As Israel heads towards pivotal elections this October, the country finds its international standing and brand at a nadir in most of the developed world, including the United States.
After decades of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the helm, a new government must immediately begin the process of repairing the damage caused by a surfeit of tactical success coupled with a deficit of strategic common sense.
Failure to do so will result in deep and lasting impact diplomatically, commercially, and even militarily.
Israel continues to destroy Hamas as a fighting force and has secured multiple tactical victories since October 7, including against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and to a lesser extent, the implacably hostile regime in Iran.
Syria, an erstwhile enemy, underwent a revolution and is both defanged as a military adversary and seemingly interested in some kind of normalization of relations.
Lebanon – essentially a forward base for the IRGC over recent decades – has, for the first time in many years, a government interested in normalizing relations with Israel and, possibly, clipping Hezbollah’s wings by initiating a process of disarming it.
None of these successes would have been possible without the combination of two critical factors: intrepid Israeli ingenuity and military skill as well as steadfast American support spanning multiple administrations.
It is also abundantly clear that over the course of the conflict during the past three years, American popular support for Israel – and with it the historical bipartisan view of Israel as a critical ally which is worthy of American support in both the military and diplomatic spheres – has substantially eroded.
Israel is far from blameless in its loss of support among a wide swathe of Americans.
Despite the range of tactical successes achieved by the IDF and Israel’s security services, the Netanyahu government failed to appreciate the dictum of Carl von Clausewitz that “war is the continuation of politics by other means,” with the result that Israel has not translated its battlefield successes into creative statecraft.
It is reported that Netanyahu could have sealed a deal to release all the live hostages earlier than was the case; instead, he was ultimately forced to accept a deal by US President Donald Trump and the American negotiators at the cost of at least several hostages’ lives.
Netanyahu could have been responsive to the Lebanese government’s attempts to initiate talks for mutual recognition and potentially disarming Hezbollah after the November 2024 ceasefire. Instead, he hesitated.
Netanyahu could have agreed to allow a government of Palestinian technocrats to enter and begin to take control of the civil infrastructure in Gaza following the ceasefire.
Instead, he demurred, because to do so would have meant bringing upon him the wrath of his Jewish supremacist coalition partners.
Today Israel finds itself with reduced agency and degrees of freedom, its policies and posture increasingly limited by American dictat.
For decades, Netanyahu has overseen the gradual transformation of Israel from the object of bipartisan and full-throated American support into a country which many Americans – wrongly, unnecessarily, and with damaging results – perceive as morally suspect as well as arrogant in its assumptions about unfettered access to American support.
Henry Kissinger famously said that “Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics.” That dictum has been taken to an extreme by Netanyahu, who has seemingly prioritized his personal political survival over Israel’s national interests.
In the realm of US-Israeli relations, this myopic viewpoint has led to Israel’s increasing estrangement from the Democratic Party, from many American Jews, and recently even from significant parts of the Republican Party.
One has only to look at the mayhem and violence being perpetrated in Judea and Samaria by what American Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has called Jewish terrorists to see the latest evidence of the damage such misguided priorities have wrought.
Meddling and moving forward
Netanyahu has – for good reason – been obsessed with the need to deny Iran access to nuclear weapons.
He has, however, been seemingly oblivious about the importance of maintaining bipartisan American support for Israel as an essential element in advancing that goal.
Netanyahu has repeatedly attempted to interfere – sometimes in a subtle manner, and other times blatantly – in American domestic politics.
He saw fit to testify in front of the American Congress as far back as 2002 while out of office and advocate for the removal of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. We know how that ended.
He openly supported the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney (a highly capable and very pro-Israel politician for sure), in his race against former US president Barack Obama in 2008.
Netanyahu engineered the idea of addressing a joint session of Congress in 2010 on Iran – despite Obama’s vigorous opposition – in an attempt to block the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreement.
If any means justify the ends, then we should not be surprised that along the way, many American legislators and citizens have become wary of Israel and its government.
When one finds oneself in a hole, the first rule is to stop digging.
The next Israeli government will face a herculean task in beginning the long road towards rehabilitating Israel’s brand. It must resist any temptation to in any way appear to be interfering in domestic American political affairs.
Israel should similarly expect that no American government of either party will wish to interfere in Israel’s domestic politics.
And Israel should always seek to both inform and seek the collaboration with and acquiescence of its American partners in any major military or diplomatic initiative, all the while preserving Israel’s national independence and associated degrees of freedom.
A good place to start would be for a new Israeli government to voluntarily and immediately notify the US that it intends to forego American military aid.
Israel is a wealthy country with a higher GDP per capita than France and the UK. It can pay for its own defense, and doing so would both serve to dampen criticism (in Congress and in American public opinion) and create a more level playing field.
Israel and the US face a common need to rapidly increase the production of a new generation of weapons – AI-based, inexpensive, and capable of neutralizing asymmetric warfare threats.
Working together to address this challenge would meaningfully “shift and lift” the discourse about Israel.
Israel has no better friend than the United States. It depends on American support and on the (still) special relationship it has had with the world’s only superpower.
Moreover, Americans have a long history of supporting Israel based on shared values as well as realpolitik considerations. It will take a major effort and considerable time, but the task of rehabilitating Israel’s brand is both possible and essential.
Rebuilding Israel as a liberal democracy with equal rights and obligations for all citizens, as articulated in the country’s Declaration of Independence, and a high-functioning government is the best guarantee to ensure that Americans will once again look at Israel as an ally and worthy military and diplomatic partner.
The writer is a venture capitalist and the founder of the Shlomo Argov Fellows program at Reichman University.