Protesters block a road in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Sept. 1, calling on the Israeli government to reach a deal that would bring home remaining hostages held in Gaza by Hamas.
In the days and weeks after the terror group Hamas’ brutal surprise attack on Israel last October, much of the world was eager to demonstrate its support for the grief-stricken nation.
In Washington, D.C., a staunchly divided Senate overwhelmingly adopted a resolution backing Israel, and a crowd of hundreds – including the city’s mayor – rallied at Freedom Plaza. In Europe, as national leaders rushed to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Eiffel Tower, 10 Downing Street and the Brandenburg Gate lit up with the colors of the Israeli flag. Supporters waved that same flag en masse in Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana neighborhood; in New Delhi, they flooded the social media of the Israeli Embassy.
Nearly a year later, as Israel and its leadership continue to face criticism over its handling of the war in Gaza, the country’s global reputation appears to have taken a serious hit: In U.S. News’ 2024 Best Countries rankings, released this week and based on the perceptions of thousands of survey respondents around the world, Israel fell 10 places year over year, from 36th to 46th.
That overall ranking ‒ punctuated by lower annual marks on attributes that aim to capture a country’s reputation related to corruption, tourism, political stability and human rights, among other areas ‒ is the lowest placement for Israel in the rankings’ nine-year history. Its 10-place slide was also the third-largest registered this year by any country.
“Obviously this is not the first time in which Israel has struggled with its international reputation,” says Eric Fleury, an associate professor of government and international relations at Connecticut College. “But I do think that this has been a particularly severe crisis.”
That’s because, while the world saw such horrendous depictions of Jewish suffering on Oct. 7, almost a year has now passed, Fleury says. Since that day, he says, “the images that you’re most likely to see are ones of Palestinian suffering.”
This year’s Best Countries project assessed 89 countries overall, based on surveys asking respondents to associate countries with dozens of attributes that fall under 10 broad areas, including cultural influence, quality of life and social purpose. Respondents were queried between March 22 and May 23, and Israel – a small nation that holds outsize influence on the world stage, with strong ties to the U.S. and other Western allies – still rated highly for various characteristics.
Survey data placed Israel as the world’s third-strongest military power and fifth-most politically influential country, and among the top 10 nations that are viewed as leaders. Each of those rankings was at or near where Israel sat in 2023, and each informs the broader power subranking, in which Israel ranked No. 10.
To be sure, year-over-year comparisons in the Best Countries rankings should be made with caution, given weighting shifts within the rankings and that one country’s poor performance in a particular area could cause another to rise without doing anything, or the opposite could occur with a strong performance.
Yet Israel’s severe drops in many other attributes – it saw double-digit falls related to perceptions about its care for the environment, its cultural accessibility, its political stability, its scenery, its safety, its adaptability and its care for human rights, among others – suggest that the war in Gaza and its reported death toll of more than 40,000 people are also taking a wider toll on its reputation writ large. Across the rankings’ 10 subcategories, Israel dropped year over year in eight of them and by double digits in four of them, fueling its overall fall to No. 46.
