Israel has plenty of problems despite Trump’s Everlasting Peace Plan

Israeli political economist Arie Krampf has described Netanyahu’s long-range perspective for Israel as follows:

Israeli political economist Arie Krampf has described Netanyahu’s long-range perspective for Israel as follows:

What I call the Netanyahu doctrine is based on geographic, institutional, and even mental separation between Israel as a globalized economy and Israel as a state that occupies a territory and engages in a territorial conflict. Elsewhere I have called this doctrine “hawkish neoliberalism,” a doctrine based on the premise that free markets must be harnessed to serve the national purpose. ...

The future of the Netanyahu doctrine also depends on the course of the Israel–US relationship because Israel remains significantly dependent on the US. Israel’s ability to forge independent relations with China and Russia has limits due to US concerns with technology transfer. It could be the case that after Russia’s war in Ukraine, a revitalized West led by the US will pressure Israel to realign its foreign policy, despite its increased financial independence. [emphasis in original] (1)

At this point, though, it’s hard to imagine the Trump 2.0 Administration pressuring Israel to realign its foreign policy, beyond trying to keep Israel from even more blatantly showing to the world that Trump’s Everlasting Peace Plan is not stopping its ethnic cleansing campaign and genocide against the Palestinians, as they continue to absorb illegal occupied into what Netanyahu party and government call Eretz Israel, i.e., from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea.

While progress in getting concrete agreements about Everlasting Peace Plan matters like the proposed peacekeeping force for Gaza is so far very slow (to put it mildly), Netanyahu and his allies are eagerly pursuing their goal of transforming Israel into a more and more authoritarian state. A former Military Advocate General, Yifat Tomer-Yurushalmi, was arrested and now moved to house arrest over the leak of video showing Israeli Defense Force (IDF) abusing prisoners. The real crime in the eyes of the Israeli right was not the criminal abuse, but the attempt to prosecute the crime and revealing it to the public. (2)

As the video illustrates, there is widespread support in the IDF and from Netanyahu’s government for the kind of torture of prisoners which the disputed video seems to show.

As Yossi Mekelberg of Chatham House says in the video:

The background of all of it is they [the pro-Netanyahu rights is trying] to dismantle the legal system, the judiciary as we know it in Israel, in order to derail Netanyahu's corruption trial. This is this is a kind of the fundamental issue here and for this they are ready to ruin the foundations of Israel[‘s] democratic system and harm also the gatekeepers.

He goes on to say that this incident:

... shows what he said [is] the completely moral bankruptcy of Netanyahu. It's not the release of the clip that undermines Israel. It's what is alleged to happen there [that] is the problem. And there are other cases that are not investigated. Whether the killing of journalists, killing of medical personnel, there are so many other cases that not investigated.

That's what compromises Israel morality.

The events of the last two years have severely undermined Israel’s image and credibility in the United States, including among American Jews. So the Netanyahu government is rushing to try to repair the damage by shoring up its propaganda (hasbara) operations, including among the critical Republican constituency of Christian nationalists.

It’s always important to keep in mind the bizarre twist that fundamentalist Christians like US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Christian United For Israel (CUFI) in membership the largest group in the Israel Lobby in the US, essentially believe that God’s plan for Jews who do not convert to Christianity is to have them burn in Hell for eternity.

Amid a sharp drop in support from the conservative right, Israel has hired firms to conduct not just "hasbara [public diplomacy] campaigns" but also campaigns targeting millions of Christian churchgoers, bot networks to amplify pro-Israel messages online, and efforts to influence both search results and the responses given by popular AI services like ChatGPT.

Among the experts recruited is a former campaign manager for Donald Trump and many of the other firms are linked to the Republican party or Evangelical communities, indicating that Israel is focusing massive efforts on communities once considered automatically pro-Israel. Among the campaigns' goals is fighting antisemitism, which has risen alongside the decline in support for Israel. Together, these campaigns signal a new phase in Israel's post-war public diplomacy strategy, and a shift in the way it uses agents - both AI and human influencers - for hasbara abroad. [my emphasis] (3)

This has always been a big risk for Israel to rely so heavily as it does on political support from American Christian nationalists and on rightwing parties and factions, including in Europe. Because those are the very factions in US and European politics that are the most influenced by actual anti-Semitism. (4)

Joshua Leifer has written about the loathsome politics of the far-right hardliner Nick Fuentes, currently being promoted by Tucker Carlson, a well-known Republicans media figure.

The Christian right in the United States is now in the midst of a fundamental ideological transformation. "Carlson and Fuentes' statements reflect a growing trend among American Christians away from a Judeo-Christian ethic that privileges the Hebrew Bible and certain Judaic ideals, and toward more Greek and Pagan traditions that emphasize Christian power and virility and look down on Judaism and Israel," explained Eliyahu Stern, a scholar of religion at Yale University and author of the forthcoming book, "Nowhere Left to Go: Jews and the Global Right, 1977–October 7." …

The immediate response by the Heritage Foundation – the flagship conservative think tank that is now driving much of the Trump administration's policies – revealed the magnitude of this shift. In a defiant, if also strange, video posted on X, Heritage president Kevin Roberts mounted a defense of Carlson and his choice to bring Fuentes on his show. And he did so not with the old Republican talking points, but in the new fighting jargon of Christian nationalism.

"My loyalty as a Christian and as an American is to Christ first and America always," Roberts said. "Conservatives," he continued, "should feel no obligation to reflexively support any foreign government, no matter how loud the pressure becomes from the globalist class or their mouthpieces in Washington." (5)

The posture of the Republican Party and far-right parties in Europe that claim to support Israel as an anti-Muslim ally is essentially: We hate Muslims and Muslims hate Jews and that means we can’t possibly be anti-Semitic.

Leifer warns, “The catastrophic war in Gaza reduced Israel to a U.S. protectorate. Now, Israel's fate increasingly rests in the hand of an American right that sees Israel as not as an asset but as a burden, and Jews as foreign adversaries of the West.”

Meanwhile, we have new developments in the Eternal Peace Plan: (6)

Notes:

(1) Krampf, Arie (2022): The Netanyahu Doctrine. Jerusalem Strategic Tribune Nov 2022. <https://jstribune.com/krampf-the-netanyahu-doctrine/> (Accessed;: 2025-06-11).

(2) Former IDF lawyer arrested over leaked video allegedly showing Palestinian prisoner abuse. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 11/04/2025. <https://youtu.be/LKsQFt3oTyE?si=se-RD9JL7zF2vtAR> (Accessed; 2025-07-11).

(3) Benjakob, Omer (2025): AI Hasbara: Israel Pours Millions Into U.S. Influence Efforts, Targeting Evangelicals in Churches and ChatGPT. Haaretz 11/06/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2025-11-06/ty-article-magazine/.premium/ai-hasbara-israel-pours-millions-into-influencing-u-s-evangelicals-in-churches-chatgpt/0000019a-540e-db4c-a5fb-dfafea590000> (Accessed: 2025-06-11).

(4) Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentes and the split in the GOP about combating antisemitism. CNN Politics 11/06/2025. <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/06/politics/video/inside-politics-antisemitism-gop> (Accessed: 2025-07-11).

(5) Leifer, Joshua (2025): Israel's Right Wing Bet the Country's Future on American Christian Nationalists. That Has Backfired. Haaretz 11/05/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-11-05/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israels-right-bet-the-countrys-future-on-american-christians-that-has-backfired/0000019a-550a-d22e-a39b-7dfa5cb40000> (Accessed: 2025-06-11).

(6) Ben Ari, Lior (2025): Israel steps up strikes on Hezbollah as Lebanon fears renewed conflict in the south. Ynet Global 11/06/2025. <https://www.ynetnews.com/article/b1fyhb5kzg#autoplay> (Accessed: 2025-07-11).