Short answer: No. As of August 2026, John Mearsheimer, the University of Chicago political scientist, does not support Israel. He is one of the most prominent American academic critics of U.S. support for Israel, co-author of the influential and controversial book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," and he continues to call Israel and its American lobby a strategic, moral, and free-speech liability for the United States, while repeatedly describing Israel's campaign in Gaza as a genocide.
What John Mearsheimer has actually said and done
- March 23, 2006: Mearsheimer and co-author Stephen Walt published "The Israel Lobby" in the London Review of Books, arguing that the Israel lobby has disproportionate, distorting influence over U.S. Middle East policy.
- August 27, 2007: The two expanded the argument into the 496-page book "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. It became a bestseller and drew accusations of antisemitism, which both authors rejected.
- April 29, 2010: In a lecture titled "The Future of Palestine: Righteous Jews vs. the New Afrikaners," Mearsheimer predicted, according to Wikipedia's summary of the published lecture text, that Israel was heading toward becoming what he called an apartheid state absent a Palestinian state.
- July 30, 2025: In an interview publicized around this date, Mearsheimer said "the Israelis are executing a genocide in Gaza" and that the United States is "complicit in that genocide," describing it as a systematic effort to dismantle Palestinian national identity, according to Middle East Monitor and the Arab American News.
- March 15, 2026: Marking 20 years since the original "Israel Lobby" essay, Mearsheimer said, per Antiwar.com, that the lobby's policy influence remains as strong as ever but that it has lost control of the public discourse, and that it, together with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, helped drag the United States into the 2026 Iran war.
- April 5, 2026: On Al Jazeera's "The Bottom Line," Mearsheimer said he saw no signs of a quick end to the then-ongoing U.S.-Israel war on Iran, according to Al Jazeera.
- August 4, 2026: On the program "Judging Freedom," Mearsheimer called Israel and its lobby "an albatross around America's neck," citing what he termed a strategic liability (linking Israel to 9/11, the 2003 Iraq War, and the 2026 Iran war), a moral liability (alleging genocide in Gaza and pogroms in the West Bank), and a threat to free speech in the U.S., reported by Antiwar.com.
Who is John Mearsheimer, and where does this come from
John Mearsheimer was born December 14, 1947, in Brooklyn, and has spent decades as a Distinguished Service Professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he is regarded as a leading realist theorist of international relations. He is of German and Irish descent. There is no reliable public record confirming or ruling out whether he has ever visited Israel, so that specific point cannot be stated as fact either way and is treated here as unverifiable rather than asserted.
What is well documented is nearly two decades of sustained public argument that U.S. support for Israel is not in America's national interest. The 2006 London Review of Books essay and 2007 book he wrote with Stephen Walt argued that a network of pro-Israel groups and individuals skews U.S. Middle East policy away from what he considers America's strategic interests. The work drew sharp accusations of antisemitism from critics, including Alan Dershowitz and the Anti-Defamation League, which Mearsheimer has consistently denied, framing his position as realist foreign-policy critique rather than animus toward Jews or Judaism. Through 2025 and into August 2026, he has intensified this line, repeatedly using the word "genocide" for Israel's conduct in Gaza and tying Israel and its American lobby to the costly 2026 U.S.-Israel-Iran war, which began with U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran in late February 2026 and reached a ceasefire that April.
The bottom line
John Mearsheimer does not support Israel. He has been a consistent, high-profile critic of the U.S.-Israel relationship since 2006, and his public statements through August 2026, calling Israel a strategic liability, a moral liability over Gaza, and a threat to free speech, show that position has sharpened rather than softened over time.
Wear where you stand
Not everyone in public life reads the U.S.-Israel relationship the same way Mearsheimer does, and plenty of Americans want a simple, visible way to say where they stand. If that describes you, our Support Israel collection is built for exactly that, including the I Stand With Israel bracelet, a small everyday way to show solidarity.
Related
Does Stephen Walt Support Israel?
Does Glenn Greenwald Support Israel?
Does Tucker Carlson Support Israel?
Last updated August 2026. We update these profiles as the record changes.
