President Biden, a staunch supporter of Israel who had privately warned Bibi (as the prime minister is known) to end his assault on the judiciary, issued his strongest public condemnation of the move last Tuesday. “I’m very concerned,” he said. “They cannot continue down this road.” He urged “some genuine compromise.” As a sign of his displeasure, he made it clear that Netanyahu won’t be invited any time soon to the White House, where Israeli prime ministers have been regular visitors.
Netanyahu responded almost instantly with a harsh statement: “Israel is a sovereign country which makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad.” Other members of his cabinet were more acerbic, with one claiming that Biden had “fallen victim” to “fake news,” and another complaining that Israel is “not another star on the American flag. We are a democracy, and I expect the U.S. president to understand that.”
The reality, though, is that Biden is defending Israeli democracy, not threatening it. And Bibi has no standing to complain about U.S. interventions in Israeli politics when he blatantly intervened in U.S. politics in 2015 to urge Congress to reject President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Netanyahu has never suffered from low self-regard. In the past, however, he showed greater concern for his country’s well-being, not just his own. Now he appears to be hell-bent on staying in power at any cost — not least by undercutting the independent judiciary to prevent his conviction on corruption charges. His autocratic impulses are threatening not only Israeli democracy but also Israel’s all-important relationship with the United States.
Now that Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East, it’s easy to lose sight of how much it still depends on America — but it does.
According to the Congressional Research Service, Israel is the largest U.S. foreign aid recipient since World War II; it is receiving another $3.8 billion in military aid this year. While Israel has an advanced defense industry of its own that produces missile defenses, cybersecurity tools and unmanned aerial vehicles, it still needs big-ticket items from the United States, such as fighter jets, that allow it to maintain its military superiority. Israel, for example, has purchased 50 top-of-the-line F-35 fighter aircraft with U.S. funding, and it just bought four KC-46A aerial refuelers, again with U.S. funding, that it will need if it ever wants to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.
The United States also provides vital diplomatic cover for Israel, using its seat at the U.N. Security Council to block anti-Israel resolutions. U.S. mediation made possible the Abraham Accords under which four Muslim countries recognized Israel, and that support will be necessary again if Netanyahu is to succeed in establishing diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia — a goal that is imperiled by growing settler expansion and violence in the West Bank. (Riyadh just established relations with Tehran, not Jerusalem.)
A three-star U.S. general in Jerusalem oversees training of the Palestinian security forces and security coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which is vital for stopping terrorist attacks on Israel, especially since Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently cut off security coordination with Israel after an Israeli raid on the Jenin refugee camp killed nine people. The U.S. government then convened international conferences with Israel and the Palestinians in Aqaba, Jordan, and Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank.
Then there is all of the covert U.S.-Israeli intelligence cooperation on projects such as the creation of the Stuxnet virus to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program or the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani and Hezbollah operations chief Imad Mughniyah.
“The intelligence partnership between Israel and the U.S. is close, deep and long-standing,” retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence, told me. “In the past, it has been a pillar of stability and continuity when the binational relationship otherwise went through rough waters. Even that pillar could be jeopardized if the current disagreement about the essence of Israel’s democracy continues. We are most comfortable sharing intelligence with democracies; I hope Israel stays in that camp.”
U.S. support for Israel is not directly imperiled in the short term; Biden has so far ruled out cutting military aid. But Bibi’s self-destructive actions will only deepen the growing divide between the two countries, making aid reductions more likely.
A recent Gallup poll should have been a wake-up call for Israeli leaders who take U.S. support for granted: While Republicans are more pro-Israel than ever, Democrats are now divided in their sympathies between Israel and the Palestinians. Moreover, a 2022 Pew Research poll found that most Americans under 30 hold an unfavorable view of Israel. Even American Jews are not as pro-Israel as they used to be. A 2021 survey found that about a quarter of U.S. Jews (and 38 percent of those under age 40) consider Israel to be an apartheid state.
Growing American coolness toward Israel, especially among progressives, has been exacerbated by Bibi’s close relationship with former president Donald Trump — and now by his growing discord with Biden. Former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg is among the prominent supporters of Israel who have expressed alarm about Bibi’s judiciary bill. So have the leaders of major American Jewish organizations.
Even David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, has come out against the judicial overhaul, calling it “offensive to my idea of how courts should work.” So has prominent right-wing philanthropist Miriam Adelson, whose late husband, the billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, was a major donor to both Trump and Netanyahu.
In trying to hold onto power and mollify his far-right coalition partners, Netanyahu is playing with fire. He is risking not only civil war within Israel but also a fraying of Israeli ties with the United States. He needs to withdraw the judicial reform for good or else risk further damage to Israeli security. In truth, it may be too late: Bibi has already done lasting damage to Israel’s reputation in America.
