Israel’s Global Image Crisis is Also a Relationship Crisis |
A new Pew Research Center survey should stop us in our tracks. Across 36 countries, a median of 67% of adults now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, while just 25% hold a favorable view. Pew also reports that majorities in most surveyed countries have little or no confidence in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The survey was conducted from February 8 to May 13, 2026.
For Israelis and Jews around the world, those numbers are painful. For Israel’s friends, they are alarming. For Israel’s enemies, they are useful.
That last point matters.
Because part of Hamas’s strategy on October 7 was not only to murder, kidnap, terrorize, and traumatize Israelis. It was also to provoke a war that would damage Israel’s standing in the world.
That does not excuse Israel from the hard questions every democracy must ask in war. It does not erase Palestinian suffering. It does not make every criticism of Israel antisemitic. But it does mean we have to understand the trap Hamas set.
Hamas appears to have understood something brutal and simple: if it could draw Israel into a devastating war in Gaza, the images of Palestinian suffering would travel faster and farther than explanations of Israeli trauma. The massacre would begin the war. The war would become the story. And over time, Israel would be judged less by the horror that triggered the conflict and more by the suffering that followed.
That is not an accident. That is strategy.
Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad later described October 7 as a “benefit” to the Palestinian cause because, in his telling, it exposed Israel’s brutality. He also said the attack brought renewed global attention to the Palestinian issue. In 2025, Hamad reportedly called international moves toward recognizing a Palestinian state “one of the fruits of 7 October.”
There is also reporting, based on documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, that Hamas leaders wanted the October 7 attack to derail Israel-Saudi normalization talks. According to that reporting, Hamas feared that normalization would marginalize the Palestinian issue and believed an extraordinary act was needed to stop it.
So when we look at Israel’s global image crisis, we should see more than failed messaging. We should also see the aftermath of a deliberate........