Israel’s public image is in the toilet. On the socialist left, the Jewish state is portrayed as a genocidal colony. On the populist right, Israel and its supporters in America are conniving courtiers who bullied President Donald Trump to launch a war against Iran on its behalf. The numbers back it up too. A Gallup poll released late last month found that more Americans sympathize with the Palestinians than the Israelis for the first time in the quarter century that Gallup has been asking the question.
All of this might lead Zionists to despair for Israel’s future. In terms of soft power, Jerusalem is being pummeled by podcasts, protests, and social media. But that is only part of the picture. When it comes to hard power, the stuff of arms sales, diplomacy, and air space, Israel is on a generational run.
“There are a lot of people very angry about Israel and yet no one is actually stopping them,” Kenneth Pollack, the vice president for policy at the Middle East Institute and a former CIA Persian Gulf military analyst, told The Free Press.
