Former PM Bennett says Israel’s standing in US ‘has never been so bad,’ Netanyahu turned it into ‘leper state’ Israel’s status in the United States “has never been so bad,” former premier Naftali Bennett warns, blaming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for turning it into “a leper state.” In a lengthy tweet following a tour of the US, Bennett argues that Israel has lost Democratic support and that “the Republican Party, whose support for Israel could once be counted on, is also being lost.” “Although some of the Trump administration still sympathizes with Israel, primarily thanks to President Trump himself, many on the right wing in the US, including the MAGA movement, are distancing themselves from Israel,” Bennett writes, insisting that even Israel’s friends “are having a hard time defending” it.