Netanyahu, the Biden-Harris Administration, Trump, Lies, and Distrust

New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, supposedly a dispassionate and level-headed commentator on Israeli foreign policy and the political environment in which the country is embedded, is someone who persistently underwhelms me by delivering decidedly one-dimensional observations that give the distinct impression of mechanically echoing the views and unabashedly serving the interests of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and whoever represents it in the White House.

Friedman is clearly not fond of Benjamin Netanyahu and misses no opportunity to cast a negative light on him. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in-all-likelihood sorely tempted to publicly express as emphatically and elaborately the same sentiment but, because of their elevated official status and a desire to avoid a political backlash, they need to confine themselves to brief and opaque statements. I have reservations about Netanyahu’s behavior and judgement yet am willing to give credit where credit is due.

Friedman’s recurring and unoriginal argument is that Netanyahu routinely lies to the Biden-Harris administration and cannot be trusted. Moreover, he does so not merely to advance his own personal agenda but also goes to considerable lengths to ensure that Donald Trump prevails in the November presidential election. If that is indeed the case, which may not be entirely inaccurate in one way or another, this is dramatically depicted as something virtually without precedent and simply beyond the pale.

The fact of the matter is that politicians lie habitually and blatantly violate the trust of their counter-parties and constituents. Bill Clinton, the most strategically savvy of the lot, has not been a paragon of honesty and integrity, and Barak Obama and Joe Biden have had no compunctions about distorting the truth when it suited them. In the past few weeks, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have probably outperformed Trump in terms of the number of lies they have produced, without being as entertaining! And when it comes to trust, it is difficult to think of anything as profoundly distressing that has occurred in recent years as Biden’s callous betrayal of the Afghan people. This is not to imply that, whatever the source, such conduct should be deemed acceptable and greeted with indifference. Indeed, the opposite is true. That said, some sense of balance is called for in reflecting on this type of political excesses.

By the same token, for the Biden-Harris administration, whose members and their allies have openly undermined Netanyahu and have unambivalently stated that his removal from office would be a welcome development, to protest his pro-Trump leanings is an act of hypocrisy. Trump is a slippery and unpredictable character. It is reasonable to assume, however, that he would have not pursued the misguided Obama-Biden policy of appeasement vis-a-vis Iran, would have taken a wider range of concrete measures to put it on the defensive,  would have exhibited greater decisiveness in addressing its march toward becoming a nuclear threshold state, and would have reacted more determinedly to the Houthis’ attacks on ships in the Red Sea. Perhaps his claims that, if he were president, the multi-front assaults on Israel would have not happened and the hostage crisis would have been promptly resolved are not wholly without foundation. It is by no means wrong for Netanyahu to strive for Trump’s victory over Harris, who is a highly risky prospect from an Israeli perspective, provided this is done in a tactically prudent and productive manner.