When an Israeli prime minister jets into Washington for a meeting with the president of the United States, the red carpet is typically rolled.

But when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited President Donald Trump on July 29, that was not the welcome he received. Instead, the veteran pol, who was in town for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s memorial service, kept his head down, afraid of further irking an American commander in chief who has often expressed displeasure toward Israeli policy in the Middle East.

This anecdote underscores a fact that is becoming increasingly undeniable for Israel: The country is no longer immune from criticism. Congressional candidates who in the past would have been ostracized as extremists for even suggesting a modest cut in U.S. military aid to Israel are now in the mainstream, ousting more establishment politicians in primary races. Progressive candidates in the Democratic Party have kicked out big-money incumbents in deep-blue New York City, Colorado and Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed bested an opponent who had a much larger campaign war chest courtesy of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC.

Even the Democratic political establishment is beginning to see which way the wind is blowing. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, one of the most stalwart allies of the Jewish state in Congress, lambasted Netanyahu on the Senate floor during a March 2024 speech and encouraged Israelis to elect a new government. Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman, White House chief of staff and mayor of Chicago, made a stop at Tel Aviv University in July to excoriate Netanyahu for turning Israel into an international outcast.

The politicians are not leading the way here. Rather, they’re merely following where the American electorate is trending. If the polls are any indication, Americans in general are disgusted with Washington’s Israel policy. There is a significant shift away from the unconditional support U.S. administrations of both political parties have offered Israel since its founding in 1948.

One July survey from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that 58% of Democrats, including 51% of Jewish Democrats, believe the U.S. is too supportive of Israel — up 13 percentage points from January 2024. Asked by Quinnipiac University whether the U.S. was giving Israel too much support, 48% of Americans replied in the affirmative, the highest number since the question was asked nearly a decade ago. Netanyahu is particularly loathed; nearly half of Americans believe he should be arrested on war crime charges if he entered the United States.

Netanyahu may take comfort in the fact that it’s just Democrats souring on Israel rather than America’s two-party system writ large. However, though the Republican Party remains highly sympathetic toward Israel, even this support isn’t as monolithic as it may seem. The generational divide within Trump’s MAGA movement is notable. In total, only 11% of Trump voters view the U.S. as too closely aligned with Israel’s current government. Yet for those below the age of 35, the figure nearly triples to 32%.

The Trump administration, of course, continues to argue that Israel has no greater friend than the current occupant of the Oval Office. But sometimes being a friend means speaking hard truths when Israeli policy goes astray or outright jeopardizes what Washington seeks to achieve in the Middle East.

In terms of rhetoric, one can make an argument that Trump is far tougher on the Israelis than Joe Biden ever was. When in September Israel tried to assassinate a top Hamas official in Qatar, the country that was mediating talks to end the war in Gaza, Trump rightly condemned the attack, scolded Netanyahu for his stupidity and forced him to apologize to Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani when the Israeli premier was in the White House. This June, when the Israeli air force bombarded Beirut and risked collapsing Washington’s peace talks with Iran, Trump called Netanyahu and screamed at him.

Vice President JD Vance, a prospective 2028 Republican presidential candidate, has gone even further than Trump at times by alleging publicly that Netanyahu’s government is deliberately trying to torpedo the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts in the Middle East. He’s onto something. When Trump signed the memorandum of understanding with Iran, right-wing allies of the Israeli government took to the airwaves to ridicule the Americans for lifting sanctions on the Iranian oil industry and potentially unlocking billions of dollars in Iranian assets. Vance didn’t appreciate the noise and took to Joe Rogan’s podcast to wave his finger.

“There are some people within their system, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt, who are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going on indefinitely,” Vance said.

Vance has had a consistent rejoinder for those in Israel who continue to oppose the administration’s negotiations with Tehran: if you don’t have a workable alternative, then stop talking.

None of this is to suggest the U.S.-Israel relationship is in danger of a complete rupture. The Democratic Socialists of America may be on the upswing, but that organization’s position on Israel — in effect treating it as a revisionist state a la North Korea — still holds little traction on Capitol Hill.

However, the frequent U.S. military supplemental packages for Israel, the $3.8 billion a year in U.S. defense aid to the Israeli armed forces and the unflinching U.S. diplomatic endorsement of whatever Israel chooses to do in the Middle East are now the politics and policy of yesteryear. Anybody hoping that a Netanyahu defeat in October and the emergence of a less controversial successor will reset the table is likely fooling themselves.

The U.S.-Israel relationship is bound to be normal rather than extraordinary. Get used to it.

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Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Tribune.

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