The withdrawal of dozens of delegations from the United Nations General Assembly hall as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began his speech on 24 September highlighted diplomatic pressure and a broader crisis facing Israel’s image among sections of Western public opinion, particularly younger generations in the United States and Europe.
The scene coincided with the impact of the war in Gaza, violence in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s hardline rhetoric on Western public perceptions of his government’s policies. These developments have had a greater effect on young people, who follow images of the war and its consequences daily on screens and digital platforms, making it more difficult for them to defend those policies.
Haaretz warns of decline in standing in the United States
In an editorial published on Friday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Netanyahu had brought Israel’s standing in the United States to an “unprecedented low”. It said the prime minister and his government’s policies had damaged Israel’s standing among Americans, and that the decline in support was no longer confined to Democratic Party supporters but had also spread to sections of the Republican Party.
The editorial linked the shift to several factors, including the Iran war, rising fuel prices and settler violence, as well as damage inflicted on Christian communities in Gaza and the West Bank.
The newspaper’s warning focused particularly on young Americans, arguing that declining support among younger generations could affect the relationship with the United States in the future and have repercussions for Israel’s own security. In Europe, a Pew Research Centre poll covering 36 countries between February and May 2026 found that negative views of Israel prevailed in all the European countries included in the survey.
Pew poll measures negative views across Europe
Half or more of respondents in Italy, the Netherlands and Spain said their view of Israel was “very negative”. The Pew poll examined two separate indicators: respondents’ views of Israel and the extent of their confidence in Netanyahu’s handling of world affairs.
The data alone do not establish that views of Israel result exclusively from attitudes towards its prime minister, just as declining confidence in Netanyahu does not by itself provide a complete explanation for the shift in public attitudes towards Israel. Nevertheless, the coincidence of negative views of Israel with declining confidence in Netanyahu suggests that the crisis goes beyond a temporary dispute with a specific government.
Age and ideological divides in attitudes
Israel’s image among the public cannot be reduced to the prime minister’s personality alone, but his government’s policies and rhetoric have become prominent elements in the debate over its standing and acceptance in Western societies. The Pew study also found age-related differences in a number of countries, mostly in Europe and North America, with younger groups expressing more negative views of Israel than older groups.
In Hungary, 72% of respondents aged 18 to 34 said they had a negative view of Israel, compared with 45% of those aged 50 and over. The centre also recorded a clear ideological divide in seven European countries: Spain, Sweden, France, Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany.
In these countries, negative views of Israel were more widespread among respondents who described themselves as left-wing than among those who placed themselves on the right. The delegations’ withdrawal from Netanyahu’s speech was not a global referendum on his government’s policies, nor did it mean that Israel had lost its allies or official relationships.
Declining public acceptance despite continuing alliances
But it reflects a contradiction between the continuation of its alliances and its considerable military capabilities on the one hand, and its declining ability on the other to persuade broad sections of Western public opinion that its government’s policies can be defended ethically and politically. Pressure in the public sphere differs from direct diplomatic isolation.
Official relationships can change through a political decision, a deal or a change of government, while public attitudes form cumulatively through images of war, leaders’ speeches, protests and activity on university campuses, alongside material published by the press and digital platforms.
Israel’s official relationships with Western countries remain broader than Netanyahu and his government, but analyses raise questions about the impact of his name becoming a symbol of the crisis in its image. The Haaretz editorial, Pew data and Western newspapers’ readings of events inside the United Nations point to an increasing struggle over acceptance and the narrative, as a Western generation appears less willing to separate Israel’s image from its government’s policies.
In April, the French newspaper Le Monde said Netanyahu was pushing Israel away from its European and American allies. The Guardian described his speech at the United Nations as taking place amid protests, political pressure and growing isolation, while The Wall Street Journal portrayed his return to the General Assembly podium as a return to a familiar arena, but at a time when he appeared more isolated than before under the pressure of the war and a shrinking political room for manoeuvre.
Reuters also documented dozens of delegates leaving the General Assembly hall as Netanyahu began his speech, without specifying a final number or providing a unified official list of the delegations that walked out.
The scene remains one of several indicators of the widening pressure facing the Israeli government beyond the scope of its official relationships with Western governments.
