Opinion- Netanyahu plays Trump for fools, again

Let’s stop beating around the bush: Israel’s far-right government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is spitting in America’s face and telling us it’s raining. It’s not raining. Bibi is playing President Donald Trump and American Jews for fools. And if the US lets him get away with it, we are fools.
While keeping Trump focused on the Iranian missile and nuclear threat — which, though reduced, is still very real and will have to be dealt with diplomatically or militarily — Bibi is fundamentally threatening broader US interests in the Middle East, not to mention the security of Jews all over the world. In what way? I cannot put it any more succinctly than Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, did.
“A violent and criminal effort is underway to ethnically cleanse territories in the West Bank,” he wrote in an essay in Haaretz this month. “Gangs of armed settlers persecute, harm, wound and even kill Palestinians living there. The rampages include burning olive groves, houses and cars; breaking into homes; and physically assaulting people.” He continued, “The rioters, the Jewish terrorists, storm Palestinians with hate and violence with one objective: to force them to flee from their homes. All this is done in the hopes that the land will then be prepared for Jewish settlement, en route to realising the dream of annexing all the territories.”
Israel’s accelerating attempts toward annexation of the West Bank and to permanently remain in the Gaza Strip — and deny Palestinians political rights in both areas — are as morally reckless and demographically insane as would be the US annexing Mexico.
If it were just Israelis who were going to be hurt by the crazy fantasy that some 7 million Israeli Jews can control about 7 million Palestinian Arabs in perpetuity, I might be tempted to say that if Israel’s leaders want to commit national suicide, I can’t stop them.
But the effects will not be confined to Israel. I believe that this messianically driven endeavour will make today’s Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa and will have seriously detrimental implications for US interests and the interests and security of Jews all over the world.
As I said when I began, Netanyahu has played Trump for a sucker, as well as the pro-Israel lobby led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and many other so-called American Jewish leaders. He has gotten them to focus on Iran and ignore the fact that everything he is doing in Gaza, in the West Bank and inside Israel will strain ties between the US and its major Middle East allies, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Türkiye and Qatar.
Yes, Iran remains a reduced but very real nuclear threat after Israeli and US air strikes hit its nuclear enrichment and ballistic missile facilities in June. It has already largely rebuilt its stock of ballistic missiles that could do real physical damage to Israel if war resumes. I take that very seriously.
But focusing exclusively on the external threat from Iran ignores the internal threat Netanyahu’s government poses to Israel and its standing as a rule-of-law democracy and unified society. Netanyahu has been engaged in a three-year effort, even during the war in Gaza, to carry out a judicial coup that would all but eliminate the separation of powers in Israel — one that enables its Supreme Court to check the excesses of the governing political party. Is Iran responsible for that? No.
What prompted Trump to publicly demand that the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, pardon Netanyahu — even before a verdict — for the corruption charges he has been indicted on? It would be a terrible blow to the rule of law in Israel. It certainly was not Iran.
And here is what is truly crazy. Israel today has never been more militarily feared and technologically admired by its Arab neighbours, because of the blows that it dealt Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. If Netanyahu engaged in negotiations for a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority — on any reasonable terms — it would pave the way for peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq.
The whole neighbourhood, and the whole Muslim world beyond it, would open up to Israel; Iran would be totally isolated. Israeli technology and Arab energy would create an amazing synergy for the age of artificial intelligence.
Iran is not the greatest threat to Israel as a democracy governed by the rule of law. It is not the greatest threat to US-Israeli relations. It is not the greatest threat to the unity and security of Jews around the world. It is not the reason so many talented Israeli technologists, engineers and doctors are moving away. And it is not the biggest reason Israel is becoming an apartheid state not only by refusing to try anymore to create a separate Palestinian state but also by working instead to make that impossible.
That title goes to the government of messianic zealots, Arab-hating nationalists and anti-modern ultra-Orthodox Israelis put together by Netanyahu to keep himself in power. — The New York Times