Israel’s Loss of American Support Explained

September 23rd, 2025
Patrick Li

Just four days ago, as of the day of writing (September 21st, 2025), Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stood side by side with American Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a 2,000-year-old holy site, declaring that the American alliance with Israel was “as strong and durable as the stones…[they] had just touched.” In reality, this is not the case.

For the past 2 years, following the start of the war in Gaza, Israel has become increasingly isolated by the international community and equally as reliant on American backing. During this week’s UN General Assembly, previously ardent friends, including the states of Australia, Britain, Canada and France, will recognize a Palestinian state—despite the ballooning expansion of settlements in the West Bank making statehood an increasingly unlikely occurrence. Since the US now supplies over 70% of all war costs for Israel, the US is all that remains between Israel’s seemingly invincible status and an outcast pariah state lacking virtually any sort of international backing.

And yet, despite Mr. Netanyahu’s steadfast assurance that the American bond is perfectly solid, it is not. Left-leaning Democratic Party voters, long before Israel launched its invasion, have been slowly drifting away. Even among conservative Republicans, cracks have begun to emerge.

Domestic polling is especially jarring. In 2022, 42% of American adults held an objectively unfavourable view of Israeli statehood; now, 53% do. Recent YouGov polling finds that now 43% of Americans believe that “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.” In the past three years, Democratic unfavorability has risen by 23%. Even among Republican voters, support is evenly divided across the board—in contrast to 63% in favor of Israel in 2022.

Specifically for Democrats, the falling-out seems to be over deep-rooted clashes in social values. Historically, American leftists, especially the young, have held strong dismay against their own nation’s past, riddled with neo-colonial exploitation and slavery. This has transferred over onto Palestinian oppression and unwarranted Israeli settlement of the West Bank. According to a recent Truthout poll, 59% of Democratic voters now say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis, whereas only about 21% side with Israelis, representing a dramatic reversal of a hardline Democratic pro-Israel sentiment just a few years ago.

For right-leaning Republicans, the issue seems to be predominantly fiscal. Anger founded in taxpayer “waste” sent to overseas conflicts—specifically during the previous Biden and now Trump administrations’ backing of Ukraine’s war effort—has, as with the left’s historical roots, spilled over to Israel’s war in Gaza. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene put it bluntly: “U.S. taxpayers fund Israel $3.8 billion annually for military aid… I don’t want to pay for genocide in a foreign country… And I will not be silent about it.”

As of now, American military support is underpinned by a decade-long agreement—in which Israel is supplied nearly $4bn a year—that runs out in 2028 and should, critics say, be renegotiated. Israel is worried that Trump will refuse to simply just ‘hand over money’ and, as The Economist writes, “repackage the agreement as a ‘partnership.’”

Regardless of partisan roots, it isn't difficult to infer that a loss of popular American backing would be catastrophic for Israel—a small country surrounded by hostile neighbors.