A short while ago, in these pages, I asked why an Israeli institution was polling American Jews about whom they wanted to win Israel’s upcoming election.
My argument was simple: American Jews have every right to care deeply about Israel and every right to have political opinions about it. But they should not become a surrogate Israeli electorate.
Then Hillary Clinton came along and demonstrated why the distinction matters.
Appearing on Morning Joe, the former secretary of state made no secret of her feelings about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I love Israel, and I hate Netanyahu’s government and his policies,” she said. She is entitled to that view. Netanyahu has plenty of critics in Israel, and Americans certainly do not surrender their freedom of opinion when the subject turns to Israeli politics.
But Clinton did not stop there.
“If the Israelis want to vote for that again,” she said, “then I think the United States has to take a very tough position.” She added that the United States “could work with a new government.”
That is a very different proposition.
Clinton was not saying that Washington should respond firmly to a particular future Israeli policy. She was linking America’s posture toward Israel to the choice Israeli voters make at the ballot box.
Vote one way, and Washington could work constructively with your new government.
Vote the other way, and the US should get “very tough.” That sounds uncomfortably close to a warning.
To be clear, Clinton does not make American foreign policy today. She is a former secretary of state and former presidential candidate expressing her own view. But she remains one of the most prominent figures in American public life, particularly in the Democratic Party, and her formulation deserves scrutiny.
The issue is not whether Netanyahu deserves reelection – that is for Israelis to decide on October 27. They may return him to office. They may send him home. I would make the same argument regardless of which Israeli candidate an American political figure was attempting to help or hinder.
The issue is whether a friendly democratic country should be told that the quality of its relationship with Washington may depend upon its voters producing an acceptable result.
Israel is an American ally. It is not an American protectorate.
There is, of course, nothing unusual about governments preferring one foreign leader to another. Presidents and prime ministers are human beings. Some work well together. Others can barely tolerate being in the same room.
Nor is there anything improper about the US opposing an Israeli policy. Allies disagree. Washington has every right to pursue American interests, just as Jerusalem has every right to pursue Israeli ones.
But there is an important line between disagreeing with the government a democracy elects and suggesting that voters themselves should contemplate foreign-policy consequences before choosing it.
Interestingly, US President Donald Trump recently came close to stating the correct principle.
Asked about endorsing someone in Israel’s election, Trump said, “I think it’s most appropriate for me to stay out of the Israeli elections.”
‘I may endorse somebody’
He then immediately weakened his own argument by adding, “I may endorse somebody.”
Still, his first instinct was right: stay out.
That principle should apply whether the American politician involved is Trump, Clinton, or anyone else.
Unfortunately, American political involvement in Israeli electoral politics has precedent.
In March 2024, then-Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer used a major Senate speech to call for new Israeli elections, arguing that Netanyahu had “lost his way.” Schumer went further: he said that if Netanyahu’s coalition remained in power after the war, the US should take a more active role in trying to change Israel’s course.
Imagine reversing the countries.
Suppose a senior Israeli politician announced shortly before an American election that Americans ought to replace their president, and warned that if they failed to do so, Israel should reconsider its approach to the United States.
Americans would quite properly tell him to mind his own business. Israelis are entitled to the same respect.
Clinton’s comments were made more troubling by another part of the interview. Referring to reporting that Netanyahu had received a warning before the October 7 massacre, she speculated that perhaps he “wanted to see what they could plan so that he could then come down hard and it would enhance his position.”
She also conceded: “I don’t know what his thinking was.”
There are grave questions about the failures preceding October 7. Israelis have every right to demand answers, accountability, and a full accounting of what went wrong.
But suggesting, without evidence, that an Israeli prime minister might knowingly have allowed Hamas to proceed in order to enhance his political position is an extraordinary thing for a former American secretary of state to say.
Israeli voters can evaluate Netanyahu’s record for themselves.
That brings me back to the question I raised in my previous column.
We seem increasingly comfortable treating American opinion as another participant in Israel’s electoral process. First, an Israeli think tank asks American Jews whom they want to govern Israel. Now a former American secretary of state suggests that if Israelis return the current government to power, America should become “very tough.”
There is an escalation there.
American Jews expressing an opinion is one thing. American politicians expressing a preference is another.
Hinting that Israelis should expect consequences if they vote the wrong way crosses still another line.
None of this requires Americans to remain silent about Israel. The US-Israel relationship is too important for that. Friends should speak honestly, particularly when they disagree.
But friendship also requires respecting democratic decisions one might dislike.
When Israelis enter the voting booth on October 27, they will have plenty to consider: security, the economy, religion and state, the judicial system, the conduct of the war, the failures of October 7, and competing visions of the country’s future.
Whether Hillary Clinton will approve of their choice should not be one of them.
Last week, I argued that American Jews should not become a surrogate Israeli electorate.
Neither should American politicians.
The writer is an attorney and the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995. He is the author of A Father’s Story: My Fight for Justice Against Iranian Terror (now available in an expanded paperback edition on Amazon.com) and is the chair of the Religious Zionists of America-Mizrachi. A new oleh, he divides his time between Jerusalem and New Jersey.
