The U.S. Enables the 'Madman' Netanyahu

Is it any wonder that Netanyahu assumes that he can get away with international aggression when there are never any penalties for anything that he does?

Israel’s attack on Syria last week reportedly annoyed some officials in the Trump administration:

“Bibi acted like a madman. He bombs everything all the time,” one White House official told Axios, an American news website. “This could undermine what Trump is trying to do.”

It can’t be news to the administration that Netanyahu “bombs everything all the time.” This is what he has been doing for the last twenty-one months, and Trump has supported all of it since he returned to office. If the administration is unhappy with the behavior of its favorite rogue aggressor, it has considerable leverage that it can use, but it won’t do that. Is it any wonder that Netanyahu assumes that he can get away with international aggression when there are never any penalties for anything that he does?

Netanyahu is a war criminal and a genocidaire, but he isn’t a madman. He is acting exactly how you would expect an opportunistic politician to act when his political survival depends in large part on stoking and escalating conflicts. The U.S. has given him extraordinary leeway to do as he pleases under both Biden and Trump, and he has taken full advantage of this.

Unfortunately, his reckless and aggressive actions have not jeopardized support from the U.S. On the contrary, he managed to draw the U.S. into joining the illegal attack on Iran, and he hasn’t faced any consequences for the continued devastation and starvation of Gaza. The next time that he concludes that attacking another country will benefit him, he will do it again unless he thinks that it might actually cost him Washington’s support.

It is ridiculous to arm and support a client government run by a war criminal and then feign shock when he acts the part. If Netanyahu “bombs everything all the time,” as the official put it, it is because the U.S. provides him with a steady supply of weapons and rushes to defend Israel no matter what its government has done. If the U.S. genuinely wanted Israel to stop attacking its neighbors and slaughtering Palestinians, it could do so at any time. The Trump administration doesn’t want that, and so the killing and starvation continue.

One of the officials is quoted saying that “Netanyahu is sometimes like a child who just won’t behave.” There never seems to be any acknowledgment that he has no incentive to “behave.” The reality is that he has been encouraged to act as aggressively as he has because he assumes that the U.S. will never cut its client off. Unless the administration jerks that chain, the war criminal prime minister will keep doing whatever he thinks will keep him in power and out of jail.

The true madness here is U.S. policy. Like its predecessor, the Trump administration is breaking U.S. law every day by sending weapons to a government that is deliberately starving over two million people and routinely committing other horrific war crimes against civilians. The U.S. is unconditionally supporting a client state as it commits genocide in full view of the world. All of this is indefensible, and none of it is in the best interests of the United States. The U.S. could insist on an end to these horrors, but instead it keeps providing mindless support to rogue state as it slaughters and starves innocent people.