No, Trump Does Not Know What’s Better for Israel Than Bibi

 

Donald J. Trump likes to believe he knows what’s better for Israel than Israel’s own prime minister. It’s an astonishing claim, but then again, humility was never his strong suit. In recent months, Trump has scolded Benjamin Netanyahu for being “too tough,” for “losing control,” for not listening to his “advice.” As though the Middle East were another Manhattan construction deal waiting for “The Art of the Deal, Part II.”

But Israel is not a casino or a golf course. It is a nation surrounded by enemies sworn to its destruction, forced to make moral decisions in seconds that most American presidents wouldn’t dare confront in a lifetime. Trump’s belief that he “knows better” than Bibi is more than arrogance — it’s a dangerous illusion.

Yes, Trump gave Israel historic gifts. He recognized Jerusalem as its capital, moved the U.S. embassy, and tore up the Iran nuclear deal that Barack Obama had naively embraced. He blessed the Abraham Accords and ended decades of diplomatic paralysis. Those acts earned him deep gratitude and a chapter in Israel’s history books.

But gratitude does not equal obedience. And friendship is not fealty.

Netanyahu is not a client of Washington, nor a prop in an American political drama. He is the democratically chosen leader of the Jewish state, accountable to Israeli citizens — not to Trump’s campaign rallies. When Bibi weighs a military decision, he isn’t thinking about polling numbers in Michigan. He’s thinking about Jewish lives — children in Ashkelon, soldiers in Gaza, families in Sderot. Trump may understand power, but Bibi understands survival.

This isn’t the first time an American president has presumed to know what’s “best” for Israel. Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 threatened sanctions when Ben-Gurion refused to retreat from the Sinai after routing Egypt in the Suez War. Ben-Gurion resisted for as long as he could, declaring, “Israel will not be a vassal state.” He knew that dependence is the enemy of sovereignty.

Ronald Reagan, beloved as he was, also lectured Israel after Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Washington condemned it as “reckless.” A decade later, the entire world realized it was one of the most courageous preemptive strikes in modern history. Without Begin’s audacity, Saddam Hussein would have had the bomb.

Even Richard Nixon, who privately bristled at “those Jews,” understood better than most that Israel must be free to defend itself. When Golda Meir came to Washington during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Nixon — against the advice of his entire national security team — ordered an airlift that resupplied Israel’s nearly depleted forces. Nixon later said he acted because he remembered his mother telling him as a boy: “One day, the Jews will need help. And you must be there for them.” He didn’t think he knew better than Golda. He respected her judgment and trusted her instincts.

Benjamin Netanyahu carries the same burden those leaders carried — and more. He leads a nation that cannot afford to lose a single war. Every battle is existential. Every ceasefire is temporary. And every inch of restraint is analyzed by enemies who interpret mercy as weakness.

Trump, with all his bombast, confuses diplomacy with branding. He sees peace as a contract, not a covenant; war as a negotiation, not a nightmare. Netanyahu knows that the Jewish people are not living in the post-war world Trump imagines — We are still living in the shadow of the Crusades, vicious pogroms for thousands of years, and the Holocaust. We can not get this war wrong!

When Trump scolds Israel for being “too harsh” in Gaza, or for rejecting his “peace plans,” he betrays his ignorance of Jewish history. He forgets that every Israeli leader since 1948 — left, right, religious, secular — has been forced to make decisions that would break lesser men. From Ben-Gurion’s defiance in ’56 to Begin’s strike on Iraq, from Rabin’s painful Oslo gamble to Sharon’s tragic Gaza withdrawal, every Israeli prime minister has carried the same question: How do we stay alive?

That is the question Netanyahu wakes up with every morning. It’s not the question Donald Trump asks.

Trump’s favorite slogan, “America First,” should make him the first to understand why Israel must put Israel First. Yet somehow, when Israel asserts independence — when it refuses to bend to an American president’s political timetable — Trump takes it personally. He mistakes sovereignty for betrayal.

Israel’s moral compass cannot spin around Mar-a-Lago. Its security cabinet cannot be an appendage of a campaign committee. A true ally does not demand submission; he respects self-determination.

And this is what Trump fails to grasp: Israel’s mission is not to please the White House, but to protect Jewish life and Jewish destiny. The State of Israel exists precisely so that never again will Jews rely on the benevolence of foreign powers to live.

If that principle offends Donald Trump’s pride, so be it. It is the same principle that offended Pharaoh, Haman, and Antiochus — that the Jewish people answer to a higher authority than earthly kings.

When Trump says he knows what’s best for Israel, he’s revealing that he doesn’t understand what Israel is. It is not just a military power or a strategic ally. It is the vessel of a three-thousand-year covenant. Its survival defies logic, and its endurance is a miracle.

Bibi Netanyahu may be cynical at times, and his political maneuvers may exhaust even his supporters. But in his bones, he understands the ancient rhythm of Jewish destiny: Ein li al mi l’hisha’en ela al Avinu shebashamayim — “We have no one to rely on but our Father in Heaven.”

Trump believes in deals. Bibi believes in destiny. And that’s the difference.

Trump may think he knows what’s better for Israel. But Israel was not reborn so that foreign leaders — even friendly ones — could script its fate. It was reborn so that Jews could finally chart their own course, make their own mistakes, and defend their own existence — on their own terms.

And on that, Mr. Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu knows infinitely better.

 

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