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Steven J. Frank

Israel and the Trump Factor

Credit: Gage Skidmore cc2 wikipedia
Credit: Gage Skidmore cc2 wikipedia

Imagine the panic in chancelleries and palaces across the haut monde last November as it became clear that Donald Trump would once again be president of the United States.  Particular dismay greeted world leaders who, confident of Trump’s political demise in 2020, had shared their relief or praised his opponent a little too loudly – or in the case of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a tad quickly.  Their dread is existential.  Few countries can shrug off their relationship with the U.S., Israel least of all.

Who is Trump and how can Israel’s leaders deal with him successfully?  First by clearing away some misconceptions.  Trump is not, as some would have it, an antidote to politics and politicians.  The belief that he’s so wealthy and successful as to be above the dirty games – that he can say and do what he thinks is right – is dangerously misguided.  Trump is an accomplished politician, maybe the most political figure of our time.

Politicians aren’t unprincipled, goes the old joke, they just hew to a single principle:  getting re-elected.  Trump’s principle is Trump himself.  He is all political id.  No source of votes, no useful character however personally odious, is outside his embrace.  Trump gets away with this because his base venerates Trump.  His positions, which can shift or reverse in an instant, are secondary.

But now the election is over.  Muslims in Dearborn, wealthy Jewish supporters, Second Amendment absolutists and antiabortion firebrands – all await a return on their investment in Trump.  They may be disappointed.  Their transactional value vanished on the morning of November 6, 2024.  Sure, Trump may keep certain promises to the extent they benefit Trump or burnish his brand.  But Trump now follows a single lodestar: Trump is a winner.

In his own eyes, anyway.  Having others see him as a winner is important but secondary.  Say, for example, a person – any person – cheats at golf.  That may not strike others as winning.  But the cheater may view his success as evidence of his cleverness, strength, or both: the traits of a winner.

Winners seize every opportunity to win.  Barely a week into Trump’s new term, Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro refused to permit two U.S. deportation flights to land in Bogotá, telling Trump, “I will resist you.”  But he instantly caved after Trump authorized retaliatory tariffs and harsh visa sanctions against Colombia.  There was no diplomatic flurry or agonizing in the State Department.  President Petro is now a mounted cod in Trump’s trophy case.

Winners like other winners.  To Trump, nothing says winning more than wealth and success in business.  Billionaire Elon Musk has vastly surpassed Trump on both measures and Trump is besotted.  Maybe he secretly sees Musk as just a little bit alpha to himself.  The bromance will end as soon as Musk actually behaves alpha to Trump – contradicting him, say, or prematurely announcing policy positions.

Musk got a little ahead of his skis when he questioned the viability of a $500 billion artificial intelligence project championed by Trump.  He landed upright this time.  Next time maybe not.

That’s because winners expect loyalty.  Loyalty to Trump means putting everything – career, duty, even personal safety – on the line for him.  Trump will return that loyalty to the extent it benefits Trump.  Such asymmetry is commonplace among politicians, who can’t afford sentiment in the never-ending fight to stay in office.

But with Trump it’s more personal.  It can even be fatal – one of Trump’s first acts as president was to cancel Secret Service protection for two disloyally critical officials in his previous administration, despite Iran’s attempts to assassinate them.

Disloyalty can be redeemed, but only if you’re a winner.  J.D. Vance once called Trump reprehensible and likened him to “America’s Hitler.”  But here he is, Trump’s vice president.  Vance is young, charismatic, a best-selling author and he was a minor celebrity before entering the Senate.  Trump saw a winner who could help him win.  He accepted Vance’s groveling change of heart.  The supplicating Vance said he regretted his statements, regretted being wrong, and that Trump “made a lot of good decisions for people.”

Winners don’t hate losers, they just ignore them.  Remember that NATO photo-op when Trump barged past the prime minister of Montenegro?  It wasn’t mean-spirited, the guy was just in the way.  Where the hell is Montenegro?

Finally, caprice is the prerogative of a winner.  What may seem like a brain fart – draining Gaza of Palestinians, for example – is a winner’s challenge to his followers.  The challenge is less in effectuating the capricious notion than managing its fallout.  Gazans won’t be harvesting coffee beans in Sumatra and Mexico hasn’t paid for a border wall, but once uttered, a winner’s pronouncement is never retracted.  Directly questioning its reality is disloyal.  Barring the ability to somehow make it so, those in the winner’s orbit must laud the aspiration and try to change the subject.

So where does this all leave Israel and its current leader?  Trump’s smackdown of Bibi via his Mideast envoy, fellow real-estate developer Steve Witkoff, even before taking office clearly signals the Trumpian verdict: you’re a loser, and I am manfully breaking up your brawl with Hamas.  You had 15 months and have yet to achieve any of your own stated goals.  Don’t blame my predecessor – you won big against Hezbollah despite him.  But Hezbollah didn’t take American hostages, or GoPro themselves decapitating babies and raping girls to death and killing 1200 of your people, okay?

Netanyahu, who once boasted of convincing Trump to exit the Iran nuclear deal, will now deal with him in much reduced stature.  The prime minister may dream of redemption in the form of a joint U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, but Trump sees himself as the preventer as well as the ender of wars.  Losers like Joe Biden let wars erupt by their own fecklessness and weakness – their loserdom.  Winners intimidate potential belligerents into standing down.  A canny player like Iran will string talks out for months before revealing it isn’t serious.  By then, Israel will have a new government.

Israel’s next leader will unfortunately inherit a loser’s mantle.  A loser must always make its case; justice is not self-evidently on its side.  Hence, the most important step Israel can take is to improve its public diplomacy, which has long been criticized.  Qatar understands messaging.  So does the tireless Palestinian public-relations machine.  Israel’s outreach must outpace its adversaries’ and expose their frequent duplicity, when they speak reason in English and breathe fire in Arabic.

Helping or at least supporting Israel must be seen as a win.  Israel is fortunate in its detractors since many of them loudly despise Trump.  Discrediting those detractors – forcefully but with civility and respect, since they will one day regain power – serves both Israel and Trump.  A winner must never be contradicted, but his best ideas can be supported and pursued more energetically than his worst.

What won’t work: flattery, obsequiousness, or other propitiations.  These are appreciated and potentially redeeming when spoken by winners, and are ritually expected of subordinates to demonstrate loyalty.  They are ignored from losers.

Israel will always be an important U.S. ally and a moral cause for Republicans.  But to Trump, the relationship with Israel will be one of many Middle East ties to be balanced and managed.  With the Abraham Accords, Trump cast a broad winner’s shadow over the region.  He will want to build on it and claim the Nobel Prize he (not unreasonably) thinks he deserves.  For their part, the Palestinians see victory in Hamas’s survival despite Gaza’s devastation.  Their dream of destroying Israel burns brighter than ever.  Unlike them, Israel can’t win by not losing.  Israel must ultimately be recognized unequivocally as a winner – by Trump, yes, but most importantly by its genocidal enemies.

About the Author
Steven Frank lives and writes in Massachusetts. After a multi-decade legal career, he now sits on the other side of the table as a technology developer and entrepreneur.
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