{"id":557828,"date":"2026-07-24T18:39:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:39:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/557828\/"},"modified":"2026-07-24T18:39:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T18:39:09","slug":"how-much-will-lindsey-grahams-death-affect-us-support-for-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/557828\/","title":{"rendered":"How much will Lindsey Graham\u2019s death affect US support for Israel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several days after the US-Israel attacks on Iran, Lindsey Graham, a staunch advocate of government change in Tehran, said<\/a> the conflict \u201cwill set the course for the future of the Middle East for the next thousand years\u201d.<\/p>\n

Graham, who died on July 12 hours after a visit to Ukraine, did not live to see the latest phase of the Iran war, which reignited over disagreements surrounding the Strait of Hormuz and has reportedly resulted in further American casualties.<\/p>\n

The hawkish Republican senator, who went from being a fierce critic of President Donald Trump to one of his closest allies, was among Washington’s strongest advocates for both Ukraine and Israel. <\/p>\n

He consistently backed military support for Kiev while arguing that Israel should be defended at all costs.<\/p>\n

Since Hamas’s October 7 cross-border blitz, Graham visited Israel at least a dozen times, underscoring his commitment to the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael has lost one of its greatest friends,\u201d Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement after his death. Netanyahu and his allies held 71-year-old Graham in high regard <\/a>as Israeli isolation across the globe, including US territories, has deepened.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Related<\/p>\n

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Graham, one of the most outspoken advocates of American Christian Zionism, had \u201cgenuine love, not just political love\u201d for Israel, according<\/a> to Michael Oren, Israel’s former ambassador to the US.<\/p>\n

A hardcore Zionist<\/p>\n

Besides his influence within the US administration, Graham’s decades-long career in the Senate also made him an influential voice across both Republican and Democratic circles, a valuable asset to pro-Israel lobbying groups for many decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, his absence represents the removal of a major structural pillar of unconditional Israeli support in US politics\u2014one that cannot easily be replaced,\u201d Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian political analyst and writer, says, noting that Graham was \u201cnot merely an ordinary pro-Israel politician but he was a central pillar of foreign support for Zionism\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was fully aware of the immense diplomatic and moral damage the genocide in Gaza inflicted on the United States as Israel\u2019s primary benefactor, defender, and weapons supplier. Yet he persisted without hesitation,\u201d Baroud tells TRT World.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In various interviews, Graham compared<\/a> the situation in Gaza to America’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and encouraged Israel to \u201cdo whatever you have to do\u201d, including the use of nuclear weapons against the native Palestinian population of the Mediterranean enclave, prompting a protest from the Japanese government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was not standard foreign policy rhetoric. What made it particularly alarming was that Graham possessed the political influence, institutional power, and status within Washington to normalise and champion such extreme talking points,\u201d Baroud says.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In many respects, Graham served as the American counterpart to far-right Israeli figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who advocated \u201cthe minimum of the minimum\u201d for Palestinian prisoners<\/a> and urged the Netanyahu government to annex the occupied West Bank and dismantle the Palestinian Authority.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baroud says that Graham was particularly \u201creckless, rhetoric-heavy, deeply influential, and seemingly indifferent to the catastrophic real-world consequences of his statements.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Republican senator, who was a ranking member of both the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations and Appropriations Committees, leveraged his legislative authority to advance the Israeli agenda in various ways.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He consistently spearheaded bipartisan efforts to secure billions in unconditional foreign military financing, pushed for aggressive sanctions against international bodies like the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigating Israeli actions, and relentlessly advocated for a military-first foreign policy across the Middle East.<\/p>\n

While Graham’s death is unlikely to significantly alter US policy toward Israel, Sami al Arian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University, argues that the Zionist movement has lost one of its most influential public advocates, whose prominence extended across both the US media and international political circles.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis absence would certainly hurt the Zionist cause,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Graham\u2019s loss might also impact Trump-Netanyahu political dynamics, <\/a>which have led to some rifts due to the US war on Iran, as some influential American commentators like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon have criticised Israeli influence in US decision-making on Middle Eastern politics.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several days after the US-Israel attacks on Iran, Lindsey Graham, a staunch advocate of government change in Tehran,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-557828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}