Reprinted with permission fromTrita Parsi’s Substack.
“You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”
According toAxios, this is what Donald Trump said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in “an expletive-laden call” earlier today.
Trump also accused Netanyahu of ingratitude since Trump had helped keep Netanyahu out of jail. At the heart of the matter was Trump’s frustration with Netanyahu not caving to his demands to cease bombing Lebanon, as Israel’s aggression riskedjeopardizing Trump’s diplomacy with Iran.
The story has understandably been met with considerable skepticism. After all, there is a long and well-documented pattern of American presidents privately expressing anger and frustration with Israeli prime ministers while publicly standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them and continuing to support their policies.
Take Joe Biden as an example. In late December 2023,Axios reportedthat Biden’s frustration with Benjamin Netanyahu had become so intense that he abruptly ended a phone call with the Israeli leader, reportedly concluding the exchange with the terse remark: “This conversation is over.” Yet in practice, Biden remained firmly aligned with Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza.
Two months later,NBC News reportedthat Biden had repeatedly referred to Netanyahu as an “asshole” in private conversations with aides and donors. But even as he vented his exasperation behind closed doors, Biden continued to arm Israel lavishly and shield it from mounting diplomatic and political pressure at the United Nations. The gap between private frustration and public policy could hardly have been more striking.
According to Bob Woodward’s 2024 bookWar,Biden’s frustrations became intenselypersonal during the Rafah dispute and Biden told an associate: “That son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f***ing guy.” No policy change followed.
There are plenty of other examples.
There are, however, a few important counterexamples – particularly from Trump’s second term – that suggest the Axios story is not entirely implausible. (Indeed, the report would have been far more difficult to believe had Axios claimed that Trump told Netanyahu, “Everybodylovesyou.”)
Source: Antiwar.com
