Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump are both autocratic in their style of ruling — er, governing. After Trump was elected the first time in 2016, I said frequently, with what I now see as a simplistic analysis at best, that because I had reported for years on Netanyahu, who has been prime minister since 2009, I could predict Trump’s next move. The past week has offered an interesting opportunity to put that claim to the test, against the results of Israel’s national election and the U.S. midterm elections.
In Israel, Netanyahu’s ruling coalition lost its majority, while the so-called Arab parties won a historic 19 seats, outperforming their previous record of 15 seats in the 2020 election. Because the four Zionist opposition parties, led by Gadi Eisenkot’s Yashar, have only 48 seats, they cannot form a government without the Arab parties. This, they say, they will not do.
In the U.S., there was a blue wave, with the Democratic Party winning majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The contrast between the reactions from the two leaders is notable. Netanyahu, who is eight seats short of the necessary 61-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament, activated his “poison machine,” the well-oiled media apparatus that has for years been distorting the national discourse with its effective disinformation campaigns. His shills in the commercial media and his online troll army planted the story that “the Arabs” had “stolen” the election, with the help of money from Qatar. That claim oozed into the purportedly independent veteran media outlets, with news presenters repeating and amplifying the right-wing talking point. Because Israeli society has shifted so far to the right in recent years, the lie found receptive ears even among the center-right supporters of parties that are purportedly anti-Netanyahu.
In the U.S., however, Trump and the Republican Party conceded that they had lost. There was no repeat performance of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection. So far, Trump’s supporters have not embarked on any disinformation or retribution campaigns, though it is admittedly early days yet.
Meanwhile, Trump has made some unexpected statements on Israel. Two days before the midterm elections, he announced that he would halt the $4 billion annual U.S. aid package to Israel, which has been in place since the 1980s. On election day itself, he told Fox News that “if people in the U.S.” got “tired” of him, he would move to Israel and become prime minister there, where he claimed to have a “99% approval rating.”
Trump is indeed popular in Israel. According to a poll conducted by the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute, 73% of Israelis say that Trump is a “better-than-average” president, as far as Israel’s interests are concerned, while 49% of those who approve of him say he’s one of the “best presidents in U.S. history.” So not 99% approval, but far higher than his dismally low numbers in the U.S., where, according to exit polls, 67% of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Democratic candidates.
Two prominent Muslim politicians won their elections in the U.S. despite having voiced strong criticism of Israel’s policies. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed won his campaign to become senator, with his supporters including a slim majority of Jewish voters. Meanwhile, New York City’s Mayor Zohran Mamdani is, as Democratic politician Rahm Emanuel recently reminded an Israeli journalist, “more popular with American Jews than Benjamin Netanyahu.” I am old enough to remember when a U.S. politician could kiss their career goodbye if they criticized Israel.
The Israeli media is not quite sure how to report this new era in U.S. politics. With the exception of Haaretz, every mainstream Hebrew media outlet describes both El-Sayed and Mamdani as “anti-Israel,” with little reference to their policies and even less to explaining why they are popular with Jewish voters. They are also starting to notice that the Republican Party is no longer united in its support for Israel, but they haven’t yet amplified the fact that the anti-Israel wing of the GOP is dominated by white nationalists, otherwise known as Nazis. So while the Israeli media might say or imply that the Democratic politicians critical of Israel are antisemitic, they haven’t applied the same criticism to Republican politicians who advocate turning away from Israel, though they are motivated by antisemitism rather than a pro-Palestine position.
For the most part, the Israeli media doesn’t really understand the nuances of U.S. politics or society. These days, they tend to see the world through the lens of grievance over Oct. 7 and what they perceive as unjust criticism for the war in Gaza — criticism that they regard as antisemitic. They are also reflexively prejudiced against Arabs and Muslims, whom they tend to categorize as pro-Palestine and therefore gratuitously anti-Israel (read: antisemitic).
So when they hear left-wing Democrats with Muslim names or brown skin (or both) criticizing Israel, they dismiss them as antisemitic. They might not share the views of right-wing Republicans on social issues like access to abortion or transgender rights, but until now they saw them all as Christian Zionists and were certain of their unquestioning support for Israel. Israelis do not know how to read the cracks in the right-wing U.S. discourse on their country, but they understand that they can’t count on U.S. support now, and they are openly worried.