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ANALYSIS: Trump is destroying the Netanyahu myth

2025-05-25 12:11:37Pikëpamje SHKRUAR NGA YAIR ROSENBERG
ANALYSIS: Trump is destroying the Netanyahu myth
Trump is destroying the Netanyahu myth

Yair Rosenberg - The Atlantic

The night Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Netanyahu's country rejoiced.

News anchors on Channel 14, the Israeli equivalent of Fox News, toasted Trump's victory live on air. Yinon Magal, the ultranationalist host of Israel's leading right-wing talk show, led his audience in a round of celebratory songs as Trump's face smiled on the screen behind them.

Benjamin Netanyahu himself congratulated Trump on “the greatest comeback in history.” The Israeli leader and his allies seemed certain that Trump’s return to the White House heralded unconditional support for their wildest fantasies.

They were wrong. Last Friday, Trump wrapped up his Middle East tour, where he made deals and met with America’s key allies in the region — except one. Israel was not invited to the party and was barely mentioned in the president’s foreign policy speech in Saudi Arabia. The snub followed more substantive insults.

In recent weeks, Trump has surprised Netanyahu by announcing new nuclear negotiations with Iran, halting America's campaign against the Houthis despite the terrorist group continuing to fire rockets at Israel, and acting behind Israel's back to secure the release of American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander from Gaza.

“There is a great sense of unease here,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., in an interview last week.

None of this should have been unexpected. Trump is known for his instability and transactionalism, loyal only to his own self-interest.

In his first term, as an unexpected foreign president, he needed legitimacy and international victory, and Israel gave him both in the form of the Abraham Accords. This time, Trump no longer needs legitimacy, and Israel’s war in Gaza is hindering other potential regional victories, such as expanding the accords.

Moreover, the previous Trump administration’s policy toward Israel was shaped largely by staff, and that staff has changed significantly with the introduction of an isolationist faction seeking to free America from international commitments. Netanyahu put all his chips on Trump, however—a bet that now threatens to cost the Israeli prime minister the remnants of his legacy.

The legend of Benjamin Netanyahu was built on two myths.

The first was that Netanyahu was the ultimate guarantor of Israeli security, a far-sighted hawk who, for all his flaws, could be relied on to keep Israelis safe.

For years, when asked how he would like to be remembered, Netanyahu regularly replied: “As a defender of Israel,” in both Hebrew and English.

"The Jewish nation has never excelled at predicting danger," the prime minister said on a talk show in 2014.

After Hamas caused the worst day of Jewish death since the Holocaust, Netanyahu's pose as "God of Security" was exposed as a lie.

But he still had another myth to cling to: his reputation as a geopolitical genius.

In 2019, Netanyahu’s reelection campaign adorned Israel with giant posters, each depicting the prime minister shaking hands with one of three world leaders: India’s Narendra Modi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump. The banners read “Next League.”

Unlike his smaller Israeli rivals, the banners implied that Netanyahu was a shrewd statesman who thrived on the international stage, thanks to his accent-free oratory in English and his ability to charm the most powerful people in the world.

The Israelites may not like it or trust it, but they needed it.

This line of thinking was so powerful that it convinced not only Israelis but also some of Israel’s Arab neighbors, who believed that Netanyahu was the gateway to influence in Washington. One incentive for Arab leaders to normalize ties with Israel, as with the Abraham Accords, was their belief that they could win Trump’s favor by aligning themselves with his obvious ally.

Most of these campaign posters have not aged well. In the days following the October 7 attack, Putin made several public statements on the conflict in Gaza, none of which explicitly condemned Hamas. Since then, Russia has voted against Israel repeatedly at the United Nations. Netanyahu’s image might have survived this blow if Trump had not dealt him a more serious and unexpected blow in recent weeks. The president has excluded the Israelis from regional decision-making and is said to have canceled a plan to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Although Trump has not forced Israel to stop its war in Gaza yet, he has begun to pressure Netanyahu to provide humanitarian aid and end the conflict.

By revealing Netanyahu to be a minor player, rather than an elite operator, Trump has not only put the Israeli leader in his place. He has exploded Netanyahu’s carefully cultivated political persona — an act as damaging to Netanyahu’s image as the Hamas attack on October 7.

Worse than making Netanyahu look stupid, Trump has made him look irrelevant.

The third-rate pro-government propagandists on Channel 14 may not have foreseen this, but Netanyahu must have. His bleak worldview is based on the pessimistic assumption that the world will turn over to the Jews if given the chance, which is why the Israeli leader has long valued brute force over diplomatic understandings. Even if Trump were not such an untrustworthy figure, trusting him would have gone against all of Netanyahu’s instincts.

He should have realized that in a competition for the affections of a strongman like Trump, Israel had little to offer.

“We can’t invest a trillion dollars in the American economy,” noted Oren, the former Israeli ambassador, “but there are some other people in this neighborhood who can.” Not only does Israel have no spare luxury jets that could fool the American president, but it took the country nine years to modernize and launch its own version of Air Force One, and the process was a national fiasco.

As long as Netanyahu refuses to agree to any of Trump’s major diplomatic initiatives, which could require him to end the war in Gaza or accept some form of Palestinian statehood, Israel has nothing to offer Trump except symbolic jewels. But rather than recognize the precariousness of his position, Netanyahu abandoned his characteristic caution, trusted Trump without reservation, and now has nowhere else to turn.

The blow to Netanyahu's reputation should not be underestimated. His current coalition received only 48.4 percent of the vote in the last election.

More than 70 percent of Israelis want their prime minister to resign. Voters sometimes fall prey to myths, but eventually, like children, they outgrow them.


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