“For the first time since the establishment of Israel, ‘brand Israel’ is a negative in the United States, and that’s a disaster, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the second annual JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem on its third and final day, Bennett said that this situation “totally distorts good and bad, right and wrong, but that’s a fact right now.”
In a conversation with Jennifer Sutton, executive director of the Council for a Secure America, the chairman of the Together (Beyachad) Party said that while U.S. President Donald Trump is a “huge friend” of Israel, that friendship is based on his personal sympathy, and a “nation cannot based its long-term based on a president who currently supports Israel.”
Reversing Israel’s bad public image in the United States requires a commitment to “fix and build a national public diplomacy apparatus to fight back.”
Bennett is challenging current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the upcoming Israeli elections.
