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Netanyahu once decried ‘daylight’ with Washington. Now he’s tolerating Trump’s glare.
WASHINGTON – When Benjamin Netanyahu met with Donald Trump in February, the Israeli prime minister’s first meeting with the president in his second term, he made clear that he hoped the days of “daylight” between the two countries were gone.
”When Israel and the United States don’t work together, that creates problems,” Netanyahu said then. ”When the other side sees daylight between us — and occasionally, in the last few years, to put it mildly, they saw daylight – then it’s more difficult.”
The dig was at President Joe Biden and the differences the Democrat and Netanyahu had over Israel’s conduct of its war with Hamas in Gaza.
Trump and his deputies have since then expressed their frustrations with Israel in language far more blunt and excoriating than Biden ever deployed. They have also put their finger on the scale in shaping Israeli leaders’ actions and words more than Biden ever tried to.
“Frankly, it’s baffling to me that somehow he continues to get away with it,” said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.
Soifer noted that there was barely any pushback when Trump took actions that undermined Israel, including brokering a separate deal with the Houthi militia in Yemen that allowed it to continue attacking Israeli ships while allowing American ships to pass, and visiting Qatar, a backer of Hamas, but not Israel during a Middle East tour earlier this year.
She said what was striking about Trump’s actions were not necessarily the results, but the underlying assumption that he must be obeyed.
“He has actually pushed Netanyahu quite a bit and used a pretty sharp language in the process, which is not entirely a bad thing, but some of the extent to which he has either threatened or has threatened, I would say, is language that would be wholly unacceptable if it were a Democrat in any circumstance,” she said.
She offered an example: “He was emphatic in saying that Israel should not be annexing the West Bank. Now, it’s not that I disagree with that position, but he said Israel would lose ‘all support from the United States’ if it happened.”
Indeed, Netanyahu and his supporters have waged rebellions, and won concessions, over far less significant incursions against his authority. Yet the prime minister, who just over a year ago was deploying social media videos and a speech to Congress to criticize Biden, has been silent in the face of the blunt and at times vulgar broadsides he has endured from Trump and top deputies — and effusive in his continued praise of Trump.
Pro-Israel conservatives who were critical of how the Biden administration treated Israel say the difference is in how Trump’s tough love does not stint on the “love” component: Netanyahu is able to take the criticism because he knows it comes wrapped around goodies.
The United States in June joined Israel in its short war against Iran, the first such offensive U.S. role in an Israeli military action in the history of relations between the countries. Biden had provided Israel with logistical support in scuffles with Iran triggered by Israel’s war with Hamas, a terrorist organization that has for decades been allied with Iran, but did not directly involve the U.S. military.
“The amount of credit that this administration now has with the Israeli government is enormous,” said Jonathan Schanzer, the vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s amazing what happens when you bomb the Iranian nuclear program, how much goodwill that buys you.”
Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, a group that advocates for a robust U.S.-Israel military alliance, said Republicans are more likely to extract concessions from Israel because they have become the repository of support for Israel in the United States as Democrats have become increasingly disillusioned with the country.
“It makes it harder for Netanyahu to [buck] any pro-Israel Republican president, but especially Trump, who obviously would certainly hold it against him,” he said.
Vice President JD Vance, speaking to college students this week, further underscored the conundrum facing Netanyahu and pro-Israel voices when he emphasized that he did not see U.S. support for Israel as sacrosanct — and noted that Trump makes up his own mind when it comes to Israel.
“When people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States, they’re not manipulating or controlling this president of the United States,” he said.
Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state in the Obama administration, said Netanyahu was in a bind because Republicans in Congress who in any other circumstance would confront a president who criticized Israel were afraid of Trump.
“They’re willing to fall in line if that’s what he wants,” Rubin said. “They may try to do their work [lobbying for Israel] behind the scenes.”
Democrats, having fallen out with Netanyahu because of tensions during the Obama and Biden presidencies, are not going to step into that breach, said Rubin, who was the Jewish outreach official during the 2020 presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a strident Israel critic.
“Do Democrats want to take issue with that, that Trump is acting like he’s the prime minister of Israel, or do they kind of agree with some of that he’s doing?” he said.
It was during the June Iran war that Trump told the press outside the White House that Israel and Iran “don’t know what the f— they’re doing.” Last week alone, Vice President JD Vance called the Knesset “stupid” for voting to annex the West Bank, and Steve Witkoff, Trump’s top Middle East envoy, said the administration felt “betrayed” by Israel’s strike on Hamas targets in Qatar.
The remark evinced barely a whimper from Israel, a stark contrast with the weeks of agonizing that eventuated when an anonymous Obama White House official in 2014 called Netanyahu “chickens–t” for dithering on peace and on how best to confront Iran. The ensuing diplomatic turmoil culminated in an apology to Netanyahu from the White House and from then-Secretary of State John Kerry.
Trump famously not only does not do apologies, he has a track record of sacking anyone who works for him who does. He also doesn’t have to: Netanyahu is rolling with the punches, as long as they’re coming from Trump and co. Greeting Vance last week, Netanyahu said that the Israel-U.S. alliance has been “second to none” in Trump’s second term.
In fact, when apologies are forthcoming in the U.S.-Israeli relationship, they are from the Israeli side. In a White House meeting last month, Trump made a show of getting Netanyahu to apologize to Qatar’s prime minister for the strike.
Netanyahu’s far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, groveled in a televised apology for having advised Saudi Arabia to “keep riding camels in the desert” if the kingdom conditions a peace deal on a path to Palestinian statehood. The remarks infuriated the Trump administration, which is trying to bring the Saudis into the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals Trump brokered in 2020 at the end of his first term.
Netanyahu scrambled to tamp down the significance of the Knesset vote during Vance’s visit that called for the annexation of the West Bank, after Vance called the vote “a very stupid political stunt, and I personally take some insult to it.”
The vote, Netanyahu said, was “a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord during Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel.”
It was a striking contrast with the last time the Israeli right wing thumbed its nose at a visiting prime minister, when Biden visited Israel in 2010 to emphasize the U.S.-Israel friendship – and Israel announced plans to build in a disputed portion of Jerusalem.
Biden and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rebuked Netanyahu – but in private, not on the Ben Gurion Airport tarmac, as Vance did. And Netanyahu deployed his diplomats and pro-Israel advocates in the United States to complain that the American reaction was over the top.
Trump gets a pass because he is family, especially now that he brokered the release of the last 20 living hostages held by Hamas, said Schanzer.
“When you have a close relationship with a friend and you’re able to take you know, as the Brits say, take the piss, you can take shots at somebody who you love and know and trust,” he said. Trump has the bandwidth with Israelis because he was able to bring home the hostages, Schanzer said.
“The Israeli right and the Israeli left cannot agree on the color of hummus right now, but they all agree that Donald Trump has done enormous good for the country,” he said. “The hostage families adore Trump and Witkoff and Kushner.”
Biden believed he had a close relationship with Israel and was in fact reluctant to press Israel hard as it retaliated against Hamas for its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of close to 1,200 people in Israel, the event that triggered the war. The president came under fire from Democrats for not doing enough to leverage U.S. aid to contain Israel.
Makovsky of JINSA said Trump consistently couples the constraints he imposes on Israel with warnings that he is ready to unleash Israeli power if its enemies do not stand back.
“One of the most important things he said here is that if Hamas doesn’t agree to this agreement or abide by it, he will back Israel to do whatever they need to do,” Makovsky said, referring to the ceasefire Trump brokered in the Gaza war.
To the degree that Netanyahu has expressed unhappiness with tensions between Israel and the faction in the Trump administration led by Vance that seeks to roll back U.S. military alliances, including with Israel, it has been through leaks.
The Israeli satirical program “Eretz Nehederet” has noticed the difference in Netanyahu’s approaches to Biden and Trump and last week depicted Netanyahu as a supplicant to Trump, who was portrayed as a Roman emperor. “Donald Trump is emperor!” Netanyahu dances and sings in the sketch. “If you want an apology to [Qatar] you got it!”
Advocacy for “no daylight” between Israel and the United States stretches back decades and became an issue in Obama’s first year in office, when Jewish leaders pleaded with the new president to sustain the practice of keeping criticisms private.
The Republican Jewish Coalition’s Jewish community campaign on Trump’s behalf last year highlighted the phrase. The RJC did not return a request for comment for this story.
Some pro-Israel conservatives are wary of what they see as Republican distancing from Israel, although they are careful not to blame Trump. Mark Levin, the Jewish Fox News pundit, last month blasted White House insiders who criticized Netanyahu for tangling with movement conservatives like Tucker Carlson who are critical of Israel.
“They’re undermining the president,” Levin said of the officials leaking their criticisms of Netanyahu to the press. “They’re pushing a propaganda campaign. Not a word from the insiders about a single terrorist group or terrorist country. Just Israel and Netanyahu. This is a scandal.”
Yet daylight keeps creeping into the relationship – and some of its exponents are Jewish conservatives who have until now been among Israel’s most strident defenders.
Figures like Yoram Hazony, the Israeli-American philosopher who is close to Vance, do not criticize Netanyahu, but they are unabashed in criticizing Israeli lawmakers for endangering emerging ties between Israel and Arab nations.
“President Trump, VP Vance, and Netanyahu himself, are completely justified in thinking this behavior in the Israeli parliament is irresponsible, insulting, and tiresome — and in saying so in strong terms so the Saudis don’t just announce that the deal is off and walk away,” Hazony said last week.
Joel Pollak, a senior editor at the Trump-supporting Breitbart news, said in an op-ed that Trump’s role was to protect Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister struggled to contain the far right.
“If Israel cannot stop its fanatics — some of whom regard the Israeli state as illegitimate — it will not survive,” Pollak wrote. “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.”
Trump, Pollak said, is “making clear that there will be a high diplomatic cost for yielding to the fringe.”
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The post Netanyahu once decried ‘daylight’ with Washington. Now he’s tolerating Trump’s glare. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls
Friday before sundown, I realized that Abe Foxman had not sent me his weekly “Shabbat Shalom” message. For the past seven years, since we began texting regularly about Jewish and political issues, the message would arrive each Friday like clockwork — often accompanied by screenshots of Shabbat memes. My response never changed: “Good Shabbos, tzaddik,” using the Hebrew word for a righteous person that Foxman himself often used.
A few minutes after sundown, I texted him anyway: “Good Shabbos, tzaddik.” Then I turned off my phone. The message showed as “read” Saturday night. But there was no response.
I’m sure I wasn’t the only one waiting for Foxman’s Shabbat greetings. The silence said everything. On Sunday, the Anti-Defamation League announced that its former longtime chief had died at age 86.
I first started texting with Foxman after he stepped down in 2015 as national director of the ADL, concluding a remarkable 50-year run with the organization, including nearly three decades at its helm. By then, he had become one of the most recognizable Jewish communal leaders in America. He was nicknamed the “Jewish Pope.” Former President Barack Obama, a frequent target of Foxman’s criticism over Israel policy, said upon Foxman’s retirement: “Abe is irreplaceable.”
For me, a rookie journalist covering national politics through a Jewish lens, Foxman became an invaluable source. He was in the room with presidents, prime ministers and world leaders during some of the Jewish community’s most consequential moments. Yet he was always available. He answered calls quickly. He texted back. He spoke candidly. He could be sharp, direct and deeply critical when he thought leaders were making mistakes. But he was also compassionate, warm and surprisingly personal.
Every conversation began the same way: asking about me. My kids. How I was holding up. Only then would we get to politics. The conversation would often veer from Yiddish to English and back again.
Our last conversation was on April 15, after a record 40 Senate Democrats voted to block $295 million for the transfer of bulldozers to Israel and 36 of them also supported a measure to block the sale of 1,000-pound bombs to the Jewish state. “A broch,” Foxman replied, using the Yiddish word for disaster. “A sad time for American politics.”
That worldview shaped much of his public commentary in recent years. In interviews with the Forward and other publications, Foxman weighed in on rising antisemitism, campus protests, Democratic divisions over Israel, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric, and the Biden-Netanyahu relationship.
Foxman could be combative and unapologetic. Critics on the left viewed him as too hawkish on Israel, while critics on the right sometimes accused him of being too willing to criticize the Israeli government or American conservatives. But nobody doubted his commitment to the Jewish people and to Israel.
Foxman’s own life story
Born in Baranavichy in 1940, in what is now Belarus, Foxman survived the Holocaust as an infant after being hidden by his Polish Catholic nanny, who baptized him to hide his Jewish identity, while his parents were confined to a ghetto. After the war, he was reunited with his parents, first living in a displaced persons camp in Austria before immigrating to the United States.
Those early experiences shaped the course of his career and ultimately made him one of the most influential Jewish communal leaders of the modern era.
In 1965, after getting degrees from City College of New York and New York University School of Law, Foxman joined the Anti-Defamation League as a legal assistant. Over the next five decades, Foxman rose through the ranks of the organization before being named its national director in 1987, a position he held until 2015.
Under his leadership, the ADL became one of the world’s most prominent voices combating antisemitism and hate.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed Foxman to serve on the council of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was reappointed by Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden. He was also vice chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.
Foxman was often willing to challenge leaders he believed were wrong on Israel, including Democratic presidents he otherwise respected. He was sharply critical of Obama’s approach toward Israel early in his presidency and became one of the leading Jewish voices opposing the administration’s 2009 demand for a freeze on Israeli settlements.
In remarks at Foxman’s farewell dinner in 2015, Susan Rice, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. and national security advisor under Obama, told the audience: “The thing I most value about Abe is his candor and integrity. He holds everyone to the same high standards, and I can always count on him to tell it to me straight, even when he knows I won’t necessarily like what he has to say.” In 2020, Foxman publicly advocated for Biden to choose Rice as his vice-presidential running mate.
“America and the Jewish people have lost a moral voice, a passionate advocate for the Jewish people and the state of Israel, and a remarkable leader,” Foxman’s successor, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement announcing Foxman’s death.
Foxman’s political commentary
Even after retiring from the ADL, Foxman remained a leading voice in Jewish public life, especially after the election of Trump in 2016.
Foxman told me in an interview at the time that the Jewish community should engage with Trump and hold him accountable when needed. He advised Trump to be cautious about making good on his promise to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He became more critical of Trump after the president said that there were “very fine people on both sides” in response to a 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
In 2020, Foxman broke his tradition of not endorsing political candidates to back Biden. He argued that Trump was a “demagogue” whose reelection would be a “body blow for our country and our community.”
Once Biden took office, Foxman started to express doubts about the president’s handling of the U.S. relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said it “sends the wrong message to our friends and enemies” that Israel is being held to a higher standard than other countries in the region. Foxman was also a harsh critic of the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul, warning that the right-wing cabinet ministers could hamper support for Israel among American Jews.
In 2024, he warned that Biden’s increasingly harsh rhetoric over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza would repel Jewish voters. “I believe that this administration, because of its political season, is taking American Jews for granted or has written us off,” said Foxman. ”If they’re worried that the Arabs in Michigan will vote with their feet, they need to worry that Jews can also vote with their feet.”
Most recently, Foxman was critical of national Democrats opposing the military operations against the Iranian regime in March for a lack of congressional authority. “Sadly, it is purely political games,” Foxman told me, noting that previous Democratic administrations conducted military operations without explicit congressional authorization. “Ninety-nine percent of Democrats are on record saying Iran is a terrorist state and cannot have nuclear weapons. So why this game?” he asked.
Now, as Jews mark Jewish American Heritage Month, that voice is silent. But for me, and for the many people still waiting for one more “Shabbat Shalom” message from Foxman, he will not soon be forgotten.
Foxman is survived by his wife Golda, his daughters Michelle and Ariel and four grandchildren.
JTA contributed to this article.
The post Remembering Abe Foxman, the longtime ADL leader known as the ‘Jewish pope,’ who always answered my calls appeared first on The Forward.
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Jailed Iranian Peace Laureate Mohammadi Moved to Hospital in Tehran
A picture of Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi on the wall of the Grand Hotel in central Oslo before the Nobel banquet, in connection with the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2023, in Oslo, Norway, Dec. 10, 2023. Photo: NTB/Javad Parsa via REUTERS
Iran’s imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi has been moved to a hospital in the capital, Tehran, and has been granted a suspension of her sentence on heavy bail, a foundation run by her family said on Sunday.
Mohammadi, 54, won the prize in 2023 while in prison for a campaign to advance women’s rights and abolish the death penalty. She suffered a heart attack two weeks ago.
Her family had called for her to be transferred from Zanjan, northwest of Tehran, where she was serving her sentence and where she had been initially taken to a hospital, so that she could receive better medical care.
She is now at Tehran Pars Hospital for treatment by her own medical team after being transferred by ambulance, the Narges Mohammadi Foundation said in a statement.
Mohammadi was sentenced to a new prison term of 7-1/2 years, the foundation said in February, weeks before the US and Israel launched their war against Iran. The Nobel committee at the time called on Tehran to free her immediately.
She had been arrested in December after denouncing the death of a lawyer, Khosrow Alikordi. A prosecutor told reporters that she had made provocative remarks at Alikordi’s memorial ceremony.
The foundation gave no details of the bail arrangements or suspension of her sentence.
“However, a suspension is not enough,” it said. “Narges Mohammadi requires permanent, specialized care. We must ensure she never returns to prison.”
Iran shut down most of the internet in the country in January as authorities suppressed mass protests triggered by economic unease. Rights groups have reported ongoing executions of people involved in the unrest.
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Israel’s Attorney General Calls to Cancel Netanyahu’s Mossad Chief Appointment
Israeli Attorney-General Gali Baharav-Miara. Photo: Twitter
i24 News – Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara told the High Court of Justice on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to appoint Maj. Gen. Roman Gofman as the next Mossad chief must be canceled.
Baharav-Miara filed her position ahead of a Tuesday hearing on petitions challenging the appointment, telling the court that “substantial flaws” had been found both in the process conducted by the advisory committee and in the conclusions it drew. She said Netanyahu’s decision suffered from “extreme and blatant unreasonableness” and could not stand legally.
At the center of the dispute is the case of Ori Elmakayes, who was a 17-year-old minor when he was activated in 2022 by Division 210, without going through authorized intelligence channels. At the time, the division was commanded by Gofman. Elmakayes was arrested in May 2022 under espionage charges after two officers sent him classified information and told him to post it online as part of an “influence campaign,” despite not being authorized to do so. Gofman initiated this operation. Elmakayes was then held in full detention until July, spending an extended period under electronic monitoring and house arrest before the indictment against him was canceled in late 2023.
Baharav-Miara says Gofman’s involvement in leaking the classified information to the minor, “casts a heavy shadow on Gofman’s integrity and thus on his appointment to head the Mossad.” The attorney general also identified serious procedural failings in the advisory committee’s work. She notes that the majority members signed their opinion before committee chairman and former Supreme Court president Asher Grunis had written his dissent and before two members had reviewed several classified documents significant to the full picture. Grunis concluded that integrity flaws had been found and that it was not appropriate to appoint Gofman as Mossad chief.
The attorney general also says the committee failed to hear directly from Elmakayes or from a relevant senior military intelligence officer, instead relying in part on media interviews.
Netanyahu, who appointed Gofman to head the Mossad starting in early June, for a five-year term, submitted his own response to the court on this past Friday, arguing that the decision fell within his executive authority. The Prime Minister also said that his assessment of the matter was “dozens of times superior” to that of the court, adding that Gofman’s integrity was “found pure,” and describing him as the most qualified candidate.
Other coalition figures responded to the attorney general with sharp criticism, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Ben-Gvir accused Baharav-Miara of fighting the state, while Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said her position was “one step too far” and vowed to advance legislation splitting the attorney general’s role in the Knesset’s summer session.