Replacing Netanyahu Won't Change How the World Sees Israel

The hope that ousting Netanyahu will salvage Israel's shattered image is just another iteration of the delusion that Israel has an image problem when the problem is Israel's apartheid nature.

Aug 10, 2026

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For Israel and its American supporters, these are desperate times. The radical tactics they are currently employing to try and rescue Israel from the consequences of its own nature and behavior are unlikely to succeed.

The efforts taking shape are a rehash of the tiresome tactics of accusing Israel’s critics, supporters of equality and justice, and international human rights norms and laws themselves of antisemitism. It is a continued effort to paint Israel as the victim. This is joined with an effort to paint Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyau as an anomalous leader whose replacement will bring Israel “back” into the warm bosom of its liberal allies.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has shown itself to be much less adept at aggressive political campaigning than they had been at behind the scenes political maneuvering. Michigan, despite an overwhelming spend on Haley Stevens that didn’t just set records, it shattered the old ones, and demonstrated just how weak the once-vaunted “Israel lobby” has become.

So, they have tried to paint themselves as victims. They are, they say, no different than other lobbying groups and are only isolated because they represent Jewish Americans. This is, of course, false on many levels.

AIPAC, through its SuperPAC the United Democracy Project (UDP), may not be the only PAC that routinely floods Democratic primaries with Republican money, but they are by far the leading culprit and are pioneers of the tactic.

Further, AIPAC’s raison d’etre of backing candidates solely on the basis of their stances on the “US-Israel relationship” is a thin veil that does little to conceal that they are a lobby for a foreign power.

There is nothing wrong with being a lobby for a foreign power; many countries invest tremendous resources in lobbying Washington for their goals. What is wrong is being a lobby for a foreign power but claiming otherwise. There is a process that foreign lobbies must undergo and rules they must adhere to, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Few outside of AIPAC’s passionate supporters buy into the idea that AIPAC is anything but a lobby on behalf of Israeli interests. That some Americans share those interests does not change the fact that AIPAC’s interests are primarily those of the Israeli government, not the United States.

This embrace of victimhood has become widespread among pro-Israel Americans. Non-Jews use it all the time to try to attack progressive forces or to protect their own paychecks. Van Jones is a good example of the latter category.

But when you can mobilize $60 million for a candidate for no other reason than her support for Israel, it’s pretty hard to play the victim.

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Blame it on Bibi

Pro-Israel forces are doubling down on false accusations and implications of antisemitism, but they’ve used that tool so much that it has lost its effectiveness. That’s particularly important because the cynical weaponization of accusations of antisemitism has blunted concern about antisemitism so much that the rise of real antisemitism risks being downplayed and even overlooked by those who would otherwise combat it. You can only cry wolf so often before you’re no longer believed.

But that’s not the only tactic in use. There is also the “blame it on Bibi” stratagem.

Benjamin Netanyahu is, to put it mildly, not a popular figure. While the Christian right loves him, among American Jews he is a polarizing figure, just as he is in Israel.

Some on the Jewish right still admire Benjamin Netanyahu. These are the same people who celebrate the Iran war and the devastation in Lebanon, although some on the right decry Netanyahu “not going far enough” in those areas as well as in Gaza and the West Bank. That mirrors the Israeli right.

But most American pro-Israel Jews lament Netanyahu’s decision to jettison bipartisan American support for an open embrace of the Republican party and blame him for destroying Israel’s international image.

This camp, which is certainly the most politically relevant, is largely reflected in one of the most tone-deaf op-eds you’ll find.

The piece, by Rabbi Eric Yoffie in Haaretz, is called “Americans Don’t Have An Israel Problem. They Have a Netanyahu Problem.” It is emblematic of the delusional thinking among so-called “moderate” or “liberal” pro-Israel figures.

Yoffie, the former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, was always a man who saw Israel through a very narrow lens. Sadly, in this, he is all too typical of diaspora Jewish legacy leadership, and it illustrates why the aging and outgoing generation of Jews, of which I am also a part, has failed so miserably in its efforts to secure a Jewish future and has instead ended up trying to make the case that a stand against apartheid and genocide is somehow antisemitic.

Yoffie lists Netanyahu’s many sins from a purely Israeli point of view. As such, he omits any criticism of the massive carnage, murder, and mayhem that Israel unleashed in Gaza and in Lebanon. He mentions settler violence, but does so in terms of the harm that violence does to Israel.

“[Netanyahu’s] government is watching silently as violent settlers are setting fire to Palestinian villages and destroying whatever is left of Israel’s international image.” Similarly, his criticism of the ongoing genocide in Gaza (which he would certainly argue is not genocide but merely the casualties of a war that is entirely the fault of Palestinians) is limited to the, certainly accurate, fact that Netanyahu refused to end the slaughter in Gaza in a deal that would have freed many hostages before they died.

“Netanyahu,” Yoffie writes, “was once a better politician and a more honorable man.” One is at pains to ask, even strictly in Yoffie’s terms, when that would have been? Was it when he incited the Israeli right to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin? When he worked with Jerry Falwell to counter Bill Clinton, or with John Boehner to undermine Barack Obama? Just when was Netanyahu a more “honorable man,” Eric?

Yoffie states that “For most Americans today, Netanyahu and Israel are one. Americans who think of Israel think of Netanyahu and all that he stands for.”

That’s not entirely unfair, of course. Netanyahu has been Israel’s prime minister for longer than anyone else in Israel’s history, serving nearly 19 years in total across three periods. While plenty of Israelis dislike or even despise him, Netanyahu has enough support to continue to cobble majority coalitions together.

But while Netanyahu may be the face of much of what Americans detest about Israel, he is far from the only aspect. His government is dominated by far right figures like Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, and sits in a bizarre alliance with reactionary Haredi parties that have cynical, opportunistic, and ambiguous relationships with Zionism, but help support many hardline policies even while their main focus is the privileges and social support they grab for their communities.

Yoffie focuses a good deal on Netanyahu’s assault on Israel’s democratic structures, especially the judiciary. While that is certainly a concern for many pro-Israel Jews, it simply is not the case that this assault on the Israeli judiciary has played anything more than a very minor role in Israel’s degradation in the eyes of most Americans.

What Yoffie is doing is to try to generate an image of Israel that transcends Netanyahu, but he fails to identify those things about Israel that have so repulsed Americans, especially, but not exclusively, among Democrats.

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How different is Gadi Eisenkot?

Yoffie puts forth Gadi Eisenkot, who, at the moment seems likely to be the next prime minister as a redemptive figure. “Eisenkot would talk tough but sensibly on Iran; would search for an opening to initiate talks with the Arab world, including moderate elements among the Palestinians; would reach out to both Democrats and Republicans in the U.S., offering a fresh start.”

Yet would Eisenkot really be that different from Netanyahu in ways that matter to Americans?

To pro-Israel Americans, there would be a significant difference. Eisenkot and Bennett would not attack the judiciary, though, like Rabin, they would often complain about it, keeping the issue alive on the right. There is no reason, at this point, to suspect that either of them would display the corruption or megalomania of Netanyahu and his family.

But these are not the things that Americans care about. Even for many pro-Israel Americans, these are internal Israeli concerns. It is how Israel deals with the Palestinians, with Lebanon, with Iran, and with its foreign policy in general that concerns Americans, including American Jews in both the Zionist and anti-Zionist camps and everywhere in between.

How will Eizenkot deal with Gaza, for example?

Eisenkot has attacked Netanyahu for lacking a political vision for continued control of Gaza. That was why the party he was in at the time quit Netanyahu’s government during the genocide. There was no issue with the mass killing, the brutal tactics or the war crimes. The problem was the lack of an endgame, a reasonable concern for a military thinker, but not one that shows any regard for the suffering the war caused Palestinians.

Eisenkot is the creator of the so-called “Dahiya Doctrine,” which advocates the mass destruction of civilian infrastructure to pressure governments or other authorities to abandon support for any group that might attack or resist Israel with force.

He is a devoted opponent of a Palestinian state or Palestinian equality. He also supports the expansion of settlements.

Eisenkot would likely try to open more talks with Arab states to normalize, but he will find no more success than Netanyahu as long as he continues to deny Palestinians their rights. Will Eisenkot continue Netanyahu’s all out assault on Palestinian institutions, the PLO, the PA, regardless of how much those groups kowtow to Israel’s every whim? His history, as well as the political positions of his coalition—including figures like Bennett, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman, and possibly Benny Gantz—suggests he will.

Would Eisenkot try to put a better face on Israel’s actions in pursuit of these goals, which he shares with Netanyahu? Yes, but in this age of social media, that will be exceedingly difficult. The idea that there can be a reversal of Netanyahu’s destruction of Israel’s bipartisan appeal is naïve and based on a complete misreading of the political map.

And that is what Yoffie fails to grasp. The problem is not what Netanyahu has done, although the scale has obviously been much larger. The problem is that, in 2026, Israel can no longer hide the brutal nature of its occupation and its apartheid nature, both of which grow worse as time goes on.

That’s what Yoffie cannot understand. Americans do indeed have a problem with Netanyahu. But he is not THE problem; Israel’s very nature is.

Yoffie demonstrates his own blindness when, illustrating his illusion of the reaction to an Eisenkot-led Israel, he writes, “Would every antisemite and BDS supporter become a Zionist? Of course not. But the majority of Americans, who until recently had a positive view of Israel, would be reminded of what made them like the Jewish state in the past, before Netanyahu’s extremist government destroyed the country’s image. With hard work and smart messaging, past levels of support could return.”

Yoffie’s insistence on equating BDS—a movement that advocates equality, justice, and human rights—with antisemitism shows how steeped he is in this dual strategy of weaponizing antisemitism and blaming Netanyahu.

I don’t mean to pick on Yoffie here. He is not alone. In fact, he is emblematic of the desperation and self-deception of Israel’s supporters in the United States.

There is no alternative for Israel but to accept that Palestinians must have their rights, all of them, on an equal basis not just to Israelis but to every other free nation in the world. They must be compensated for the years of their dispossession and degradation at Israeli hands. And they must get the apology that not only Israel but the United States, the UK, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so many other nations owe them.

That’s how Israelis get to write a new future, one where they, too, can emerge from their pariah status and live their lives away from the fear that both their experience and the demagoguery and crimes of their leaders have forced upon them. It’s a better future for everyone concerned.

But the first step is shedding the delusional, bigoted thinking of people like Eric Yoffie.

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Replacing Netanyahu Won't Change How the World Sees Israel

The hope that ousting Netanyahu will salvage Israel's shattered image is just another iteration of the delusion that Israel has an image problem when the problem is Israel's apartheid nature.

My Recent Articles and Media

VIDEO: The Soul of the Democrats: Abdul El Sayed and Van Jones

News Roundup

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