It’s Time to Break Free from Netanyahu

After a long hiatus from writing, I decided there was only one way to return: by diving headfirst into one of the most contentious issues in U.S. foreign policy today: Israel.

To start, I’d like to note that I have nothing intrinsically against the idea of Israel. I recognize the importance of having a US ally in the Middle East. Israel provides the US with useful intelligence about the region and helps the US thwart its Middle Eastern adversaries, such as Iran or Hezbollah. This is good. I also appreciate Israel’s protection of the Holy Land, an area of importance for my fellow 2.5 billion Christians and me. 

But that is where my unqualified support ends. Israel should have the right to exist but it shouldn't be treated as uncriticizable. Nor should it be exerting the amount of influence it currently does on the US and the world. The reality is that Israel’s geopolitical footprint is vastly disproportionate to its actual standing on the world stage. It has a population of just 9 million, is the size of New Jersey, and has a GDP of just 540 billion (for comparison, New Jersey’s GDP is 846.6 billion.) Israel is also resource-poor. It lacks a significant amount of oil, minerals, or farmland. It is not a global superpower that demands a partnership; it is a small regional state that depends on us (and our over $300 billion in inflation-adjusted aid since 1948), not the other way around.

So if the partnership is not essential, we must consider the pros and cons. The pros of a partnership with Israel are, as mentioned before, intelligence on US adversaries and a regional military ally. 

Now we’ll discuss the cons. But before I do so, I want to make one thing very clear. What follows is not a condemnation of Jewish people, nor a rejection of Israel’s right to exist. It is a criticism of the Netanyahu government and a broader pattern of Israeli leadership decisions that, in my view, undermine American interests. With that out of the way, let’s begin.

Firstly, Israel, through its lobbying, damages democracy in America. Take, for instance, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). AIPAC lobbies and raises money for candidates who support the so-called “American-Israeli alliance.” In other words, it exerts disproportionate influence over U.S. elections. In 2024, AIPAC backed 361 candidates, pouring over $50 million into the election cycle to ensure their victories. It was money well spent: 96 percent of the candidates they endorsed won. AIPAC also brags about how in 2024, they “helped defeat detractors of the U.S.-Israel relationship in 11 of 12 races where they were on the ballot.” 

You might assume this dominance reflects the will of the American people. You would be wrong: only 35 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Israeli government. Yet, defying this public sentiment, AIPAC successfully purged 91 percent (11/12) of its targets and installed around 346 pro-Israel candidates in 2024 alone. Is it okay that our representatives — the very people meant to reflect our interests — are so dramatically skewed toward a political stance that the public itself does not agree with? No. And it reveals that AIPAC—through spending over 50 million dollars on the 2024 election—has the capacity to significantly shape U.S. policy outcomes in ways that often diverge from public opinion.

Secondly, the outsized influence of pro-Israel lobbying has contributed to a Congress increasingly unwilling to apply moral or legal scrutiny to Israeli policy. In the eyes of most organizations, Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights–Israel, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Oxfam International, Save the Children, International Federation for Human Rights, Genocide Watch, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, Islamic Relief, ActionAid, Medical Aid for Palestinians, Middle East Children’s Alliance, Defence for Children International, Al-Haq, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, Palestinian Medical Relief Society, United Palestinian Appeal, Mennonite Central Committee, American Friends Service Committee, UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, and the International Association of Genocide Scholars have all deemed Israel guilty of, or complicit in, a genocide.

Now, how do our congresspeople react to this? Just ~24 out of 435 members of the House have declared the war in Gaza to be a genocide. But why, you may ask? Because AIPAC would remove them from office if they spoke out. After all, 11/12 of the Israeli dissenters that AIPAC targeted lost their elections in 2024. It’s either go along with Netanyahu or lose your job. Consequently, we are left with a legislative body that has been systematically purged of its moral backbone. Is it okay that congressman Randy Fine openly tweeted that Palestinians should “starve away” and even laughed at the death of a Palestinian baby? Is it okay that Ritchie Torres, while representing the poorest US district, mentions Israel 236% more than he does poverty? No, it is not. However, because of AIPAC, people like Ritchie Torres or Randy Fine are given the help they need to become elected officials.

Even if you couldn't care less about everyone in Gaza, even the women and children (a rather odd position to take), do these ideologues have your best interest in mind? Are the people who send money for Israel to bomb schools the people you want to be passing legislation to defend your children in American schools? Are the congresspeople who mention Israel more than poverty good for the 10 percent of Americans who are in poverty?

And even if you look past your own self-interest, I’ll ask you this: If the U.S. government functions as a financier for the Israeli state—and is therefore complicit in genocide—what moral standing does the US have left? If our representatives prioritize lobby money over fundamental human ethics, we have sacrificed the very morality that makes America exceptional. 

Thirdly, our alliance with Israel has repeatedly led to the deaths of American citizens and dragged us into wars we should not be in. Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982 prompted the U.S. to deploy troops — a decision that ultimately led to the deaths of 241 American soldiers. Netanyahu spent years claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that invading Iraq would lead to “positive reverberations” in the region. This pressure campaign contributed to the climate that enabled the mistaken US invasion of Iraq. Subsequently, 4,431 American soldiers died. This isn’t okay.

Furthermore, Israel isn’t a direct military ally to the US anyways. After 9/11 , the US military explicitly asked Israel not to join the coalition, knowing their involvement would fracture our alliances with Arab nations and further aggravate the people we were fighting. If our “greatest ally” is such a liability that they cannot even help us in times of need, are they really our ally?  

Let us return to the balance sheet. In exchange for some shared intelligence and a regional military partner, we are paying a price that no nation should accept. We are sacrificing the integrity of our democracy to foreign lobbying. We risk trading our moral credibility for complicity in war crimes. And most tragically, we are paying for this alliance with the lives of American citizens. No amount of intel is worth the soul of our nation—or the blood of our soldiers. 

The cons outweigh the pros.