Blinken says he warned Netanyahu Israel could lose support among Republicans, Evangelicals

Former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Sunday repeated his assertion that he warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel risked losing the support of young Republicans and young Evangelical Christians over the Gaza war, along with the Democratic Party.

Blinken made the comments while speaking alongside former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington over the weekend.

“You are not only losing the Democratic Party, and that may be fine from your perspective. You’re going to be losing young Republicans, young Evangelicals,” Blinken said he told Netanyahu during a conversation in the spring of 2024, “And we’re seeing some of that turn up in the polling.”

Earlier this year, Blinken made similar comments while speaking at a Harvard Kennedy School event.

Blinken said then that he told Netanyahu that when he was younger, “Israel was mostly seen as the David and other forces were seen as the Goliath. That is now flipped.”

Blinken said he told Netanyahu that the way Israel was choosing to prosecute the war in Gaza would cost it support in the United States.

“You may not care that you’re losing the Democratic Party, but trust me, you are going to lose young Republicans. You’re going to lose young evangelicals. This is generational,” Blinken said he told Netanyahu.

Speaking with Pompeo over the weekend, Blinken also repeated his claim that Israel is facing a shift in public opinion.

“I think we’re in the midst of a potential sea change, and navigating that is going to be incredibly challenging,” Blinken said.

The former secretary of state shared his opinion that “for the most part, the Israelis did the bare minimum” to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza.

“There was a certain amount of disregard, a certain amount of disdain, for the well-being of the Palestinian civilians,” Blinken said, before adding, “But that is vastly different. Vastly different from the intent to do them harm, the intent to eliminate them.”

“The target was Hamas, and horrifically, too many people were caught in the middle of that, and suffered terribly as a consequence,” he stated.

“Of course, there needs to be a central way forward in Gaza that finally changes the lives of people on the ground, and that finally brings peace there,” Blinken said regarding steps for the next Israeli government. “There has to be an end to what we’re seeing in the West Bank, in terms of the abuse, in my view of many of its Palestinian inhabitants.”

“I think that what Mike [Pompeo] did, and what the first Trump administration did with the Abraham Accords was the most powerful vehicle that we have. And my hope would be that we could get back to that.”

Blinken also reiterated the assessment of the Biden administration that Hamas launched the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, in order to “disrupt” the effort to “create broader unity among the countries of the region,” specifically, the admission of Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.

“We also have to recognize that we are at an inflection point,” Blinken said, repeating his statement from earlier this year that the younger generation no longer sees Israel as David facing Goliath.

“That’s flipped, and that’s having a profound impact on our politics and on the arrangements we’re going to make.”

In his remarks, Pompeo said part of the reason the Abraham Accords succeeded was that Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates, recognized Iran as a threat and that it was best confronted with Israel, backed by the United States.

Asked about Israeli conduct in the war on Gaza leading to international isolation, and what diplomatic pressure could be brought to bear on the government to change its behavior, Pompeo responded, “I don’t know the answer to that, when you are so fundamentally in the right, and evil is so one-sided and clear. I don’t get it. I don’t get the storyline.”

He recommended that Israel persist with its efforts to demonstrate the standards of the Israeli military and its lawfulness in the conflict, contrasted with Hamas’ active use of human shields.

Pompeo also recommended that Israel supporters not be bothered by some of the condemnation of the Jewish State.

“It is not unique that the United Nations condemns Israel; that’s not a new storyline,” Pompeo said. “This is a historical fact over an extended period of time. We know the history of antisemitism. It is not unique that Jews get blamed for lots of things.”

Pompeo further stated that people trying to reduce the strategic risk to Israel from the conflict “have to just be unequivocal about who’s got it right, and who’s got it wrong, and never hedge, and never fear.”