Anti-Israel conspiracy theorists, both left and right, have claimed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu controls American politics and the U.S. military, using both to serve his interest in land and war.
They might have been puzzled by the events of this week, when President Donald Trump threatened Israel with the loss of “all support” if it annexed the West Bank — and when Netanyahu opposed such annexation when it was brought up by right-wing Israeli opposition parties during Vice President JD Vance’s recent visit.
These events made plain that the U.S. is the dominant party in the relationship, even if both reject the idea that Israel is a “client state.” It also made clear that Netanyahu prefers peace to war, and is prepared to back away from territorial ambitions — especially when Trump opposes them, and does so in the interest of peace.
Notably, Trump said that the reason he opposed Israeli annexation of the West Bank — which Israelis call Judea and Samaria was because he had made commitments to Arab allies — not because of Palestinians’ desires to use that same land for their own state.
(A president from the Democratic Party would have done the opposite, giving radical Palestinians an effective veto over advances in regional peace and prosperity.)
In other words, Trump was making his opposition to annexation plain because annexation would disrupt diplomatic relationships that benefit both the U.S. and Israel in the long run.
Without saying so directly, Trump was opposing Israel’s far-right on the grounds that their agenda is not in America’s or Israel’s best interests.
Typically, the idea of pressuring Israel, ostensibly for its own good, is a Democratic Party obsession. Upon taking office in 2009, for example, President Barack Obama thought to woo support in the Muslim world by creating as much “distance” between the U.S. and Israel as possible.
But all that did was signal weakness to enemies and allies alike. The Palestinians dug in and refused to make compromises necessary for peace.
Trump is not pressuring Israel overtly. He is doing something more effective — something he is very good at, in other contexts: enforcing a border.
It is a border around the excesses of Israel’s far-right wing, a border that prevents a small, fringe minority of Israelis from disrupting the whole.
That minority has corroded the rule of law within Israel — by resisting the military draft for religious scholars, for example; and by condoning vigilante action and reprisals against Palestinian villages in the West Bank.
If Israel cannot stop its fanatics — some of whom regard the Israeli state as illegitimate — it will not survive.
Yet Israeli leaders, including Netanyahu, have struggled to rein in that fringe — especially because the existential threat posed by terrorism made internal law enforcement politically fraught.
The Biden administration intervened in a punitive way, slapping sanctions on settler activists. The sanctions were so broad that they punished even mainstream opinion in Israel.
Trump has adopted a different approach: he is letting Israel choose its own path, while making clear that there will be a high diplomatic cost for yielding to the fringe.
Trump helped Israel defend its boundaries from terror — but he is also reminding Israel that boundaries set limits to those within, too.
And he is helping Netanyahu patrol both sides of that border.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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