I'm going to take a guess and fill in some details by saying that I think you're probably talking about US perceptions of Israel during the 1973 oil embargo imposed by the Arab members of OPEC during and following the Yom Kippur War. The quite large increase in price did not appear to have a large shift in public perceptions of Israel.

For one, Gallup polling on the question of where American sympathies lay (between Israel and the Palestinians) was fairly consistent. During the start of the war, sympathy shifted further towards Israel, and remained high. It did not drop to its pre-war levels until January 1974, and still did not drop beyond that (around that time, Israel was signing an agreement on withdrawing back to the east side of the Suez). Even including other polls shows remarkable consistency on the subject. At the same time, Americans were remarkably less willing to send troops to assist Israel if they were attacked, a trend that altered over the next 20 years (though it was rarely supported; the only time it was supported was 1991, around the time of the First Gulf War when the US went to war to protect Kuwait from Saddam).