Photograph Source: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson – Public Domain

The results are in and the clear winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election is undeniably Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  Netanyahu is now freer than ever to pursue his genocidal campaign against Palestinians; demolish Lebanon; create more illegal settlements on the West Bank; and even annex the West Bank itself if he chooses to do so.

There is no better indication of the close relations between Donald Trump and Netanyahu than the recent announcement of the exchange of ambassadors to their two capitals.  Netanyahu has named Yechiel Leiter, a settler activist and a former aide who was Netanyahu’s chief of staff when the prime minister served as finance minister years ago.  They are very close.  Leiter was also an aide to the late war hawk Ariel Sharon, when Prime Minister Sharon served in the Knesset.

As a young man, Leiter was a member of the Jewish Defense League, which was formed by right-wing rabbi, Meir Kahane.  The group was designated a terrorist organization following the discovery of its plan to bomb a mosque in Los Angeles.  Leiter himself founded a U.S.-based fund (the One Israel Fund) that supplies security equipment and financial assistance to the illegal settlements on the West Bank.  Leiter is doing his best to expand the West Bank settlements, and he and his family currently live in one of them.  At a funeral for one of his sons, Leiter crudely denounced President Joe Biden for pursuing a cease-fire.

Following the Leiter appointment, Trump announced that former Arkansas Governor, Mike Huckabee, would be his ambassador to Israel.  Huckabee opposes a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and claims that “there’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”  Like Leiter, he favors permanent Israeli control over the West Bank, a term he will not use, preferring the Israeli terms “Judea” and “Samaria.”

During a visit to Israel, Huckabee said that “there is no such thing as a West Bank.”  As for the illegal settlements, Huckabee similarly says that “there is no such thing as a settlement.”  He calls them “communities…cities…neighborhoods.”  To cap it all off, Huckabee emphasizes “there’s no such thing as an occupation.”  Huckabee, moreover, is a Christian evangelical, and Trump is a hero to conservative Christians for ending Roe vs. Wade.  Trump often referred to “my beautiful Christians” at campaign rallies.

In his first term, Trump’s ambassador to Israel was David Friedman, who infamously referred to a liberal Jewish organization as “worse than kapos,” meaning Nazi collaborators.  Like Leiter, Friedman wanted Israel to annex the West Bank.  In his second term, Trump will have real estate developer Steven Witkoff as a special envoy to the Middle East.  Witkoff was a key fund raiser for the Trump campaign, raising “six-figure and seven-figure donations” from Jewish donors.

With Trump in the White House, Netanyahu will no longer have to worry about U.S. efforts to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza.  The Biden administration sent a warning letter to Israel in October to ensure the opening of more aid channels into Gaza, but the thirty-day deadline was ignored, and humanitarian aid is at its lowest levels since the start of the war.  At the same time, the bombing of civilian communities and civilian shelters has gotten worse.  Israel has simply refused to comply with the requests that were contained in the letter signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.

In addition to ignoring the U.S. demarche, the Netanyahu government went out of its way to embarrass the Biden administration once again.  Netanyahu sent a special envoy, Ron Dermer, to the United States with a plan for a ceasefire in Lebanon.  Before going to Washington, however, Dermer flew to Mar-a-Lago to brief Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on the details of the plan.  Netanyahu has described the plan as a “gift” to Donald Trump.  Trump, for his part, has already told Netanyahu that he can “do what you have to do” against Hezbollah and Hamas.

The discussions in Mar-a-Lago appear to be a violation of the 1799 Logan Act, which criminalizes negotiations between the United States and a foreign government by an unauthorized American citizen.  But no one seems to care about the law these days.  Dermer, who like Leiter was born in the United States, has a very close relationship with Kushner.  Meanwhile, the Israeli Defense Forces appear to be making plans to ramp up ground operations in Lebanon.

The White House and the Congress over the years have played to the worse sides of  Israeli prime ministers, but Netanyahu has always gotten the best treatment that Washington has to offer.  The catering to his militarism must stop, but there is simply no chance of this as long as Trump and his acolytes form the national security team in the White House.

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