From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
California Governor Newsom says Netanyahu taking Israel down path that could lead US to rethink military support
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California Governor Gavin Newsom says he believes the actions of the current Israeli government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may eventually force the US to rethink its military support for the Jewish state.
Newsom, who is widely believed to be planning a 2028 presidential bid, is asked about Israel while promoting his new memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery.”
“It breaks my heart, because the current leadership in Israel is walking us down the path where I don’t think you have a choice about that consideration,” he says of the possibility that the US could rethink its military support.
His comments come amid a coordinated US-Israeli campaign against Iran, which opened on Saturday with the killing of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei.
Newsom has opposed the fighting in Iran — even as he has agreed that the regime of the Islamic Republic “must go” — accusing US President Donald Trump of dragging his country into “an illegal, dangerous war that will risk the lives of our American service members and our friends without justification to the American people.”
Netanyahu, says Newsom at his memoir event, has “got his own domestic issues. He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the rocks.”
He sharply criticizes the premier’s far-right allies and their bid to annex the West Bank, and suggests that people would be correct to refer to Israel as “sort of an apartheid state.”
The California governor has been vocal about his disdain for Netanyahu in the past, saying earlier this year that he is “crystal clear in my love for Israel — and my condemnation of Bibi [Netanyahu], and there’s a distinction.”
Newsom visited Israel less than two weeks after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, meeting with anguished Israelis as well as senior officials, including Netanyahu.
Jewish Telegraphic Agency contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.