Israel faces 'generational' challenge with future US policymakers, outgoing ambassador says
Israel faces a “generational” problem as future American policymakers will be shaped by the destruction of the war in Gaza, the US outgoing ambassador to Israel said.
Speaking at length to the Times of Israel this week, US ambassador Jack Lew said that American public opinion “is still largely pro-Israel” but that could shift in the next decades as a result of the war in Gaza.
“What I’ve told people here that they have to worry about when this war is over is that the generational memory doesn’t go back to the founding of the state or the Six Day War, or the Yom Kippur War, or to the intifada even,” Lew said, referring to Israel’s creation in 1948 in what Palestinians call the Nakba (catastrophe), and the 1967 and 1973 Wars.
“It starts with this war, and you can’t ignore the impact of this war on future policymakers - not the people making the decisions today, but the people who are 25, 35, 45 today and who will be the leaders for the next 30 years, 40 years,” he said.