American support for Israel could be at risk unless steps are taken, including by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, to maintain bipartisan support for the Jewish State, US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew said on Tuesday night.
“There are risks – in both the Right and the Left – of erosion on the margins, that only makes it more important for there to be bipartisan support,” Lew told an economic conference at Reichman University.
To date, that erosion has not impacted pragmatic support for Israel such as Congressional approval of arms sales, he said.
“The question is, when you have generational change, will that be true 10 years, 20 years, 30 years from now?” Lew speculated.
The issue of how best to shore up public support for Israel takes place within the growing political divisions in the United States, Lew stated.
“In the context of an America which is increasingly polarized, it’s harder to have bipartisan support,” Lew explained, adding that “It’s critical that [Israel] not become a partisan issue in the United States.“For the entirety of Israel’s history,” Lew said, “there’s been bipartisan support” for the Jewish state and it would be important that this backing continues for the next 76 years.US-Israel ties should be built from the Center of the political scene because neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party can be 100% behind Israel, Lew said.“You don't need either party to be 100% if you've got most of both. And that's where the support for Israel is. It's probably, still close to 70%,” he said.
“You don’t need either party to be 100% if you’ve got most of both. And that’s where the support for Israel is. It’s probably still close to 70%,” he said.
Israel, however, has “some work to do” to maintain that support, Lew said.“I think it’s important for the Government of Israel to promote bipartisan support and not to allow it to become a polarizing issue,” he said.Among the steps it must take, Lew stressed, is to improve the way it tells its story to the American public, particularly in light of the Gaza war.
The images that Americans see out of Gaza are “brutal,” Lew explained. Israel’s enemies “are actively telling the story in a very negative way,” he said.The Biden administration has emphasized that Israel has a right and a responsibility to defend itself and to ensure that humanitarian assistance is provided, he said.Lew said he has pushed back many times at charges that Israel is responsible for a Gaza famine, when in fact, there is no famine in Gaza.“I get asked the question regularly about what’s being done to deal with the famine?” Lew said. “It’s a really hard situation [in Gaza], but there is not a famine. There’s a lot of people who think there is a famine, and [that] doesn’t help to build, you know, bipartisan support,” Lew said.He alluded to Netanyahu’s issues with his right-wing coalition partners who oppose the entry of aid into Gaza.“Now, it’s not always popular in Israel to explain everything that is being done” and that means that public view of the situation outside Israel is skewed, he said.It’s also important when it comes to US-Israel relations to “keep the daylight to a minimum” and “not look for things that exaggerate how much space there is.”The US and Israel have had “very public conversations” about “how the war should be fought. It’s not a secret,” Lew said.
Lew's fear of the far right
Looking beyond Israel, Lew said, he fears that the dangers from the far Right of the American political map are being ignored.
“One of the fears I have about the United States is that the focus is all on the risk from the Left when there’s an isolationist wing on the Right,“ which has opposed helping Ukraine, Lew said.
As someone who grew up during the Cold War and actively working during the Reagan years, “the idea that there would be an isolationist Right that said the United States shouldn’t be defending democracy in Europe is kind of shocking,” Lew stressed.