Raymond J. de Souza: Netanyahu should have seen this coming

Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu should have known it was only a matter of time before his supposed ally, Donald Trump, turned on him, writes Fr. Raymond J. de Souza. Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images / Jim WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has learned what everyone already knows. Those who fly too close to the orange sun get scorched. President Donald Trump has signed a “peace” deal with Iran that guarantees the territorial integrity of Iran and Lebanon, but does not mention Israel except to demand that it cease hostilities with Hezbollah. Israel was not consulted on limiting its response to years of rocket attacks that have made part of its north uninhabitable.

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For longtime friends of Israel, the American turn against its ally is devastating.

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Netanyahu put many of his eggs in the Trump basket, and that basket is now being presented to the Iranians as a payoff to get the Strait of Hormuz open. Trump was admirably clear about that. The closure of Hormuz was risking an economic “depression” and American oil reserves were four weeks away from depletion.

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Forty years ago, when the Iran-Iraq war spilled over into occasional attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Ronald Reagan — for whom “peace through strength” was an actual policy, not a baseball cap slogan — sent in the navy to guarantee safe passage. A president who knew the difference between genuine peace and capitulation, between actual strength and vainglorious posing, between strategic thinking and incoherent logorrhea, could open the strait. Reagan was such a president; Trump is not.

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Failing to obtain “unconditional surrender” from his enemies, Trump has turned on his friends. Netanyahu must have known that it was only a matter of time, as Trump’s first vice-president, first and second national security advisers, or first and second and third attorneys general, could have told him. Or for that matter, Mrs. Trump 1.0 and 2.0.

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Trump belittled the Israelis, speaking of their partnership as successful, but that Netanyahu and Israel were a “very small partner.” And then Vice-President JD Vance reminded Israelis that they should be grateful for whatever crumbs fall from Trump’s table.

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“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” Vance said.

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That’s true, and Netanyahu’s military and diplomatic choices of the past two years made that calculation; international isolation was acceptable if he had an American president who would permit him a place in the Situation Room. He could outmanoeuvre that president into joining Netanyahu’s longest and most fervent desideratum — war against Iran. He got his global isolation and he got his war (twice). Now he is stuck with his president.

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In April, Vance boasted that ceasing arms shipments to Ukraine was “one of the things I’m proudest of that we’ve done as an administration.”

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There is a constituency in the toxic, antisemitic right that rejects American support for both wartime countries with a Jewish head of government, Ukraine and Israel. There is no reason to think Vance antisemitic, but he needs to keep an eye on that part of the MAGA coalition. By the time he runs for president next year, it is entirely possible that Vance might wish to be as proud of cutting off Israel as he is about Ukraine.