How the Trump administration could be hurting Israel’s already damaged brand

 https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/19/politics/israel-trump-administration-iran-war

President Donald Trump joined with Israel to launch the Iran war at an inauspicious time for the US-Israeli relationship.

Just a day before the first strikes, Gallup polling had shown Americans’ views of Israel hitting a 21st century low; most strikingly, Americans for the first time didn’t sympathize more with Israelis than Palestinians.

Making matters even more fraught, the right has in recent months become riven over how to deal with what many regard as a troubling rise in antisemitism in its base and influencer class. Some of the biggest names in conservative thought have increasingly — and often conspiratorially — linked Israel to all manner of American maladies.

On two major occasions now, the administration has gestured at Israel being mostly responsible for major inflection points in the war — even though the evidence on both counts isn’t totally clear