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.
There are several reasons for this. The first is that Operation Epic Fury has served as a demonstration of the U.S.-Israel military alliance’s lethality. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth described the partnership earlier this month at a press conference. “When you add the Israeli Defense Forces, a devastatingly capable force,” he said, “the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries.” The new relationship was captured in a stray bit of cockpit audio that went viral on social media. “It is a great honor to fight with you. You’re doing a great job,” an Israeli pilot says. The American replies: “Be safe out there, strike hard.”
In the recent past, American presidents have asked Israel to hold fire, fearing its participation in the previous Gulf wars against Iraq would poison cooperation with Arab allies. Under the old rules, Israel was the underdog, surrounded by enemies, protected and subsidized by America. Now Israel’s air force is helping shoot down Iranian missiles aimed at the Gulf States that once refused even to recognize its existence.
Nothing succeeds like success. Since the fall of 2024, Israel has demonstrated the ability to decapitate the leadership of its enemies from the air. The intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance technology that made these air strikes possible is now the envy of its neighbors. The dreams of pro-Palestinian activists to persuade the world to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel look quaint when nearly every military would love to learn how Israel is able to assassinate terrorist leaders without committing ground forces.
Pollack said that Gulf Arab monarchies “are not going to tank their partnership because of what the Israelis are doing to the Palestinians. They need them for all these other reasons. It’s the ultimate triumph of Israel’s economic and military power.”
Beyond Israel’s military advances, the Jewish state has also been accumulating allies. Take Israel’s recent pact with Somaliland in January. Shoshana Bryen, senior director of the Jewish Policy Center, contrasted the Somaliland agreement with past Israeli development projects in Africa. “This is not just a new water project,” she said. “This is a strategic asset on the Red Sea.” Israel may soon be able to project naval power in one of the most important waterways in the world.
Bryen said, “There is a tectonic shift going on generally. Countries are moving to align with what they consider to be a strategic power, Israel, in the Middle East, in Africa, and Europe.”
Strategic gains are happening in the political arena, too. While the socialist government of Spain imposed a largely symbolic arms embargo on Israel in October, Germany has not stopped selling arms. Last month, Germany’s ruling party approved a policy to bypass the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and use alternative institutions for aid projects in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel has tried for decades to get Europe to drop support for the UN aid agency to no effect. After the Gaza war, the most important country on the European continent is on board.
The most astounding diplomatic advance for Israel has been in the Middle East. Iran’s regime gambled that if it struck America’s Gulf allies like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, the kingdoms would pressure the U.S. to end the war. Instead, the gambit further isolated Iran. The New York Times is now reporting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pushing President Trump to strike Iran even harder.
There is no better example of Israel’s improving diplomatic fortunes in the Middle East than the Janus-faced Kingdom of Qatar. On October 7, 2023, an official statement from Qatar’s foreign ministry held “Israel solely responsible” for the Hamas attacks of that deadly day. That was then. Last week, Qatar formally expelled several senior Iranian diplomats, spies, and military officers after an Iranian missile hit one of its liquefied natural gas pipelines.
Israel still has a steep hill to climb when it comes to its public image in America and Europe. But very few people have noticed that as Israel has lost the public relations war in the West, it has been winning a real war in the Middle East. And the countries that used to yell loudest about Israel’s perfidy are quietly cheering on its air force as it helps to dominate the skies and pulverize the regime in Iran.
