Reported by Al Jazeera
The Republican midterm rout is helping shape who leads Israel next, as Netanyahu’s US ties turn toxic.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long sold himself as the leader who will ensure that ties with the United States, the country’s most important ally, remain strong. The endorsement he received in the run-up to Israel’s parliamentary elections last month from US President Donald Trump added to that perception, in the same year as Washington and Tel Aviv jointly went to war against Iran.
Then came the US midterm elections, and the disastrous performance of Trump’s Republican Party. Early analysis of why the Republicans lost so badly has in part focused on that war with Iran, and the United States’s relationship with Israel. Both were highlighted by US Vice President JD Vance.
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Suddenly, Netanyahu’s argument that he is the US-Israel relationship’s secret sauce looks much weaker. If anything, it can be argued that Netanyahu, and his policies – resulting in a genocidal war in Gaza, the Iran war, and numerous attacks in the wider region – have made Israel politically toxic in the US.
Many Israelis are now worried that the country can no longer rely on unquestioned support from the US. And as Israel’s political leaders jockey to try and form a government following the parliamentary elections, the opposition has laid the blame squarely at Netanyahu’s feet, and argued that it is another reason he should not be allowed to form the next government.
Yair Lapid, a former Israeli prime minister whose party is a member of the bloc seeking to unseat Netanyahu, stressed his own ties to members of the US Congress in a social media post. He added that he believed US voters were not so much against Israel as “against extremist ministers who say crazy things. They’re against settler violence; they’re against a government they don’t understand; they’re mainly against Netanyahu — for them, anything connected to him is toxic”.
Avigdor Lieberman, another opposition leader, echoed what many in Israel are said to suspect : that Trump’s election-day announcement that US military aid to Israel would end had been…