The world is turning on Israel

So, there is this map that I want to show you. 

This is actually from November 2011 when the United Nations held a big vote about Palestine. 

And we'll get to what that was in a second. These are the countries that backed Israel in voting 

no. And these countries abstained, which was basically the same thing. What you are looking at 

here is the pro-Israel world as of 2011. Mostly Western countries and small nations that depend on 

them. These are the governments that arm Israel's military, that support it diplomatically, that 

shield it from international pressure. And to understand how far that support went, it helps 

to look at what that 2011 UN vote of the map was actually for. This is a UN agency called UNESCO. 

That name stands for educational, scientific, and cultural organization. And they do like events 

and educational grants. It's all very benign and boring. The Palestinian government asked to 

join it. And from the UN's perspective, yeah, no big deal. The UN resolution that established 

Israel back in 1947 also called for an independent Arab state in Palestine. So according to the UN, 

Palestine is a state just as much as Israel. It should be allowed to join this nice cultural 

agency. But Israel opposed this because they did not want anything anything that legitimized 

the idea of Palestine as a state. And these 65 countries sided with Israel. That's how far they 

went for them. But that was 2011. Check out what one of those blue countries is up to today. This 

is Italy's prime minister, Georgia Maloney. Italy has criticized Israeli attacks peacekeepers there. 

In light of the current situation, the government has decided to suspend the automatic renewal of 

the defense agreement with Israel. This is a huge pivot and this kind of thing has been happening a 

lot. Israel's backers, that network of countries that have been supporting it for decades, they've 

been kind of turning on it one by one, often in small ways, but it is adding up. And today, we're 

going to look at what all of that is adding up to. We're going to ask what this means for Israel and 

what happens when the international support it's long counted on to do everything that it does 

starts to look like it could really go away. So, I'm going to give away the ending slightly 

here and tell you that Israel has actually been quietly preparing for years now, a plan 

for what to do if and when it loses the international support it relies on. We'll 

also look at why this is happening now and what it means that it is. But we'll begin by 

simply going through country by country on the map what is changing here. Starting early 

2024, the height of Israel's war in Gaza. Experts were calling it a genocide. The 

International Criminal Court was preparing charges for war crimes. And that April, the UN did 

what it does. It held a symbolic non-binding vote. This one on admission of new members that said in 

theory, Palestine was qualified for membership. In other words, to be recognized as a state. The 

US had vetoed that though. So all this actually changed was where the powerless Palestinian 

representative was seated in the UN assembly room. Still, this was a chance for countries to 

take a side and a lot of them that had longsided with Israel used this vote to signal that that 

was kind of over. Look at that map again. We're going to label all of the countries that went from 

voting with Israel back in 2011 to voting against it in 2024. Australia, New Zealand, important 

Western countries. Japan and South Korea, major economies usually vote with the West. A bunch 

of countries in Africa and the Caribbean that rely on Western support. A few other big ones, but 

also, and this was a big deal, a bunch of Europe, Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Estonia, plus a 

couple more. So, look, Denmark and Poland, I know not exactly the biggest world powers, 

but Europe collectively is Israel's biggest trading partner. It's their biggest source of 

tourists. It's their second biggest supplier of weapons after the United States. Europe is 

what expands the pro-Israel sphere from a niche American thing into a broad western coalition. So 

any chip in that, it's a big deal. And then 2026, the Iran war hits. The US and Israel have launched 

strikes and a major military operation targeting Iran. The Ayatollah, the supreme leader of Iran, 

is dead. For the first time in history, Iranian officials say the country has closed the straight 

of Hormuz following joint strikes from the US and Israel, which didn't just defend sensibilities 

and values in Europe. It really messed up their economies. The country is facing widespread 

disruption as fuel protests continue with major roads blocked and shortages beginning to 

emerge. So, pretty soon you got stuff like this. This is Belgium's foreign minister. He is talking about trade sanctions on Israel. The 

kind of thing you do to a hostile rogue state. He even went on to say that Belgium would support a 

total EU boycott. Here, let's zoom in on Europe because it's not just Belgium. Spain, Ireland, and 

Slovenia are also calling for the EU to sanction Israel. Ukraine threatened sanctions, too over 

Israel importing grain from its Russian occupied territory. Israel stopped the stolen grain 

import, but the threat is still hanging. Also, remember we saw that Italy suspended a defense 

cooperation deal. But the really big turn has been France. France recently closed its airspace 

to Israeli flights carrying weapon shipments. It's a symbolic step, sure, but a big enough warning 

shot that Israel in response halted all arms purchases from France. This is a real loss for 

Israel. French weapons make up a ton of Israel's imports. Like check this out. You can see it here. 

This is the EU data for every European arm sale. And if you look at the top arm sales to Israel, a 

ton of them are from France. Like all the biggest ones. You must wonder if Israel did this to 

preempt France from doing it first. You know, you can't break up with me, I break up with you. 

Anyway, the point is this is effectively a quasi self-imposed French arms embargo on Israel, which 

joins a Spanish arms embargo imposed a few months earlier. So yeah, this is Europe on Israel today. 

You can see it's a pretty meaningful pivot. But now we got to talk about the US. The time is 

now for us to end all US military aid to the extremist Netanyahu government. This is Senator 

Bernie Sanders recently introducing a resolution that would block all US arm sales to Israel. 

It did not pass, but it was closer than you might guess. 40 to 59. On this vote, the yays 

are 40, the nays 59. The motion is not agreed to. And like the UN votes or the EU threats, 

this was about sending a signal. 40 US senators voted for an arms embargo. That is a message that 

almost half of the American political system is ready to really turn on Israel. And that's not 

just a signal to Israel, which, let's face it, seems unlikely to change behavior. It's a signal 

to all of these other countries that that global pro-Israel coalition is getting closer and closer 

to breaking apart. So, it's time to ask why. Why now? The simplest explanation would be that this 

is all in reaction to Gaza and to the Iran war. But I think the truth is that those things are 

just catalysts pushing along a change that's been building for a long time now. This is a 

foreign policy article warning Israel that had lost Europe. But what's interesting about this 

is that it's from 2012. One of the things they were reacting to was that 2011 UN vote we looked 

at before. What looks to us now like it had been a big pro-Israel wave in Europe. At the time it 

looked like Europe turning on Israel. And this makes more sense if we rewind a few years more to 

2008. This is German leader Angala Merkel speaking to Israel's parliament. And she said basically, we 

will support you forever because of the Holocaust. But look, it's not just Holocaust guilt behind 

this. There's a bunch of other stuff like this sense among democracies worldwide that Israel 

was a like-minded democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships and a sense after September 11 

that Israel and the West were on the same side in a global war on terror. Plus, there was 

some cold war stuff in there before that. Look, my point is that there was a lot 

going on in European support for Israel, but it's all anchored to stuff that happened 

in the past. 1945, Arab-Israeli wars in ' 6773, invasion of the Golan Heights by Syria and Egypt, 

2001, which means the further that those events drift into memory, the less kind of cultural 

and political scaffolding there is for that relationship to exist, especially as Israel does 

more and more stuff in the present that upsets or hurts or offends its international sponsors. which 

is why support for Israel is strongest among older people whose view of it is rooted in that past. 

Like here, look at this. This is Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, speaking to Apac in 

2018. Of course, we say it's our land. The Torah says it, but they don't believe in the Torah. So, 

that's the reason there is not peace. They invent other reasons, but they do not believe in a 

Jewish state. And that is why we in America must stand strong with Israel through thick and 

thin. Schumer is obviously coming to this through a kind of Jewish ethnationalism. That's why he 

specifically supports Israel. But he's drawing on and for a long time got that support because of 

a wider sense across Western countries that Israel is quote unquote like us. But that feeling, that 

perception has been steadily eroding, often slowly but steadily for as long as I have been writing 

and reporting on Israel and Palestine. Every year, people learn more about Israel's occupation, the 

settlements, the treatment of Israeli Arabs. And it gets harder and harder to recognize the Israel 

that we see with our eyes to the Israel that we have been told was this foothold of Western 

democratic values. and big moments like Gaza or Iran tend to generate a lot of attention that 

accelerates that shift. This is a recent NBC poll of Americans by age. The green bars measure 

positive views on Israel and the yellow bars are negative views. When NBC first ran this back in 

2023, older Americans had overwhelmingly positive views of Israel. People my age were more mixed 

and younger people were a bit more negative than positive. Fast forward to today. Young Americans 

have turned on Israel 5 to one. My generation, it's 2:1 negative on Israel. Older adults are 

almost split and only the oldest are like solidly pro-Israel. That is how you get 40 US senators 

voting for an arms embargo on a country that not that long ago they'd have all felt obligated to 

pledge their undying support to. Public opinion has shifted really quickly. That is part of why 

you see this world governments that had always supported Israel suddenly starting to pivot. But 

there are some big holdouts, especially Germany, the UK, and the US. Things are changing within 

each of those countries like we talked about in the US. But their leaders are resisting 

pressure to break with Israel. I know it might feel difficult to imagine a real meaningful 

Western break with Israel, but you know, relative to just 10 or 15 years ago, which is not that 

long in geopolitical terms, it is already sort of happening in ways that recently would have felt 

impossible. Hey guys, just wanted to quickly pause to say if you want to learn more about Israel, why 

it is the way it is, what it's doing, its place in the world, all of that, head to newress.com/quests 

for an exclusive video. It's part of a series I'm doing called No Dumb Questions, where I answer 

big questions about the world. And in this week's, we answer why the US supports Israel, how Israel 

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sign up. Newress.com/quests or the QR code. Okay, back to the video. And Israeli leaders know this, 

which is why they have a whole plan to prepare for the day that the West breaks with them for real. 

I actually did a bunch of reporting on this plan a few years ago, and what I found is that Israel 

had quietly achieved a real degree of autonomy from the US. This had a few components. It made 

peace with a bunch of the countries it used to need American protection from, like Egypt and 

Saudi Arabia. It learned how to build big weapon systems domestically. So while yeah, it's happy 

to take American and European exports, it can replace a lot of them if needed. Israeli voters 

have also embraced more hardline nationalism. So they no longer really pressure their leaders to 

keep foreign powers happy the way they used to. And in some ways they even want their leaders to 

defy those foreign powers by doing things like expanding settlements. And look, yes, it is still 

true that Israel has a ton to gain from American and European weapons funding and support. Those 

play a big role at empowering Israel's war. My point is that Israel has built up its autonomy 

so that holding on to that support is no longer existential for them, which frees them up to defy 

those countries, even the United States, which is how you get moments like Trump last year tweeting 

at Israel to not bomb Iran, which of course they still did. Or this year, Trump tweeting at Israel 

that it was prohibited from bombing Lebanon, which you guessed it, they immediately did anyway. But I 

mentioned at the start of this video that Israel's plan to survive a breakup with the West is only 

sort of working. One component in particular, I wrote about it back in that article, and it's 

that Israel has been cultivating new allies, right-wing illiberal democracies that actually 

admire the very actions that had been pushing away its more traditional allies. An Israeli 

analyst named Dog Shimlet, who told me about this, called it kind of mockingly the other friends 

policy. Let me show you on that map. The big ones are India, Brazil, and Hungary, plus a 

couple others. Countries whose leaders aren't drawn to Israel because of the past, but because 

of what it is today, as a symbol of unapologetic militarism and ethnationalism. And this worked 

pretty well for a while. Hungary especially was Israel's best friend in the EU, vetoing all 

sorts of trade restrictions or sanctions that Europe might have otherwise imposed. But after a 

couple years, it kind of started to fall apart. Israel's buddy in Brazil lost re-election and got 

sentenced to jail time for a failed coup attempt. And it's Ali in Hungary lost power too, actually 

just a few weeks into the Iran war. And the new guy in power there has already said his government 

would arrest Netanyahu on war crimes charges if he visited Hungary. Better look at that map again. 

Brazil out, Hungary out. H that Israeli diplomatic resurgence is looking pretty shortlived. So what 

does all this mean? Look, when I started reporting on Israel and its place in the world back in 2010 

or 2011, it was honestly unthinkable to me that the Western pro-Israel world would ever equil to 

it to the extent that it already has. And I know that to a lot of you, especially if you're on the 

younger side, that probably sounds crazy because if you look around you, it looks like the West 

supports Israel as unreservedly as it ever has. You know, the US just started an entire open-ended 

global economy destroying war with Iran basically as a favor to Israel. Western weapons are funding 

Israel's wars in Gaza and Lebanon. I'm not blind. I see all this. But I am telling you, if you take 

a step back, if you look at the bigger picture, the kind of longer timeline here, that support 

is starting to look kind of tenuous. We are not talking about a wide and deep pro-Israel consensus 

across the Western world anymore. We are talking about a handful of countries that are increasingly 

isolated in backing Israel, led by leaders who are acting in defiance of their publics, their 

political parties, even their own core supporters. I'm sure you've heard that Hemingway quote, change 

happens slowly and then all at once. We are in the happen slowly part right now, but it feels like 

that all at once is coming up fast. We might look back 5 10 years from now and feel that actually 

it was as of this moment that it was already here.