Meetings between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are more akin to a master class in duplicity than in diplomacy. Last week’s meetings were no exception.
Both men, master manipulators and products of our media age, create illusions they insist are real. They repeat a lie over and over, and with such force, it becomes real for their trusting followers. Non-believers are threatened, belittled or shunned.
Both leaders utilise their craftiness to achieve personal success in domestic politics. They’ve developed strong constituent bases, followers who believe their leadership must be supported and protected. At the same time, these polarising figures contribute to deep fissures within their countries.
Because the illusions they project are based on lies, their successes are ultimately limited. Reality invariably presents a strong check to illusions. And ignoring reality can result in social unrest and political chaos.
For example, Trump promoted his signature budget plan – his so-called ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ – promising fiscal responsibility and greater prosperity for more Americans. Instead, it’s poised to dramatically increase the nation’s deficit while causing 17 million Americans to lose their healthcare.
For his part, Netanyahu has prolonged his war on Gaza (and Lebanon, Syria and Iran) promising ‘total victory’ that will make Israel more respected and secure. Instead, it’s led to his indictment for war crimes and Israel’s international standing diminished because of its genocidal policy.
Truth wins out. The day will come when Trump voters lose their healthcare plans and see their rural hospitals forced to close and realise that the illusion of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ didn’t include them. And Israelis will realise that ‘total victory’ is a farce – the conflict with Palestinians will continue as long as they are denied rights – and as tens of thousands of young Israeli soldiers return from multiple tours of duty in Gaza with PTSD, wreaking havoc at home and in their communities.
With this backdrop, watching the two master manipulators at work with and on each other last week was both fascinating and deeply disturbing – a bizarre exercise in log-rolling flattery. Netanyahu, the indicted war criminal, gave Trump the letter to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating him for the peace prize. And Trump returned the faux compliment calling Netanyahu ‘the greatest man alive’.
All of this can be dismissed as buffoonery or maybe even harmless puffery – just two manipulators playing each other. But their efforts become truly dangerous when they and their acolytes, believing the deceit, attempt to supplant reality with illusion through policies that impact others.
We know little of what transpired in Trump and Netanyahu’s meetings, but what’s clear is that their ideas are not reality-based. Trump’s plan was to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza, making way for a Riviera-style resort – an idea trashed early on as ethnic-cleansing and blatant colonialism.
Netanyahu appears to have nothing better to offer than a slight modification of Trump’s idea. He wouldn’t expel all of Gaza’s Palestinians, but would force as many as possible to countries that would take them and “relocate” those remaining to ‘humanitarian relocation sites’ to be provided for and ‘deradicalised’.
Both plans share three elements. First, Trump and Netanyahu clothe their ideas in humanitarian language to sell them. Second, both plans are designed and offered without consideration for what Palestinians want. And finally, both plans are delusional and destined not only to fail, but to exacerbate an already volatile situation.
Maybe the biggest illusion projected by both men is the notion that their ‘plans’ will create the conditions for regional peace. Ignoring the reality that a root cause of tension in the Middle East is the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians, their proposals only add to that dispossession and the resistance it spawns in Gaza (and compound the same dispossession in the West Bank and East Jerusalem).
As history has shown, ignoring the humanity of Palestinians is perilous. Trump and Netanyahu assume that their projected illusions will be believed in the Arab world, making possible an ‘era of peace’. This fantasy only exists in their minds and in the minds of their sycophants.
As a great Republican President said 160 years ago, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
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