Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, said he feared that the war had poisoned attitudes toward Israel almost irretrievably. “It’s become Jew-hatred,” he said.

By David M. Halbfinger

(October 12, 2025 / NYT) . . . However difficult it may be to repair the relationship and to win over Americans who have turned against Israel over the war, experts agree that Israel will have little choice but to try, because of the degree to which Mr. Netanyahu has allowed Israel to become isolated internationally.

“Israel has no hedging strategy,” said Ted Sasson, a professor at Middlebury College and a fellow at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It absolutely needs the U.S. It has nowhere else to turn. It’s firmly committed to that alliance, and it’s going to have to work harder to persuade Congress and a future American president to provide the kind of support that Biden and Trump have provided.”

Eventually, an end to the war should mean an end to the worldwide focus on Israel’s conduct of it, said Ted Deutch, president of the American Jewish Committee. He said he eagerly awaited a point at which “the humanitarian situation gets better and the hostages are released, and Arab countries are investing in the future of Gaza.” Then, he said, “the conversation can be about what’s next, about what the region can look like, what Gaza can look like.”

“I’m more hopeful today than I have been for hundreds of days,” said William Daroff, chief executive of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, an umbrella lobbying group.

Others are less optimistic. Morton Klein, who leads the Zionist Organization of America, said he feared that the war had poisoned attitudes toward Israel almost irretrievably. “It’s become Jew-hatred,” he said. “I don’t know how that is resolved.”

What seems indisputable is that the stakes for Israel, and for its advocates in the United States, are enormously high.

Mr. Telhami, the University of Maryland professor, said that Israel’s dependence on U.S. support had become so glaring over the course of the war — in political, military and economic terms — that Israel would be motivated to treat its possible defeat in the court of American public opinion as an “existential threat.”

“The game for maintaining the support for Israel is priority No. 1,” he said, adding, “Because the battle in America for Israel is perceived as part of the battle for Israel itself.”

David M. Halbfinger is on his second assignment as Jerusalem bureau chief of The New York Times, leading coverage of Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. After his first tour there, from 2017 to 2021, he served as Politics editor, overseeing coverage of national politics, threats to democracy and the 2024 presidential campaign.

 This article was originally published in the NY Times and can be viewed here.