US midterm results spark fears in Israel over future of two countries' ties

As the US midterm election results rolled in, long-held Israeli assumptions about the transatlantic alliance began to shatter. "For us in Israel, this will be a generational sea change," wrote one prominent journalist in Israel's biggest-selling newspaper, right-leaning Yedioth Ahronoth. "The [prime minister, Benjamin] Netanyahu government sowed the wind and reaped the tsunami." Israel's opposition leaders have lined up to blame their prime minister, with one saying the US results showed "just how toxic Netanyahu has become" among both Democrats and Republicans.

"Israel's political establishment understood intellectually that things have been shifting. They have not understood how much and how quickly," one US official with knowledge of the situation told me. Many Democratic candidates were sharply critical of Israel's actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and the costs of the joint US-Israeli war on Iran was a key issue for many voters.

The US president himself blamed the Iran War for the Republican rout – a war that Israel's leader is widely seen as having promoted to him.