[This is the final part of a four-part series. To read more, see Parts 1, 2 and 3 here.]

Josef Olmert: Hello. Hi to my watchers, to my readers, to my followers. This is the fourth and last in my short series on US–Israel relations. And the idea is really to lead us to the current situation with US President Donald J. Trump, his second administration, with a brief review of his first and the in-between period of the US presidency of Joseph Biden — Joe Biden Jr. — as president. And then we’ll come to the current situation, with the exception that I have to make already now: that we are in a situation that is unfolding. And there might be people who say, “Oh, it’s too early even to talk about US–Israel relations under Donald Trump.” So what I’m going to do is, therefore, to talk about what I consider to be situations that already are fully now results, and maybe inevitable results, of what we already discussed, and how they are happening right now — not talked about, but happening.

Therefore, if we make any predictions for the future, they will be based on what I would consider to be a more solid ground. That’s about the methodics of all that. And I need to say, because I do get reactions, comments, responses from people who watch, read, and they are asking questions that lead me to say what I’m saying to you now.

The American Jewish community and Israel’s image problem

Josef Olmert: So today, very briefly, just to remind you: In our previous episode, we discussed more in-depth processes, mostly in the American Jewish community, that led to changes in attitudes towards Israel. And we touched upon, therefore, what was happening in Israel at the same time that might have led to these changes in American attitude towards Israel, but also the rise of new movements in the US that were either more or less supportive of Israel. Of course, the evangelical Christians on the one end being more supportive; the left-wing, the progressive movement on the other side, in the Democratic Party mainly, that has been much more negative, still is, and becoming more and more negative.

And that brings us, really, to the situation that we are going to delve into in great detail today in our episode.

Trump’s first term: populism, promises and policy shifts

Josef Olmert: And I would say to you that when President Trump was running for president in 2015, 2016, he was not taken seriously, not just by Jews, but also by ordinary America, of course, the commentators. And I cautioned people at the time — it’s not like an “I told you so, period” — but I cautioned people, because I talked to people about the significance of the politics of identities and populist politics altogether, in the unfolding political climate in the US, as well as in other Western democracies.

And by the way, I gave the comparison with Israel. I analyzed the fact that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibi Netanyahu, at that time was already in his sixth year as prime minister in his second term, after the one that he was in from 1996 to 1999 — this one was from 2009; we talk about 2015, 2016 — that Netanyahu also succeeded in Israel with the politics of populism and identities. And this is a successful political card.

And Trump made promises about Israel, and everybody said, “No, I mean, don’t take them seriously.” And he fulfilled, to a large extent, a great deal of his promises. For example, the moving of the embassy to Jerusalem, which was, by the way, the policy of every American president before him, with the exception that they didn’t fulfill their decision because of whatever reason that they gave. That was basically based on the idea, “Yes, we say to the Israelis and to the Jews and to the pro-Israel community, we want to move the embassy — but we can’t do it now.”

Trump did it. Trump also withdrew out of the Iran nuclear deal, as was expected by the Netanyahu government in Israel.

Let me say something here: Netanyahu was not wrong in his opposition to the nuclear deal as was devised by President Obama’s administration. Where were the problems that he had, and they have to do with what’s happening now, so therefore I’m saying them now:

He didn’t know the limits of, or the ways in which to express, his opposition to the Obama administration policy, and therefore he made a terrible mistake of showing in Congress and giving his speech — that was in March of 2015. In January of 2015, that is to say, two months before, the speech was announced by then-Speaker John Boehner. (By the way, I have a picture with John Boehner in my study, because I met him before — I met many other people.) And I then cautioned from getting biting gifts — I cautioned Netanyahu not to do the speech. That was a big mistake.

It comes back to what we discussed before in the previous episode about bipartisanship, or lack thereof, under Netanyahu. It was a big mistake.

The other mistake, which might have even been bigger, was that while he said no to the deal as was devised by Obama — with the support of other powers, as part of Obama’s internationalist policy — he did not offer any alternative. He basically created the impression from day one that all he wanted was to see an American military operation against Iran — or else to justify an Israeli one. But even then, he was not preparing one.

In 2011, the Israeli military establishment was waiting for a word from Netanyahu that he was giving the green light for an attack on Iran. He asked for three days to make a decision. He then said no. And there still are reports to that effect that even today, he basically did not approve all kinds of plans that were supposed to finance projects that were designed to improve technological abilities that were to be connected with an attack on Iran and so on and so forth.

So Netanyahu basically said to Trump, “Cancel the agreement, period,” without offering an alternative.

Why is this important? Because it’s the same mistake he has done since the beginning of the war in Gaza, on the 7th of October 2023, to this very moment. While he said, “no, no, no, no, no,” to everything offered by other people, to other countries, including the best friends of Israel, he does not provide any alternative.

Then Trump, for example, said something which is again interesting: that when the US, with Israeli support, decided to eliminate the arch-terrorist Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran, Netanyahu said yes. And then he said no, he would not be part of it. Which, by the way, caused ongoing damage in the relationship between him and Trump, because Trump — and that we know already — doesn’t like what seems to be weak people, leaders, losers. For Trump, the fact that Netanyahu did not show up in the end, as opposed to what Trump did, was an indication of lack of stamina, resolve, real determination.

But there were also examples of how Israel was so helpful to the American administration. For example, in the war against ISIS, I don’t know how many of my watchers and listeners and readers remember that Trump, in public, said something that compromised the invaluable, great support that Israel gave to American intelligence to locate ISIS targets in Syria. Israelis were furious. But Trump said, “He’s a great friend.”

MAGA and the limits of right-wing support

Josef Olmert: Trump gave a lot of support also in the UN, the national organizations. But Trump also was the leader of MAGA, and that’s the point that I want to emphasize here. And we saw it after the incident in Charlottesville — if I even call it an incident, I believe what happened there in 2017, referring to “good people on both sides.” I immediately wrote an article in which I said, “There are no ‘both sides’ where there are swastikas.”

When Trump referred to “good people on both sides,” he also referred to those that were marching with people that waved the swastikas. That led me into discussion with myself about MAGA.

First of all, it was “America First,” which was a bad memory to me. For those who remember history — I mean, I don’t remember it from that time, but I know it — there was Charles Lindbergh with his America First Committee. That was basically a pro-Nazi domestic American organization that didn’t want America to join the Second World War. You can argue, “Okay, he just used the words; he didn’t mean very much.”

The MAGA movement is a nativist movement. The MAGA movement is isolationist. When you look at the roots of the MAGA movement, when you look at the terminology used, the symbols used, the organizations that were at the forefront of the movement, you have to come to the conclusion that this movement cannot be the pro-Israel movement that existed in the past under the great US President Ronald Reagan — when the world was divided according to the Cold War, and Israel was on that side, the good side. Or under US President George W. Bush, let alone previous presidents from before. Because their opinion about how the world is divided is totally different.

And nativist movements in America or in Europe, by definition, have more than a nucleus of antisemitism, because any movement which is also based on xenophobic feelings is bound to be antisemitic. And no antisemitic movement can be good to Jews, can be good to Israel. It’s as simple as that.

And it was very convenient to many Israelis to accept the better sides of Trump’s policies, but to ignore the roots of it that were based on assumptions and ideologies and terminologies which, as I said, by definition are not good to Jews and Israel.

And how many more times can I say it? How, with more decibels, stronger volume, to say it in order to make the point? Because it is a point that is still debated, even among Jews: What makes you really anti-Israel?

The MAGA movement was on the right side. The alternative to the MAGA movement as a mass mobilization political movement is the “woke” movement, which is, again, anti-Israel. The two most important political movements — and I say movements, not parties — in terms of mobilizing public opinion in the US from right and left, as developed in the last ten to 15 years, are not pro-Israel. And it’s just a question of time when these movements affect the political parties that they try to influence from the outside or by infiltrating from the inside. They already did it in the Democratic Party, and they are doing it now — and have done it — in the Republican Party.

And it will bring me to the current situation momentarily.

Biden’s presidency and the fracturing of democratic support

Josef Olmert: Joseph Biden Jr. — interesting fellow. I, by the way, met him personally: I had dinner with him in Tel Aviv in December of 2002, ahead of the invasion of Iraq. He came to visit the Middle East with a colleague from the Republican Party, Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican from Nebraska who later became the moderate Republican defense secretary under US President Barack Obama; a much more moderate Republican than the Republican Party already at that time.

And Biden gave a brilliant prediction and analysis of what would happen in Iraq after the war. Because everybody knew there was going to be a war, the Bush administration would do it at that time. Much later on, I wrote an article in The Huffington Post, where I blogged for seven, eight years, praising Biden for the fact that he read and understood the situation in Iraq very properly. I also talked about the ethnic and sectarian divisions in all this.

The problem really is — and this is not something that we need to develop in this particular episode, because it’s much beyond the topic that we are discussing — Biden, who came to be president, was not the Biden of earlier years. And we understand it, Now we know more truth about it.

The Biden administration, from the beginning of its term, in all kinds of subtle ways that became much more obvious during the early stages of the war in Gaza — and much later on, as the war dragged on — developed the sense that we have problems with Israel. Exactly on the main core point of what the Israeli lobby and pro-Israeli lobbies all the time emphasized: that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, a beacon of freedom, of human rights, of civility and all that comes with it.

The attack on Israel with regard to that was already at the time of Jimmy Carter. But who remembers Jimmy Carter? He was way back.

Now, Biden, whether wittingly or not — I would say intentionally — slowly, gradually, systematically, consistently built up the case in all kinds of ways, undermining this Israeli argument or claim to fame, if you will.

The forefront of it was what’s called “The Squad” in the Democratic Party. And it was much beyond it. It infiltrated and crept into the trade union movement, the labor movement that in the past was one of the beacons of support for Israel; minority communities — African Americans, but also Asian Americans, which is very interesting; Latinos — tolerating the infiltration of Qatar and other states into universities in America, Saudi Arabia and others — relying on people that were clearly not in the pro-Israel camp anymore, but were at various levels of being anti-Israel.

And the fact is that while still a majority of the Democratic caucus in the House voted with Israel, there was a growing number of the progressives that were already taking their distance. So you could see the cracks in the bipartisan coalition for Israel.

The Netanyahu speech was, in that case, a gift he gave to these people. A stupid gift. Terrible mistake, as I said.

Trump’s second term: strategic ambiguity

Josef Olmert: The Trump administration these days — let’s move on now. First of all, in the last campaign that brought Trump again to the presidency — he didn’t even talk about Israel. He talked about Israel or the Middle East, made very, very superficial, almost insignificant comments or references. The promises were not there, you know.

Everybody took for granted that Trump is pro-Israel and will continue to be. The person that completely misread all this was Benjamin Netanyahu, again, in Jerusalem, believing that somehow Trump is going to be the same Trump of the first administration. He ignored the fact that in second administrations, presidents do tend to change.

I would remind people here that even Ronald Reagan — a great friend and supporter of Israel — he is the president that gave the first kosher certificate to the PLO before he left his second term. He was the one who authorized the beginning of official contact between the US and the PLO in 1989, as an example. But I can give you other examples.

Then came the inauguration, and I noticed something very interesting: While the inauguration was taking place, immediately afterward, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff — I don’t get into too many details about him and his connections with Qatar, all this I leave to investigative journalism — but I don’t need to get into investigative journalism to analyze what he said on Inauguration Day, about what would be the four main pillars of American policy in the Middle East, the name “Israel” was not mentioned. The name “Iran” was not mentioned. The name “Hamas” was not mentioned.

Remember, it is in January of 2025, and the war was already raging from October of 2023. That was the first red light.

But forget about this. Maybe it was a ceremonial occasion. You don’t get into details, you just give main, big points and so on and so forth.

Gulf-centric policy and Israel’s marginalization

Then, of course, let’s see what has happened since then.

Some of his appointments have definitely been very pro-Israel. For example, Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, to be ambassador in the UN — and she made the point already, before: She’s going to fight hard about anti-Israelism in the UN as the first, if not the most important, but one of the main missions. This appointment, by the way, was canceled for all the obscure reasons. Why did he cancel her appointment, arguing that, “we need her in Congress,” when he did not cancel other appointments of people that had to resign from Congress and lead to early elections? I mean elections like in Florida. Well, I’m just leaving you with the question.

Ambassador Mike Huckabee — great, great supporter of Israel, there’s no question about it. But was he appointed as a policymaker? Or as the person that is supposed to say the good stuff to the Israelis, as opposed to the leaks coming consistently from the White House that are the bad stuff? Good cop, bad cop? Yeah — I leave my audience with this question.

All kinds of other appointments — I was skeptical about Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, for all kinds of reasons. I was skeptical about National Security Advisor Mike Waltz for all kinds of reasons. I did welcome the appointment, of course, of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, for all kinds of reasons.

But — you know — instead of getting into every little detail, like this appointment, that appointment, let’s try to talk about three or four particular issues that are typical of what has happened, and still is happening, and would lead me, therefore, to a conclusion at the end of this discussion.

Take, for example, the question of fighting terrorism. Proud American President Donald Trump surrendered. Yes, he surrendered to the Houthis in Yemen. He gave up to terrorists because he allows them, maybe even encourages them indirectly, to keep attacking Israel, but not attacking America. Sure, it’s a pro-American move: “We don’t attack America.” But is it a pillar of your foreign policy to abandon a friend and ally like that?

Cautionizing, legitimizing attacks on Israel by saying, “You can do that. What can I do?”

Donald Trump started the negotiations with Iran with changing views about what the demands from Iran are. And we still don’t know the final outcome of all that. But if the final outcome would be that Iran is still allowed to maintain a nuclear program — even for civilian purposes — it means that he doesn’t do anything different than what the Obama administration did.

Donald Trump put pressure on Israel to stop the war in Lebanon, exactly at the time when Hezbollah was ready to get the final blow from Israel. Yes, in the Lebanese situation, after 11 months of relative inaction by Israel, finally, Netanyahu, under pressure, decided to take the initiative. And it paid off so well to Israel, because this was the area in which you can talk specifically about the total defeat, almost, of the terrorists. Why “almost?” Because something else was needed to finalize the job. And then the American administration put a stop to it.

Donald Trump promised hell to Hamas in Gaza if they don’t release all the hostages within a short period of time. Nothing of this happened, of course. Edan Alexander was released — it is great news, fantastic news — but he is one hostage and an American citizen, which is also raising questions about the division between Americans and Israelis. You fight terrorism, you fight terrorism — it is one problem.

And I can go on with some more examples like this.

Where does it come from? Where was the Israeli reaction? And therefore, how do we put it all in perspective? Where it comes from is Trump’s version of isolationism. And many people will say it’s great, it’s a good American interest. So if that’s an American interest, not to get into war almost at all cost, I will be the last one to criticize it. But I need to mention it in the context of the Middle East. Because what does it mean? It means that we tolerate the terrorists, that we coexist with them. And for the sake of clarity, I will refer not just to people like the Houthis or Hezbollah or Hamas, but Iran.

Donald Trump doesn’t really care, apparently, about the fact that these systems will continue to exist. If he believes that by coming to some accommodation with them, he will be able to tame them, that’s a terrible, terrible mistake. Taming the shrew — ah! Impossible.

But if it falls into the basic tenets of how he views American isolationism and his supporters, then I can understand that there are implications.

Donald Trump wants political solutions that will be short-sighted — short of one situation that he raised and then did nothing about, which I immediately criticized, arguing it’s not going to happen because it’s just not even a half-baked cake. This is the talk about removing all the people of Gaza. It’s — let me use a non-diplomatic word — nonsensical.

But what helps him in that is that, yes, he has done already now some things that are very pro-Israel. He unfroze the embargo on arms to Israel that was basically imposed by Biden. He ordered his people in the UN organizations to continue to support Israel, even though it hasn’t yet come to any big test, like, say, a resolution in the Security Council about possible sanctions against Israel. That remains to be seen.

And at the same time, he makes it very clear that the focal countries of his new policy in the Middle East are the Gulf states: Saudi Arabia and Qatar, mainly, and the UAE, because they have something that Israel doesn’t have. They have the resources, the money.

And to give a kosher certificate, for example, to Qatar is the total opposite of anything which is like fighting terrorism. It is the greatest possible encouragement of terrorism because of what Qatar is and who the Qataris are. It’s as simple as this.

Israel’s paralysis and the waning American umbrella

Josef Olmert: What helps him with all that is — and that brings me back to what we already discussed — the total paralysis of the government of Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has no alternatives to anything, has no proposals to anything, has no initiatives — because he cannot do anything if he wants to maintain his current coalition, which is based on some lunatic — I would say lunatic — extreme right-wing parties, led by Israeli Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich. And for Netanyahu, this is the number one interest.

So even if Netanyahu were to change a little bit on all kinds of issues, or even to a large extent, it may not have changed completely the overall perspective that Trump has about how he should do his own policies and conduct them. But when Netanyahu does nothing and offers nothing, it makes it so much easier.

And that is the same mistake that Netanyahu has done throughout his political career — and definitely when it came also to the Obama administration: to say no with great, polished English is all very nice and easy. But to say yes requires courage, resolve, determination, leadership, which he lacks.

And what happens now is that because of the distance that is being created between Trump and Israel — he’s in the Middle East, but not in Israel. He’s praising Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, he’s meeting the terrorists like Mohammad al-Julani in Syria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the model countries for relations with the US. More and more countries are encouraged now to take more and more anti-Israel positions because they believe that the balance is changing. The umbrella of defense provided to Israel by the US is weakening, if not in the process of disappearing — which is, again, something very bad to Israel.

A troubling future for US–Israel relations

Josef Olmert: I can go on and on. I think I’ve said enough to lead me to interim conclusions.

Beware, Israel. The second administration of Donald J. Trump is going to be the greatest challenge to Israeli foreign policy in our memory, definitely in my memory. And I’m not a young person.

Israel will have to understand that America is changing. And with it are changes in American foreign policy, also in the Middle East.

And I will sharpen the point here by saying: The changes about Israel between this administration of Trump and the first one — in terms of the action but also the image, the perceptions — are just so important. These changes will not be the ones that will lead to a rebellion against Trump in the Republican Party, even by the greatest supporters of Israel, short of maybe a few. If there will be a rebellion against him, but it will be over other issues: the effect of the tariffs, the economic situation, the index of living, inflation, success or failure on the southern border and so on and so forth.

And that’s where we are standing, from the perspective of being in Israel now with less and less bipartisan support. If the Republican administration is the one that is changing the way I described, Israel cannot expect the Democrats to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for Israel. That could not happen.

So I have to leave my audience with this perspective: that for those who care about Israel and for Israel — and I’m one of them, of course — this is a very troubling, pessimistic, but I believe realistic assessment of the situation.

Thank you all.

[Lee Thompson-Kolar and Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.