Israel’s supporters keep proving its detractors right. Over the last couple of years, Americans from across the ideological spectrum – from Bernie Sanders to Tucker Carlson – have grown increasingly enraged by the way pro-Israel billionaires restrict Americans’ free speech. So, last month, along comes the New York England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, allegedly in tandem with other stadium owners, and pushes Ed Sheeran to drop Macklemore from his US tour because the rapper uttered “Free Palestine” on stage. It’s hard to imagine anything more likely to intensify fury towards the Aipac class.

Then Benjamin Netanyahu does something equally self-defeating. Since 2018, Israel’s favorability rating among Americans has dropped by an astonishing 67 points. A plurality of Democrats with views on the subject consider Israel to be “a state with segregation similar to apartheid” rather than a democracy. Yet faced with an American public that increasingly rejects Israel’s self-presentation as a bastion of freedom, Benjamin Netanyahu’s party has pushed to ban Arab parties, undercutting claims about Israel being a democracy for its Palestinian citizens. He’s undermining his own hasbara.

Kraft and Netanyahu’s actions aren’t merely morally loathsome. They’re politically stupid. Were pro-Israel leaders savvy, they would greet the turn in American opinion with tactical concessions aimed at salvaging Israel’s reputation. Instead, they’re doubling down.

Social science may offer an explanation. In 1979, the behavioral economists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky observed that people care more about losing what they already have than gaining what they don’t. Most people react more strongly to accidentally dropping a $10 bill into the gutter than to finding one on the street.

And because people are “loss averse”, they take greater risks to avoid losing than they take to win. If you’re already down $1,000 at the casino, you’re more likely to gamble aggressively to get the money back than you would be if you hadn’t lost it in the first place.

Since Kahneman and Twersky’s essay, social scientists have expanded their findings into realms beyond money. In a 2013 essay, the political scientists Jeffrey D Berejikian and Bryan R Early found that US foreign policy makers were loss averse when it comes to national power. In negotiations with other countries, they took greater risks “to avoid losses” than they did “to acquire new gains”.

This tendency may shape the way ordinary Americans view foreign policy as well. In 2018, the political scientist Diana Mutz discovered that, all other things being equal, Americans who felt the US was losing its global dominance were more likely to vote for Donald Trump. Supporting a reality television star who vowed to restore American greatness but had no governmental experience was risky. But Americans who felt the US was losing its international position were more willing to take that risk than those who did not.

Now Trump himself is doing something similar: the more American power declines, the more he belligerent he becomes. He tariffs Canada, which leads its government to seek membership in the European Union, which leads Trump to threaten it even more.

You can see the same dynamic in Kraft and Netanyahu’s behavior. Both men have spent their careers in a political environment in which US support for Israel was largely uncontested. The shrewder political decision would be to accept that this is longer true, and to adapt their behavior accordingly– for instance, by acting in less thuggish ways towards Israel’s critics.

But loss aversion suggests that when faced with the loss of something people have taken for granted, they don’t become more prudent. They become more aggressive.

There are exceptions to this rule. Last summer, former Democratic congressman Rahm Emanuel, a longtime supporter of Israel, went to Tel Aviv University and did exactly what Kraft and Netanyahu have not: he threw Israel’s critics a bone. He proposed that Israel respond to its growing isolation by changing course and supporting a Palestinian state.

But Kraft and Netanyahu’s obduracy is more common. Consider Aipac’s response to Tom Malinowski. Earlier this year, the former congressman – who was seeking the Democratic nomination in a special House election – suggested placing conditions on US support to Israel.

Given that almost three-quarters of Democratic voters now oppose such aid, and that Malinowski has a pro-Israel voting record, Aipac would have been wise to treat him as an ally. They instead spent millions trying to defeat him and inadvertently helped elect a progressive who is more hostile to the Jewish state.

This is loss aversion in action, and it’s part of the reason that Israel’s public standing keeps declining.

This dynamic may not continue forever. If the US and Europe stop selling Israel weapons or cut if off from chunks of the international economy, Israeli leaders and their American defenders may have no choice but to offer concessions. They will be like the person at the casino who has lost, doubled down, lost again and eventually stops trying to recoup their losses because they have run out of money.

But that scenario, while possible, remains years away. In the meantime, Israel’s champions are likely to keep answering its critics in ways that strengthen the very criticisms they are trying to quash. In a 2014 speech at Columbia, when Israel’s reputation was just beginning to slide, Bthe oycott, Divestment and Sanctions leader Omar Barghouti noted: “When I went to school here, Zionists used to be very smart”, but now “they’re really not thinking straight.”That’s even more true today. And, ironically enough, two Israel-born economists help explain why.