The Republican Party began to turn against Israel because of Netanyahu

After Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lost the support of the Democratic Party, the Republican Party is now witnessing a noticeable growth in discontent towards him and Israel, in a strategic shift that may have serious repercussions on the future of the alliance between Washington and Tel Aviv.

According to the Axios website, data indicate that a growing segment of Republicans, especially young people, have begun to change their position in support of Israel following the widespread destruction inflicted by its military machine on the Gaza Strip. This decline worsened after Netanyahu aroused the ire of President Donald Trump and his team during their efforts to end the “Iran War.”

Over the course of 15 years, Netanyahu has relied on strengthening his relations with Republicans to compensate for the decline in Democratic support. If Republican support is no longer guaranteed today, Israel and Netanyahu face a real diplomatic impasse.

Anger at the top of the party hierarchy

Netanyahu’s crisis begins at the highest levels of leadership in the Republican Party. According to the book “Regime Change” (Regime Change) To journalists Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, President Trump put pressure on Netanyahu last September to accept a peace agreement in Gaza, and clearly told him: “All the Jews are tired of you,” threatening a political “divorce” between the two countries if he continued his intransigence.

Axios previously revealed that Trump described Netanyahu in his private halls as “completely crazy,” warning that his policies risk imposing further global isolation on Israel, although Trump later stated that his relationship with Netanyahu is “good, but we have to keep him a little sane.”

For his part, Vice President and the most prominent candidate to succeed Trump, J.D. Vance, did not hesitate to rebuke Israeli officials opposed to the Iranian agreement, saying: “If I were in the Israeli government, I would not have attacked the only strong ally I have left in the entire world.”

The “America First” movement leads the rebellion

This tension coincided with the rise of isolationist anti-foreign interventionism, led by prominent right-wing media figures such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who stoked anger against Israel.

Carlson – who recently left the Republican Party – accused Netanyahu of manipulating Trump to drag him into war, describing the US president as having become a “slave” of the Israeli prime minister. On the other hand, this shift prompted figures such as Ben Shapiro – a fierce defender of Israel – to lose part of his audience after right-wing listeners who rejected American support for Tel Aviv moved to other platforms.

The Israeli issue has become a “loyalty test” in the war waged by the electronic right against the traditional establishment of the Republican Party, as platforms led by media figures such as Candace Owens intensified their anti-Israel rhetoric, considering that open American support for Tel Aviv is evidence of foreign influence penetrating the “America First” principle.

The language of numbers: an unprecedented decline

Polls show clear cracks in the Republican “firewall” of support for Israel:

• A general decline: a Pew Center poll showed (Pew) In April, 40% of Republicans have a negative view of Israel.
• Generation gap: Dissatisfaction jumped to 57% among young Republicans (18-49 years old), compared to only 25% among those over fifty.
• Excessive support: A Quinnipiac University poll this month found that a fifth of Republicans believe their country supports Israel “too much,” a number three times higher than after the October 7 attacks three years ago.
• The Gaza War: A University of Maryland poll last year indicated that only 46% of Republicans considered military operations in Gaza “justified,” and the percentage dropped sharply to only 22% among young people (18-34 years old).

The director of the poll at the University of Maryland, Professor Shibli Telhami, confirmed to Axios that the war has accelerated the movement of young people away from Israel, saying: “There is a real shift taking shape among young Republicans.”

A realistic view of the future

Despite these rifts, the party’s broad base still supports Israel. A Gallup poll last February showed that 70% of Republicans sympathize with the Israelis (although the percentage decreased by 10 points compared to 2024).

Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, stresses that the Republican leadership and evangelical community are providing strong support, but warns that poll numbers overall are “dangerously low,” a troubling trend for the party looking ahead to the 2028 primaries.

What are analysts watching now?

The most prominent question in the corridors of Washington now remains: To what extent is this unprecedented decline related to the person of Netanyahu – who is facing one of the fiercest electoral battles of his career this fall – and to what extent does it reflect a radical shift in the view of the State of Israel itself within the American political conscience?