Thankfully no longer. Though it never occurred to Israel’s best ever friend in the White House, Trump was obeying the dictum which had cuffed Israel from birth: Never let the juggernaut Jews win a war
Zionists had the right to be scandalised - but not to be surprised. ‘America First’ is Trump’s lifelong and oft-claimed credo.
The premature ceasefire he declared in what could be the queerest surrender terms ever drafted, bound Israel to lay down arms. It brought to mind that old truism: “If the Palestinians lay down weapons there’d be no wars anymore. If the Israelis lay down weapons there’d be no Israel anymore.’
Whether that occurred to the US President or to JD Vance is immaterial, given that negotiations with the Islamic Republic have been abandoned as a lost cause. In any case why regurgitate the consequences of a memo misnamed MOU instead of MOM, as in Memorandum of Misunderstanding: Chief among the defects, surely, was the ridicule and contempt it invited, from MAGA supporters and opponents alike.
“All human happiness or misery", says Aristotle, stems from character. Hardly greater misery can stem than from permitting a regime - better late than never Trump concedes they’re “scum" - to manipulate the planet’s pre-eminent head of state.
It was totally surreal for the Big Satan to defang the Little Satan, expecting Israel to let Hezbollah break the ceasefire he whimsically declared in Islamabad of all places. And what fabulous return on investment did he anticipate? We know what return the President got: a wink and a nod from “liars" (he concedes) there’d be no further funny business with Trump’s choke point, the Strait of Hormuz.
The “violent" “evil" and “sick" regime (he concedes) promptly set about making its windfall pay. The nuclear and missile programs and terror network will be restored after the drubbing they took from Midnight Hammer, Epic Fury and Rising Lion.
Trump meanwhile moved Israel to the back burner. When it bombed Beirut, retaliating for Hezbollah attacks in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, he phoned Netanyahu and called him “F--ing crazy". He told the Israeli leader to stop with the military ops.
It got worse. Trump publicly declared that his great ally had “No “f--ing judgement," though he “knows who the boss is".
Not even a rotten and failing head of state - South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa comes to mind - would tolerate being rubbished and patronised in that manner. Regrettably Netanyahu had no recourse. He could hardly go over Trump’s head to address Congress or lobby Democrats, as he’d done about the JCPOA nuclear deal Obama had patched together. After all, a majority of Americans can’t stomach Trump’s war games in the Middle East.
JD Vance met the rift with glee and spite.
“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time," declared Vance. “If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world."
Though Netanyahu ridiculed the claim that the President alone had Israel’s back, the gist of it remained. ‘You’re our puppy dog - a troublesome one. Behave yourself.’
The Israeli leader did not behave. With Trump at the NATO Summit in Ankara Turkey, Netanyahu begged him not to sell Tayyip Erdogan F-35 jet engines nor allow him back in the program. Likud’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar piled into the scrap. His Turkish counterpart, Sa’ar stated, was inciting genocide by calling Israel “a burden of humanity that humanity can no longer bear."
Trump was unmoved. He and Turkey’s leader saw eye to eye - Erdogan has been a co-operative member of NATO compared to other members he could name. Israel, remembering the piety of the patriarchs, will have to gear up for a new front in a multifaceted war.
Dear oh dear, the Middle East powder keg had been comparatively simple. The war in progress is a complete contrast. There’ll be no blast on a ram’s horn to announce that ‘The Temple Mount is in our hands’. No Israeli flag will be sunk into the bank of the Suez Canal; or planted atop Mt. Hermon.
No one knows how or when sporadic exchanges of fire between Iran, its octopus proxies and Israel will end. All we know is that Israel was never allowed, and may never be allowed, to annihilate the enemy once and for all.
The 1948 War of Independence took long enough. It was a year and a half before the new state controlled 77 percent of the original British Mandate of Palestine compared to the 56 percent allocated by the UN partition plan.
Then what happened? Lopsided truces were brokered and cunning armistice agreements devised by UN mediation. Not to put too fine a point on it, Israel let its new borders be imposed.
The 1956 Sinai Campaign was an eight day fiasco principally over - correct, over a blocked shipping lane. Israel ended with the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza strip in its uncanny grasp, only to humbly return the booty to Egypt.
The 1967 war wrapped up in six euphoric days doubled the area under Israeli control. And then? Again outside intervention. UN Security Council Resolution 242 decided to end hostilities and obliged not the blighted Arab aggressors but the envied Jewish victors to swap land to make peace. Never mind that international law gave Israel landowner rights, to keep or dispose as it saw fit.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War took three weeks to vanquish the invaders. And then? Again UN intervention - and this time, American. Henry Kissinger acting as Nixon’s Secretary of State made treaties on Israel’s behalf. His interference embedded the US as mediator in Arab-Israeli conflicts leading to what would be an eternal albatross fastened around the juggernaut’s blighted neck.
The First Lebanon War in 1982 raged for three chaotic months, and yielded victory of a sort. The PLO was expelled from Lebanon. And then? The Sabra and Shatila massacre, and Israel’s bitter distaste for war, yielded a damp squid.
The Second Lebanon War of 2006 ground on for thirty four days of relentless rocket attacks on northern Israel and abduction of IDF members. And then? Yet another UN Resolution intervened. Hezbollah was able to claim victory after demonstrating a will to fight the IDF to a standstill. And then?
Except for the limited operations against horrific intifadas, that is the end of the story. One must not ask, ‘And then?’ too often. It leads to an altogether different milestone.
A war now rages 1,000 days after beginning as Swords of Iron against Hamas in Gaza and Lebanon. This developed into Roaring Lion and Epic Fury against Iran, and looks far from over.
To what extent was Israel stopped, and how, from absolutely winning that brutal urban and subterranean war in Gaza? And what lifetime lessons could Trump take from it?
One is that in between spells of sleepy Joe, Biden (unless Obama really was pulling the strings) could be crafty.
He told Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to act as though he was a co-opted member of Netanyahu’s war cabinet. Tell that crew to “Make a ‘clear plan for protecting civilians" before trying to annihilate Hamas. As though talking to a roomful of warlords, Blinken demanded that Israel act “in compliance with international humanitarian law."
Wagging a finger, he warned that a repeat of, “the massive levels of civilian life and displacement scale we saw in the north" would not be tolerated.
It was a reproof and a warning. His thinly veiled threat signalled that President Biden might well ditch Israel if things at home get too hot for him, as indeed they already had.
But - and here the craftiness drops - who does the casualty count?. In whose crafty hands will rest the wherewithal to get Biden to blow the whistle, to hang Israel out to dry? A news item in Sky News encircles the answer.
“Israel has been criticised over civilian death - which Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry estimates at more than 13,000. However there are fears it could be higher due to people buried under rubble."
Aha! It’s not the same health ministry which lets hospitals double as command centres for Hamas? It’s not the health ministry that admitted hostages not for treatment but to incarcerate and starve? It’s not the health ministry letting gun battles rage inside hospitals?
To be clear: Biden and Blinken relied on Hamas to blab on Israel for infringing their casualties red line. To give the playbook the most wicked twist, what stopped the health ministry including terrorists in the casualty count? (they did)
As to the hostages, the terrorist group could hold them, alive or dead, for bargaining chips. The game was refereed by Blinken who resorted to Biden who resorted to Obama. The survival of Hamas was paramount.
And Hamas? No warning and wagging of fingers at Hamas? Terrorists will be terrorists, smirked the smutty gamesters.
Steve Apfel was once a business economist and founder of the School of Management Accounting. As a veteran authority on anti-Zionism his 2012 book, ‘Hadrian’s Echo: the whys and wherefores of Israel’s Critics’ was acclaimed by top Middle East scholars. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007PIVM6G
A version of this article appeared at https://spectator.org/the-war-israel-was-never-allowed-to-win/