The Godfather of Gaza (and Greenland?)
Trump has the morality of a Mafia boss. He wants to use American power to acquire territory, resources, and prestige…
Francis Fukuyama is right.
Thinking of Trump as a kind of Mafia boss is actually a pretty helpful way of understanding him — albeit not very reassuring. For Israelis justifiably grateful to him, both for crippling (for now at least) Iran’s nuclear capacity, and for engineering the return of the hostages, the analogy works particularly well.
Previous US presidents have either been personally/ideologically pro-Israel (Clinton, Bush Jr.), or much less so (Bush Sr., Obama), which has affected the relationship one way or the other. But there was always a floor and a ceiling as to how hostile, and how supportive, they could be. Even George W. Bush wouldn’t move the embassy to Jerusalem because, like his predecessors, he respected certain diplomatic norms and assumptions. Obama signed a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel in 2016, committing the US to a record $38 billion in security assistance because, again, there were norms and assumptions – in this case part of a long-time, widely supported, value-based special relationship between the two countries.
With Trump, that’s all out of the window. It’s about how he feels — about a country, about a leader, about his own needs. It genuinely does seem that he likes and respects Israel. He likes winners, and he respects strong militaries — which certainly puts Israel in his good books. He seems to genuinely appreciate Netanyahu — for now at least. Like many other world leaders, Israel’s prime minister has felt the need to kiss the ring of the Mafia Don(ald). Remember his announcement that Trump would become the first non-Israeli to be awarded the Israel Prize? And the multiple times he has publicly praised Trump’s unique genius. This is the currency that must be paid. (María Corina Machado felt the need to offer Trump her Nobel Peace Prize. Whether that will be enough to persuade him to install the legitimately elected president of Venezuela in place of Maduro’s VP remains to be seen.)
But now we have a problem, albeit one that’s been coming down the pike for some time. Because Trump — uniquely for any post-war US president — has no automatic preference for democracies over autocracies, for elected leaders over despots, Netanyahu has no greater claim on his affections than Erdogan or the Emir of Qatar. And he is openly admiring of both men. The fact that they are the two most anti-Israel leaders in the world outside of Iran, or that both are sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood (which Trump has designated a terrorist organization) matter not. And now both Turkey and Qatar are being brought into the ‘executive committee’ to run Gaza, causing understandable consternation in Jerusalem.
But here’s the problem when the US president is a Mafia boss. When he believes in you and your cause, you’re golden. He’ll do things for you that none of his predecessors would have dared. He’ll make things happen that were thought impossible. But he is also exceptionally dangerous to cross, because he has no compunction about taking revenge, however close the relationship in the past.
Trump was close to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, but then slapped huge tariffs on India because Modi refused to give him credit for ending a brewing conflict with Pakistan. European countries — fellow NATO members — who’ve pledged to support Denmark in the wake of the president’s astonishing threats to take Greenland by force, have been hit by tariffs too. Netanyahu is no fool. He knows Trump will not forgive him if he throws a spanner in the works of the president’s grand plan for Gaza. And besides, Netanyahu is still hoping Trump will deliver for him politically, openly supporting him once the whistle goes on the election campaign.
No, for all Netanyahu’s bluster about his unique abilities to influence the president, his complete identification with, and reliance on Trump has actually rendered him uniquely ill-equipped to stand up to him. One more reason to hope that the election this year brings an end to the Bibi-era, and a new prime minister can reassess how best to handle the new Godfather of Gaza.
