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Israel Factor: US-Israel relations (almost) at lowest point ever

[additional-authors]
September 16, 2015

This isn't the first time in which our panel of Israel Factor experts is asked to compare the relations of Israel with different US administrations. In 2012, we gave our panelists the following task: “On a scale of 1 (bad for Israel) to 10 (great for Israel), please rank the following past presidents in retrospect”. Judging by the answers – I wrote at the time – “Bill Clinton has been the best president for Israel since Kennedy (we did not include Eisenhower and Truman in this survey)”.

Of course, not all panelists agreed with that conclusion. The conclusion is based on the average ranking by the members of the panel. Several members thought that Lyndon Johnson deserves the title of ‘best for Israel’ much more than Clinton does. There was a member who thought Ronald Reagan was the best-ever from an Israeli viewpoint. Our new Israel Factor survey should be read with the same caveat in mind. What we show you is an average of many views. But it is a telling average.

This time we did not ask about the best-ever president; we asked about the worst-ever time in US-Israel relations. And we did not ask which of the sides is to blame for the low point, just for the ranking of the state of the relations. Our question included all administrations from Truman to Obama. And except for the “current time” item, all other items referred to the “lowest point” of the relations under each President.

Here is the graph that is the result of that question, followed by comments from the panelists themselves:

As you can see, our panel believes that current relations are strained, and problematic, but that the lowest point of US-Israel relations was under President Eisenhower. At that time, as one panelist remarked there was “no special paradigm yet.” The President forced Israel's hand following the 1956 Sinai War. And he did nothing to contribute to Israel's security – his administration was not quite interested in having much of a relationship with Israel.

The panel has more to say about today's low point – the second lowest ever, and by far the lowest since the formation of the special relations. “Worse relations in five decades,” as one of them chose to define it.

“The point here is that this is the longest sustained low point,” another panelist says. “There have been more intense crises and low points, but the relationship between the two executives has been bad since 2009 for an unprecedentedly long period”. The low point is a result of “serious disagreement on the Iran deal,” says one panelist, but a few members of our panel say that personal relations contribute to the problem. There is “personal animosity between [the] PM and [the] President,” writes one. He doesn't point a finger at any of the two leaders, but there are panelists who do. “Netanyahu has made the conflict personal. Cannot figure out why he is doing this,” says one. It is “mainly Bibi’s fault,” writes another.

We should note that on this issue the Israeli public is more favorable towards Netanyahu than our panel. In a poll just before the Israeli election there were more Israelis who blamed Obama for the deteriorating relations than those who blamed Netanyahu. And as I explained a couple of months ago, Netanyahu has a lot to gain by “running against Obama,” because the American President is not well liked by Israelis. But our panelists, while not necessarily satisfied with Obama, are definitely not happy with the Way their PM is handling the relations. In another question we asked them to answer on a scale of 1 (no) to 5 (yes) the question: “Is Netanyahu’s handling the Iran debate within the US properly?” The outcome (again, an average of the answers by the eight panelists that participated in this survey): 2.13. Most of our panel gave Netanyahu a 1 or a 2 in answering this question.

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