In the space of about 24 hours, US President Donald Trump suggested cutting off aid to Israel, a staunch critic of Israel won a key Senate race and the vice president partly blamed his own party’s landslide defeat on US-Israel relations.
The rupture caused by Israel’s devastating military campaign in Gaza and the jointly launched war with Iran has shredded bipartisan US support for Israel that goes back decades. Democrats are fiercely divided over Israel, and Republicans are increasingly critical of its actions.
In Israel, critics of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accuse him of having mismanaged relations with the country’s closest ally. But the divide runs much deeper, and is likely to persist even if a new Government is formed after last week’s elections.
On the left, Americans increasingly see Israel as an international pariah because of the war in Gaza and violent settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. On the right, some see Israel as having undermined Trump’s “America First” pledge, accusing it of dragging the US into a costly and unnecessary war with Iran.
“Something fundamental has shifted,” said Michael Oren, a historian and former Israeli ambassador to the US. “My working assumption is that the call to cut off military aid is just the beginning.” It is still unclear if Trump’s remarks on ending some USD 4 billion in annual military aid to Israel, made in an interview with Fox News, represent official policy or were just a last-ditch bid to sway voters on Election Day. The White House did not respond to a request for more details.
Netanyahu has repeatedly called Trump the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. In his first term, Trump upended decades of US policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and legitimizing Jewish settlements seen as illegal by most of the international community. In his second term, he joined Israel in two wars launched against Iran. Hours after Trump’s remarks, election results poured in, showing a massive wave of Democratic victories across the country, including in the crucial swing state of Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed handily defeated his Republican rival. El-Sayed accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza, allegations it vehemently denies.
US Vice President JD Vance, seen as a possible front-runner to succeed Trump, has sought to distance himself from the Iran war and has adopted a more critical tone toward Israel.In a postmortem posted on social media the morning after the election, Vance said an unnamed pollster, “one of the smartest people I know in politics,” told him Republicans need to do four things to bring voters back: “1) End the war 2) Focus on cost of living/inflation 3) Put America First 4) Change our relationship to Israel.”
“This clearly doesn’t bode well,” said Chuck Freilich, a former deputy national security adviser in Israel. Vance’s call for change “does resonate with a certain part of the Republican Party, the Tucker Carlson and more right-wing, isolationist and MAGA part of the party,” he said. For decades, the US has provided billions of dollars in aid and advanced weaponry to Israel while shielding it from criticism at the UN and other international forums.