Lindsey Graham Wasn't Israel's Friend – He Was a Friend of Its Worst Instincts
Senator Lindsey Graham was described in Israel after his death as "Israel's greatest friend." For a moment, the deceased became a hero in the eyes of Israelis, whose country's friends have dwindled to almost zero. On Tuesday, when the teams of Spain and France played in the World Cup semi-finals, many Israelis gave their allegiance to the country that hates Israel less among the two.
Israel loves whomever it perceives as a friend and hates whomever is portrayed as an enemy. Its definitions are erroneous and even mendacious. Israel's friends are not always the good ones and its detractors are not always the bad guys. Almost always, the converse is true.
Take Senator Graham, for example. From the beginning of his career, he supported unconditional and unrestrained support for Israel. It's hard to know where this blind support began, whether during law school at the University of South Carolina in the '70s, during his service in the U.S. Air Force in the '80s, or during his first years in Congress in the 1990s. As a predatory military hawk, Israel aligned with his worldview. It was a better Israel then.
Israel has changed since, but not Graham's friendship. He cleaved to it blindly. The man who proposed in May 2024, at least implicitly, to drop a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip, and in any case was in favor of flattening it, blindly supported Israel's insanity. He became an open proponent of Israel's perpetration of war crimes.
When such a senior senator calls for another country's committing of crimes against humanity, that is not friendship, but a complicity in the crimes. If one could understand his enthusiastic support for the former Israel in the '80s and '90s, one could not accept his later admiration. And yet, journalist Barak Ravid related this week, with tears in his eyes, that he had talked to Graham on an almost daily basis over the last two years – it is doubtful that there is any other journalist Graham talked to so much – and that the senator loved not just Israel, but also "Israeliness."
What "Israeliness" did the senator love so much? Ravid said that he loved the sense of humor and the informal nature of Israelis, saying that Graham felt very comfortable on his many visits to the country. That is complimentary and gladdening. And what about the "Israeliness" which supports – almost across the board – genocide in Gaza? Which believes with all its heart in Jewish supremacy between the river and the sea? Which is totally uninterested in what is done in its name every day only half an hour's drive away from Israel's cities and homes?
Graham and his ilk ignore this "Israeliness," which in recent years has defined Israel more than any sense of humor of lack of formality. Or perhaps he liked this one too? Maybe it was the cruel "Israeliness" that made him feel so comfortable in Israel? Gin and tonic with the old boys from the army and government on their way back from the killing fields.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Sara and I grieve with the American people over the loss of our dear friend, Senator Lindsey Graham. In our recent meeting, I said, "Lindsey is a great friend of Israel and a cherished friend of mine. We have no better friend than Lindsey."
The political and value-based choices of Israel's remaining friends should be left to them. We are left with our twisted choices, and they are intolerable. In recent years, anyone we've considered to be a friend is racist, fundamentalist, populist and anti-democratic, or someone who hates Muslims. Sometimes they are even antisemitic. From Orbán to Bolsonaro to Wilders and Le Pen – tell me who our friends are.
Instead of singing the praises of these detestable people, we should have at least strived to make different friends. To dream, for example, that Zohran Mamdani would be a friend of Israel. He is a man of values and morality, and he could have been a friend of a different Israel. He represents the future, whereas Graham represented the past. We could hope that Roger Waters returns to loving Israel, as well as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn. None of them was born antisemitic or a hater of Israel. They would all stand beside a different kind of Israel, if one arose.
Senator Graham wasn't really a friend of Israel; he was a friend of a war criminal.