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CLOSE to the end of the Israel-Iran war, and right after he had Iran’s Fordow enrichment centre bombed, the US president indulged in some unusual criticism of Israel. Granted, a day or so later, he was effusive in his praise for Israel’s prime minister and renowned war criminal Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, but given the death grip that Israel has on US politics, the fact that any criticism was made in the open is interesting.
Now we know that many US presidents haven’t exactly gotten along with Israel’s leaders and have, in fact, taken issue with many of Israel’s actions, but this is usually done behind closed doors.
If I had a hundred dollars for every time I read a ‘leak’ or ‘insider scoop’ about how displeased, angry or even livid former president Joe Biden had been with Netanyahu during the ongoing Gaza genocide, I’d be able to retire a good chunk of Pakistan’s debt by now. Of course, US military, economic and diplomatic support for Israel reached new heights under Biden, so the private criticism, if any, really doesn’t matter.
Obama himself once pointedly avoided visiting Israel after his 2009 Cairo speech, and it is known that his own relations with Netanyahu were strained, but this had no real effect on the US-Israeli relationship.
Bill Clinton was much the same, with many insiders and journalists talking about his private frustration with Netanyahu over the so-called peace process, but the private opprobrium never translated into public action.
But the further back you go, you see that there was a time when words were matched by action, or at least by the threat of action. In this case, we can refer to when George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold loan guarantees worth $10 billion from Israel in 1992 if it persisted with building settlements in the occupied West Bank.
But it is Ronald Reagan who gets the most credit among the post-1973 presidents for slightly standing up to Israel after it bombed Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981. He suspended the delivery of F-16 jets and voted in favour of a Security Council resolution condemning Israel. A year later, when Israel invaded Lebanon, Reagan not only demanded an immediate withdrawal but also temporarily restricted military aid and assistance.
That aid had become crucial for Israel’s very existence; the 1973 Arab-Israeli war was an inflection point in the US-Israeli relationship, with Nixon launching Operation Nickel Grass, an airlift of military supplies that perhaps exceeded the volume of the Berlin airlift itself. These supplies allowed Israel to continue waging war and marked the moment when the US fully committed itself to Israel’s protection.
Things haven’t always been smooth between Israel and the US.
Prior to this, there had been severe strains which came close to derailing, but never quite derailed, the core relationship. Such as when Kennedy took Israel to task over its nuclear programme, insisting that it allow inspections of its Dimona nuclear facility.
Whether this would have led to a serious dispute is now a purely academic question, as Kennedy was assassinated soon afterwards. Interestingly, Republican congresswoman and hardcore MAGA adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene recently alluded to that assassination in a tweet, writing: “There was once a great president that the American people loved. He opposed Israel’s nuclear programme. And then he was assassinated.”
A few years after that, during the 1967 war, the Israeli navy and air force attacked a US Navy ship, the USS Liberty, which was stationed north of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. In an assault that lasted over an hour, 34 crew members were killed and close to 200 injured. While Israel to this day claims that this was a case of mistaken identity, the survivors of the attack insist that it was deliberate, and that the ship was clearly marked as American. Compensation was paid, and the matter effectively covered up.
But the lowest point in US-Israeli relations had already come and gone in the shape of the 1956 Suez crisis, when Israel teamed up with Britain and France to invade Egypt. The colonial-settler state had been hungry for land since its inception, and Britain and France wanted to hold on to their remaining colonial glory.
US president Eisenhower was having none of it, though, and issued marching orders to the triple invaders, forcing a withdrawal. Of course, the US was also motivated by its fear of being embroiled in a larger Cold War conflict at this stage.
At the same time, pro-Israel elements were working diligently to expand Israel’s influence in America, notably by founding AIPAC in 1954, in part to counter ‘negative reactions’ to Israel’s massacre of Palestinian villagers the same year.
Since then, AIPAC has grown into a formidable force but is increasingly not immune to criticism, and we have seen hardcore MAGAists like the aforementioned Greene and Thomas Massie publicly criticise its influence and methods.
The writer is a journalist.
Published in Dawn, June 30th, 2025
