Israel faces a “generational” problem as future American policymakers will be shaped by the destruction of the war in Gaza, the US outgoing ambassador to Israel said.
Speaking at length to the Times of Israel this week, US ambassador Jack Lew said that American public opinion “is still largely pro-Israel” but that could shift in the next decades as a result of the war in Gaza.
“What I’ve told people here that they have to worry about when this war is over is that the generational memory doesn’t go back to the founding of the state or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or to the intifada even,” Lew said, referring to Israel’s creation in 1948 in what Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe), and the 1967 and 1973 Wars.
“It starts with this war, and you can’t ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers – not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years,” he said.
Lew added that outgoing US President Joe Biden, who has regularly proclaimed himself as a “Zionist”, is “the last president of his generation, whose memories and knowledge and passion to support Israel go back to the founding story”.
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The US was the first country under Democratic President Harry S Truman to recognise Israel, although that move faced opposition among so-called “Arabists” in the US State Department and intelligence agencies. Biden became a US senator in 1973 and met former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir roughly five weeks before the 1973 War between Israel, Egypt and Syria started.
In the interview, Lew, a longtime Democratic insider who served as former President Barrack Obama’s chief of staff and Treasury Secretary, defended Israel’s position on the war, including that it was fighting Hamas in a “fierce battle” in Gaza’s Kamal Adwan hospital.
In a press release in early January, the UN said more “than 1,057 Palestinian health and medical professionals have been killed so far and many have been arbitrarily arrested in Gaza since the war began and called “on Israeli authorities, as the occupying power, to respect and protect the right to life and the right to health in Gaza and the whole occupied Palestinian Territory”.
Lew criticised US media coverage of the war, saying that it hurt Israel, specifically criticising editorial word choices. “I frequently see language like ‘the Palestinian Health Authority reports and the IDF claims’…I think ‘claims’ is a little bit arch for a trusted ally. You could say they ‘say’.”
He said Israel’s government had not done a good job of getting information out “more quickly”, adding that “America has been fed a media coverage of this war that Israel has just not done an effective job countering,” he said. “And there’s only so much you can do through diplomatic channels to fix that.”
Media analysts and rights groups have called out what they say is one-sided and pro-Israel coverage of the war in Gaza.
In April, a leaked New York Times memo was revealed, instructing reporters to avoid using words like “slaughter” and “massacre” when describing Israeli-perpetrated violence against Palestinians.
In defence
Israel’s war on Gaza, and US support for it, has been widely termed a “genocide” by several states, leaders, human rights organisations, and experts on the subject.
Lew, a former Columbia University professor, also spent time defending his legacy.
According to a report in September, Lew clashed with junior embassy officials over a US Agency for International Development report, which said that Israel’s blocking of aid into the besieged Gaza Strip potentially puts it in violation of the Foreign Assistance Act, which bars military support from going to any nation that restricts the delivery of assistance.
Lew told Washington that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant could be trusted to facilitate aid shipments to Gaza and rebuffed junior officials at the embassy, saying “no other nation has ever provided so much humanitarian assistance to their enemies”.
Lew said the Gaza Strip had not tipped into a famine. “I don’t think Israel has gotten credit, and I don’t think the United States has gotten credit, for keeping the situation from crossing that line. And it’s hard.”
In northern Gaza, Israel has been accused of implementing parts of the so-called “General’s plan”, which involves depopulating the area and then besieging the region – including preventing the entry of humanitarian supplies – to starve out anyone left, including Palestinian fighters.
In March, experts from the United Nation’s relief agencies said more than a million people in the Gaza Strip, around half of the enclave’s population, were experiencing famine-like conditions.
Lew said it was “a little jarring” for him to hear Israelis call for no water, food or fuel entering Gaza “when they were talking about feeding babies and innocent civilians,” but said a “herculean effort” had been made to keep “things from crossing over into malnutrition and famine”.
Since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023, more than 46,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, with thousands presumed dead under Gaza’s rubble.
