Almost no one takes what he says seriously. Since he turned the White House into the setting of a reality show, he talks all the time. Says anything. Threatening pronouncements, soon displaced by friendly words. Apocalyptic warnings that immediately give rise to promises of prosperous alliances. Phrases fired wildly. Advertisements that soon come to nothing. Statements shortly after reversed by other statements. Marches and countermarchs. A mix of expressions that are sometimes grandiose, sometimes contradictory, but always disconnected from what is visible to the world.
Few care what Donald Trump says about the war against Iran or about Israel’s conflicts in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. But the flurry of insults and accusations that he said to Benjamin Netanyahu does matter, a lot, because it reveals many things.
“You’re a fucking crazy person. If it weren’t for me you’d be in prison. I’m saving your ass. Because of what you do, everyone hates you. And everyone hates Israel.”
This is the only significant and revealing thing that the president of the United States has said in recent months regarding the Middle East. He confirms what is visible and they try without success to hide the extremist government of Israel and the lobbies of the Jewish diaspora that respond to this ultraconservative leadership: yelling into the phone, he told the Israeli prime minister “because of what you do…everyone hates Israel.”
Although they try to silence and marginalize journalists and other opinion makers by putting pressure on companies and media outlets, the lobbies that defend Netanyahu pretending to defend Israel cannot hide what is visible: the expansionist policies of the ultra-conservative government headed by Netanyahu and with unpresentable figures such as Itamar Ben Gvir, destroy the image of the country.
It may not be “everyone” but never in its history has Israel been so criticized by so many and so repudiated by so many others. There have never been so many governments and so many people in so many parts of the planet marching against the ethnic cleansing that fanatical settlers encouraged by Netanyahu are carrying out in the West Bank, nor so many voices in the world’s chorus condemning the scorched earth wars in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
The person responsible is not Israel, not even Zionism, which is Israeli nationalism born from the idea raised by Tehodor Herzl since the end of the 19th century and explained in his book The Jewish State. The person responsible is Netanyahu, his fundamentalist partners and the territorial expansionism they launched.
The global wave of questions and repudiations impacts Israel’s image and plunges it into a sea of criticism and isolation.
In his eruption of anger over Netanyahu’s actions undermining his efforts to negotiate an end to this conflict with Iran, Trump vomited out that obvious reality. They were not voices of anti-Semites or anti-Zionists or Nazis, but the voice of the American president who has been most involved with the ultraconservative leadership that is prevailing in Israel.
Trump negligently brought the United States into this war by believing in the certainties of absolute and rapid victory over the Iranian regime that the Israeli Prime Minister transmitted to him, who always manages to make him act in a functional way, not for Israel, but for his own political and personal interests.
He soon realized that the scenario was much more complex and unpredictable than what Netanyahu had described to him, but it was too late to exit the conflict without considerable political damage. That is why since then he has been looking for a decent emergency exit. Let the Iranian regime accept some strong, visible and considerable impositions. The problem is that the regime does not give in.
Neither the strong economic crisis nor the destruction of a large number of strategic military installations caused by North American bombings is having the consequence sought by Trump on the Persian theocracy. The regime neither collapses nor capitulates nor is it willing to pay for its survival by making major concessions.
In this framework, Netanyahu waging his own war in Lebanon, disconnecting from the orders given to him by the American president so that the conflict with Hezbollah does not complicate the Washington-Tehran negotiations, ended up getting Trump mad.
At times, the head of the White House seems like a loud teacher trying unsuccessfully to get her boisterous students to listen to her and calm down. Neither Netanyahu stops sabotaging his negotiations with Iran nor does the Iranian regime accept even minimal concessions so that Trump can save face in North American society.
The world is seeing that the prime minister of Israel pays no attention to him. Netanyahu does not comply with the orders he receives from the Oval Office and continues to move his chips on the war board without caring that they are counterproductive to the negotiations that Washington is carrying out.
The bottom line is that Trump not only fails to impose his conditions on Iran; It also fails with Netanyahu. And it is within the framework of that frustration that he unleashed on the Israeli Prime Minister a phrase that is essential and describes what Europe, Canada, the majority of Americans and most of the countries and societies of the world see, including the majority of Israelis.
Although Trump did not get the president of Israel Isaac Herzog to give the prime minister the pardon he requested, it is to some extent true that, if it were not for him, Benjamin Netanyahu would be “imprisoned.”
That the Israeli leader owes him so much and that it harms him so seriously instead of helping him get out of the labyrinth in which he put the United States, is what generated the explosion of anger and sincerity of the New York magnate.
The only true thing, the only important thing, the only useful thing that Trump has said in these months of war in the Middle East, is “everyone hates Israel.”
It is clear that it went from being a country admired in the first decades of its existence, to a country questioned on a global scale. Although it is not seen by the right-wing government or the powerful lobbies that respond to it in the world and act to silence critical voices, the chorus of repudiation is so strong and global, including a large part of diaspora Judaism and the majority of Israelis, that few realities are as clear as the international isolation and the damage that Benjamin Netanyahu and his government coalition have caused to the image of Israel.
The greatest damage suffered in its entire history.
