The former Israeli writer and diplomat, Alon Pinkas, said in an article published by the Haaretz newspaper that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with his American “brothers in the Republican Party” in a video meeting, and claimed that the Israelis were united in supporting him. At a time when the United States says it is taking steps to end the war and complete a prisoner exchange deal, Netanyahu is busy marginalizing Biden, convincing his Republican “colleagues” in Washington that he is their ally, and gaining the affection of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Netanyahu's career in American "dramatic skits".

Pinkas spoke about the speech delivered by Netanyahu, and Trump’s participation in a video call in the meeting, and said that Netanyahu’s speech did not deviate from what is usual in his speeches of complaint, claim to righteousness, and self-pity. He complained that US President (Democrat) Joe Biden was preventing him from achieving complete victory by opposing the attack on Rafah, but the Israeli writer says that Biden did not do that, and did not prevent Netanyahu from ordering the Israeli army to launch attacks throughout Gaza, since October 7, but rather gave him full support.

Pinkas referred to what he described as the feigned pain shown by Netanyahu while speaking about the critical speech delivered by the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, Senator (Jewish) Chuck Schumer, last week, in which he criticized the Israeli Prime Minister and his government. Netanyahu said: “It was a disgraceful speech.” And inappropriate." He claimed that the Democratic American administration is trying to "drop" him from his position, instead of helping him "dismantle" Hamas, and therefore Republican representatives must support him in "opposing the position of the current American administration."

The Israeli writer pointed out the contradiction of Netanyahu, who claims “righteousness and innocence,” while he is the same man who recommended in a 2002 US House of Representatives debate that the United States invade Iraq to enable democracy in the Middle East, and then called for fighting Iran on the basis of similar claims. 

The most prominent scene in what Pinkas describes as “Netanyahu’s career in dramatic skits” was the speech he delivered before Congress in 2015, to protest the US nuclear agreement with Iran, a speech he delivered at the time behind the backs of former US President Barack Obama and his vice president, Biden.

Pinkas mocked that Netanyahu did not limit himself to criticism and complaints in his speech, but rather made sure to provide his “republican colleagues” with scientific data and reliable opinion polls, claiming that “his policy enjoys consensus among the Israelis.” However, Pinkas indicated that there is a consensus among the Israelis to destroy Hamas, but he denounced the claim that the Israelis are unanimous in Netanyahu’s ability to do so, especially if his support rate has fallen to 19%.

Deterioration of US-Israeli relations

Pinkas believes that Netanyahu was aware that the “union meeting” with his fellow Trump supporters would arouse the ire of the White House, so he contacted the Democrats requesting permission to deliver a speech before them as well, but Senator Schumer rejected the strange request, and said that the Israeli issue is not a partisan issue.

He also touched on the statements made by Trump the day before Netanyahu's speech, saying that "the Jews who vote for Democrats hate Israel, and hate their religion." Pinkas said that Trump's allegations involve accusing American Jews of dual loyalty, which is an unfounded accusation, but he agrees with the views of Netanyahu, who, through his support and closeness to the Republican Party, opposes 75% of American Jews, who have been voting for Democrats since the 1930s.

Pinkas believes that Schumer's speech, which President Biden praised, and the Israeli Prime Minister's response to it, are links in a continuing series of harmful deterioration in relations between Israel and the United States since the formation of the current Netanyahu government.

Pinkas went on to say, “The Americans have come to see Netanyahu as an unreliable ally. Indeed, his personal and political biography indicates that he is a manipulative person who is fond of evasion and deception, and does not care about the constraints of facts or national considerations. He is not a man who formulates and implements policies, but rather is keen on guarding the existing collapse to attract support by always fearing the consequences of complete collapse, he is a man whose geopolitical perceptions are outdated, and does not take into account new opportunities and challenges, and he is the man who, since January 2023, has greatly undermined the structure of “common values” in Israel, and after October 7, he caused the erosion of the alliance based on common interests between the United States and Israel.

“Netanyahu does not want to be brave and bear responsibility for failure.”

The Israeli writer believes that the worst thing Americans currently see in Netanyahu's biography is that he is not a strong man in maintaining national security, as he claimed, and he never was. The evidence for this is that Iran is on the cusp of becoming a nuclear state, and it has large quantities of enriched uranium necessary for that, and Netanyahu is not a strong man in maintaining Israel’s internal security, and evidence of this is what happened in the attack on October 7, in which he did not even bother to Now the trouble of bearing responsibility for it, nor complying with accountability for the negligence that led to it.

Pinkas pointed out that Netanyahu blamed the Israeli army and the Shin Bet for the October 7 attack, and he is now trying to create a confrontation with the United States, to pay for what he did, and to portray to the people that the American president is the one preventing him from achieving “decisive victory.”

On the other hand, the Israeli writer highlighted the meeting of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during his current visit to the region, with six Arab foreign ministers, and the discussion with them regarding a regional plan based on the “Arab Peace Initiative,” which Saudi Arabia was the first to present in 2002, and she added. The US administration has included some elements of the “Biden Plan” in an effort to stabilize the Middle East.

Pinkas believes that the American administration is not only concerned about the humanitarian damage that the Israeli military operation in Rafah will cause, nor the absence of an Israeli plan to control the turbulent situation in Gaza in the coming months, but it is also concerned about a purely military issue, which is that if Hamas’s center of gravity is in the south... Gaza - as the Israeli government now claims - so why did Israel insist on a ground operation of such great intensity in the northern Gaza Strip?