, but it did not break.That was true – until recently.What is happening in America is not just about extremists on campus, social-media influencers, or antisemitism. It is about how regular Americans view Israel, the values Israel appears to project, and the story it is telling the world today. It is about whether large parts of the American public still see the Jewish state as one that they share not only interests with, but also democratic norms.The war that erupted after the Hamas-led terrorist massacre on October 7, 2023, landed on top of