On Tuesday at the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump said that he was “really not happy with Israel” after it reportedly responded to Iranian violations of the ceasefire and that both countries “don’t know what the f**k they’re doing.”
He also warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against striking Iran by phone and posted on Truth Social “BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!” and “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran.”
Nonetheless, hyper-online conspiracists like Dan Bilzerian have spent much of the last few months claiming that “Israel controls our government and our president.” They love to knock the Jewish state’s supposed omnipotence.
The facts say otherwise. After Trump’s show of displeasure, Netanyahu’s government complied with his directives. So much for Israeli control of America. If anything, it’s the other way around.
Consider the decades-long pattern of American pressure against Israel.
In 1991, as the Gulf War raged, Saddam Hussein sent Scud ballistic missiles into Israel in an attempt to bait Israel into attacking Iraq. Saddam’s Scuds tormented the Israelis, but they never retaliated.
George H. W. Bush, another Republican president, told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir not to defend his country because Washington didn’t want an Arab-Israeli war. Even though he was bent on responding to Iraq’s wanton assaults, Shamir bent to America’s will. He could not defy the United States.
Ronald Reagan, Bush’s predecessor, exerted enormous pressure on Israel to leave Lebanon following its invasion in 1982. The Israelis protested yet before long acquiesced to the Reagan administration’s demands.
Years earlier, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon froze arms transfers to Israel. The two presidents understood that the United States could use its leverage in pursuit of Israeli policy changes.
In 1956, Israel, together with France and the United Kingdom, invaded Egypt. U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower had other ideas and threatened to impose sanctions on the three belligerents. Humbled by American might, they quickly withdrew.
The list of U.S. actions against Israel goes on and on. My book, U.S. Defense Policy toward Israel: A Cold War History, details more of them.
The United States is the most powerful country the world has ever known, whereas Israel is its much smaller client. It is only natural for Israel to be the junior partner in this relationship.
America and Israel have many common aims, but sometimes they diverge. When this happens, Washington publicly and privately presses the Israelis to change their behavior. Like all U.S. presidents, Trump is putting American interests first when he deals with the Israelis.
Yet why do so many insist that Israel runs Washington? You don’t hear them smearing other U.S. allies like this. No one seriously asserts that Japan, Italy or Canada, all of which have far larger GDPs than Israel, controls America.
Some people have a problem with the only Jewish state and its close relationship with America. They fixate on Jewish power, seeing Israeli Svengalis and Shylocks pulling the strings at every turn.
The reality is far less conspiratorial. Israel has limited clout in Washington, as Trump’s recent actions show. The country is by no means immune to American pressure or punishment.
Many cannot accept this. Antisemitism is a powerful malady that has for millennia robbed people of their rational faculties.
Some would rather accuse the Israelis of setting U.S. policy than acknowledge that it’s much more accurate to say that it is the Americans who set Israeli policy.