Trump and Netanyahu... Past and Future?

There are great similarities in the depths of the personalities of both Trump and Netanyahu. The former (and future) president Trump openly expresses his hatred for non-Americans and perhaps for many Americans. Netanyahu, after revealing his principles, which are actually based on distorted Talmudic content, almost openly expresses his hatred for the “gentiles” (i.e. all non-Jews) and also for a growing number of secular Jews – the enlightened! The love of money and thus the rich is entrenched in the inner layers of these two personalities. They also share strong tendencies with supremacist and extreme nationalist content. Experience has shown that they do not value anything that is constitutional, institutional, and liberal democratic. Rather, they believe in the role of the individual (read: leader) who enjoys unchecked powers, and thus they have succeeded in marginalizing the two institutions in whose name they rose (the Republican Party in the case of Trump and the Likud Party in the case of Netanyahu). Last but not least, they are united by their belief that the “job” of the media is to make it a weapon in their hands whose mission, without batting an eyelid, is to lie and repeat lies to the point of being believed, in addition to inventing “information” that suits them while distorting real information and facts to serve their private and public purposes.

These similarities between the personalities of the American president and the Israeli prime minister played a role in establishing "strategic" relations between them, especially after the Israeli lobby, in addition to the broader Zionist lobby (based on the pro-Zionist forces, groups and organizations) sided with Trump, which resulted in the latter adopting (in his first term) a set of Israeli-Zionist goals and interests, especially since President Trump at the time was not paying from his own pocket (similar to what Lord Balfour did before him), but rather from the account of the Palestinians, Arabs and others. Thus, the past relations between them resulted in the transfer of the American embassy to Jerusalem, the closure of the American consulate in Arab Jerusalem, and the recognition of Israel's annexation of the Syrian plateau, not to mention the "legitimization" of the colonial/settlement movement, especially in the Palestinian West Bank, in addition to pushing towards what was known as the (Abraham Accords) with some Arab countries on the path to establishing an "alliance" between the Zionist state and some Sunni countries in the face of the "Iranian Shiite threat", and of course what all of this includes in terms of trying to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and imposing various types of sanctions on it.

In the future, Netanyahu plans to repeat the process of "milking the cow" (the American Trumpian one) at the beginning of the new presidential term. In this context, and at the minimum level, Netanyahu is pushing - with an open appetite - towards enlarging "very small Israel" (according to Trump). Accordingly, Netanyahu plans to obtain Trump's approval to annex large parts of the West Bank and recognize the legitimacy of additional "settlements" there, as well as confirming Israeli control over the northern Gaza Strip and perhaps unleashing the "settlement monster" there, in addition to establishing a security buffer zone in Lebanon up to the Litani River! Perhaps the pinnacle of Netanyahu's aspirations: succeeding in convincing the next American president to launch a war to strike the Iranian regime, its institutions and foundations, especially the "nuclear facilities."

In a different scenario, a growing number of Israeli observers (and others) expect that the next US president will not respond to all of Netanyahu’s wishes. The implications of this future scenario will be the subject of next week’s article.