THE SET-UP: Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu just had to eat shit and he did it publicly … with a smile and a handshake.
First, Trump made him eat shit on his ill-conceived Doha attack with a direct apology to Qatari Prime Minister Al Thani … and a promise to never do so again.
Then Trump made him belly-up to the litterbox a second time to swallow the 20-Point Peace Plan Trump’s team developed with input from the Qataris, the Emiratis, the Saudis and a host of Muslim nations.
Although Bibi does get a green light to “finish the job” in Gaza should Hamas scuttle the plan, the plan eliminates his dream of an ethnically cleansed Strip. And that came just days after Trump said he wouldn’t allow Israel to annex the West Bank.
It’s an notable turn of events after months of free rein to kill Gazans, level what’s left of their homes and restrict their access to calories so they perpetually teeter on the brink of starvation. You only have to go back a couple weeks to find Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich promising a “real estate bonanza” after Palestinians are purged from the Strip. He said, “We’ve done the demolition phase, now we need to build.” He also said, “a business plan is on President Trump’s table.”
So, what happened?
One obvious answer is that Israel has been trumped by Trump’s financial enmeshment with the Gulf Arabs. They’ve lavished him, his family and his burgeoning crypto empire with direct and indirect investments. It’s a relationship that stretches back to the start of his first administration and neither Netanyahu or Smotrich can compete with the Saudis, who just today announced a deal with the Trump Organization to build a “new commercial and housing development valued at over $1 billion in Saudi Arabia’s second largest city.” As Bloomberg noted, it’s “another project for the US president’s family firm in the kingdom,” including a Trump Tower in Jeddah that got the go-ahead a month after he won the presidency for a second time.
In addition to the infamous Boeing 747-8 “luxury” aircraft Qatar gifted Trump, the Trump Organization inked a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar back in April. And not to be outdone, the Emiratis not only bought $100 million worth of World Liberty Financial’s digital tokens in June, they followed that up with a $2 billion investment in the joint crypto venture between the Trump and Witkoff families.
And those are just the most recent examples of a remunerative relationship that, I believe, fuels also Trump’s denunciations of green energy and climate change. In fact, Trump met with the Qataris, Emiratis, Saudis and other Arab nations a short time after he harangued the UN General Assembly about windmills and the climate “hoax.” He came out of the meeting with his new red line on annexing the West Bank. And now, less than a week later, Trump finally put the screws to Netanyahu.
If nothing else, Netanyahu’s sudden capitulation is proof positive that the President could’ve stopped the war if he’d wanted to. And I’m not just singling out Trump. The simple fact is that Israel is a dependent nation. Netanyahu’s impunity is underwritten by US power. That fact was reflected by the mass exodus when Netanyahu began his speech at the UN General Assembly. Israel can afford to be a pariah state so long as it can rely upon the support of the world’s largest military … and the generosity of American taxpayers.
And therein lies another rub.
As if on cue, Politico ran a magazine-style story today with this portentous headline:
The piece details a massive shift away from the unquestioning support Israel has relied upon for decades. A Pew Research poll conducted in March found that “more than half of American adults — 53 percent — now have an unfavorable opinion of Israel and only 32 percent have confidence in Netanyahu.”
It’s been particularly acute among Republicans under 50 years old. Fifty percent of them now harbor a negative view of Israel. That’s up from 35 percent just three short years ago. Even more daunting for Israel, they are increasingly finding common ground with their Democratic peers to form a nascent coalition that bridges a heretofore unbridgeable divide in American politics.
Former ideological foes like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ana Kasparian of The Young Turks have common cause for the first time and that’s bad news for Bibi and the future of Israeli impunity. It’s been particularly acute inside the MAGA coalition that returned Trump to the White House. Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Andrew Schulz and the podcasting bros who supported him have parted ways with Trump on Israel, Gaza and Jeffrey Epstein.
Even Charlie Kirk was starting to ask questions in the weeks before his assassination, including questions about the “surprise attack” of October 7. He doesn’t say outright that he believed it was a false flag … but he got damn close. He asked, “Was there a stand-down order?” That, in turn, has fueled conspiracy theories fingering Israel as the culprit behind Kirk’s murder. Those theories are coming from the very people Trump wooed with America First, “no stupid wars” and his alliance with RFK Jr.
But Gaza and Trump’s attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities have opened up a rift. And Trump knows it.
He was asked about it during a recent interview with The Daily Caller’s White House Correspondent Reagan Reese. The interview, which was cited by Felicia Schwartz in the Politico piece, offers Trump’s frank assessment that Israel “may be winning the war, but they’re not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them.”
Reese set-up her questions on Israel by citing the Pew poll that showed 50% of Republicans under age 50 have a negative view of Israel. Then Reese asked about the widening rift within his base:
There’s a growing group within the MAGA, America First coalition, Republicans, especially younger Republicans, who are skeptical of our support for Israel. Are you aware of this group? Are you worried about it?
Trump responded:
Yeah I’m aware of it. So, Israel is amazing, because, you know, I have good support from Israel. I have. Look, nobody has done more for Israel than I have, including the recent attacks with Iran, wiping that thing out.
Notice that he sidestepped “are you worried about it?” I suspect that’s because he is worried about it. But then he got real….
[W]hen, if you go back 20 years. I mean, I will tell you, Israel had the strongest lobby in Congress of anything or body, or of any company or corporation or state that I’ve ever seen. Israel was the strongest. Today, it doesn’t have that strong a lobby. It’s amazing.
Of course, he overstated the decline in Israel’s lobbying power. Israel still has the votes to keep the money and weapons flowing to the land of milk, honey and double-tap drone strikes. Evangelicals and Christian Zionists remain stalwarts both inside and out of Congress. But the generational divide is real and, Trump observed, Israel’s grip is slipping:
There was a time where you couldn’t speak bad, if you wanted to be a politician, you couldn’t speak badly. But today, you have, you know, AOC plus three, and you have all these lunatics, and they’ve really, they’ve changed it. You’re too young to know this, but if you go back 15 years, probably that’s when it started, right. Israel, you would understand this very much, Israel was the strongest lobby I’ve ever seen. They had total control over Congress, and now they don’t, you know, I’m a little surprised to see that.
Trump is surprised, but Bibi is scared. That’s what it looked and sounded like when he went on Breitbart to rebut MAGA’s apostates at the end of August:
Some of these people call themselves MAGA [Make America Great Again]. They’re not MAGA. If you support Iran, Iran tried to kill President Trump twice, not once, but twice. Iran has put a price on his head. … That’s Iran.
Israel is fighting Iran, and you can’t be MAGA if you’re pro Iran, you can’t be MAGA if you’re anti-Israel. President Trump understands this, and he stands very strongly with us.
That was true … Trump was standing “very strongly” … until the Gulf Arabs called in their chits.
Now Netanyahu is banking on Hamas doing what they’ve done throughout the years Bibi relied on their militancy to provide his rationale for not negotiating a resolution to the occupation in Gaza and the West Bank. Buoyed by Qatari money Bibi not only blessed, but actively coordinated, the mere fact of Hamas was all the reason he needed to forestall the coming of a Palestinian state. How ironic it is that Bibi’s political future now depends upon them not accepting Trump’s peace plan. - jp
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