Benjamin Netanyahu’s first English-language press conference since the start of the war with Iran, held earlier this month in Jerusalem, will be remembered less for the updates he provided on the progress of Israel’s military campaign than for his pronouncements on two seemingly disparate world-historical figures: Jesus Christ and Genghis Khan.I wonder if Donald Trump thought his buddy Netanyahu was dissing him with that comment?
“History proves that, unfortunately and unhappily, Jesus Christ has no advantage over Genghis Khan,” the prime minister asserted, citing the American historian Will Durant. “Because if you are strong enough, ruthless enough, powerful enough, evil will overcome good. Aggression will overcome moderation.”
“The democracies led by the United States have to reassert their will to defend themselves and to oppose their enemies,” he continued, “before the jarring gong of danger wakes them up, and wakes them up too late.” (1)
Someone should ask Baptist minister and current US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee what he thinks about his pal Netanyahu’s historical comparison there.
But the Christian Zionists – who overlap very much with the Christian nationalists – generally cheer whatever the most warmongering leaders in Israel are demanding.
Cease-Fire in Lebanon? Or somewhere?
Supposedly there’s a new ceasefire in Lebanon. By the time someone reads this a couple of hours after I post it, the “ceasefire” may already be over.
The public conventions around the endless number of ceasefires declared in Israel’s endless wars are confusing. One of those conventions is that Israel’s government, currently headed by Netanyahu, blames the US for forcing them into the “ceasefire.”
Of course, Israel and the US are not the only power players in the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman pressed US President Donald Trump on the importance of a ceasefire in Lebanon in a private phone call on Wednesday, the Arab and western officials told MEE.That last sentence is part of the standard framing: The US pushes Israel into moderating its course. Israel reluctantly agrees. Fighting resumes, sometimes within hours. Ceasefire falls apart, sometimes minutes or hours after it begins. Israel blames Islamic terrorists. Or Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Iran, or the United Nations, and (always) antisemitism. Repeats endlessly that Israel has a right to exist, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, the Israeli Defense Forces are the most moral army in the world.
Trump announced a 10-day ceasefire on Thursday afternoon, which several of the officials attributed to the kingdom’s lobbying.
It is still unclear whether Israel will comply with the agreement and how much pressure Trump will put on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (2)
Amos Harel is a journalist with Haaretz who seems to have good connections with the Prime Minister’s office, although he doesn’t seem to be doing stenography in his reporting.. In an April 17 column, he hits various points being floated by various players on the current ceasefire. His opening points:
A cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon was due to take effect at midnight on Thursday, after being imposed on both sides by U.S. President Donald Trump. It is set to last for 10 days, and the administration hopes for it to become permanent at the end of that period. During the cease-fire, Israel Defense Forces units will remain in the positions they seized in southern Lebanon. However, it's possible that Washington will force withdrawals on Israel from Lebanon, as it did last year in the Gaza Strip. (3)This allows Netanyahu to claim he was forced into a pause, and we’ll soon see how much of a pause it is. In the current situation, Iran officially regards the illegal war that the US and Israel together on February 28 as involving Lebanon, from which Israel is trying to annex more territory, and Arab oil monarchies siding with the US and allowing the US to establish bases on their territory and use those facilities to wage the war.
Syria has not been front-and-center in the war. But the new Islamist government in Syria – which has drastically curtailed the autonomy and democratic practices by the Kurdish Rojava region, is also in talks with Israel over their illegal occupation of Syrian territory, including the Golan Heights and Mount Hermon. “Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa said talks with Israel have not reached a dead end, but are progressing with ‘great difficulty’ due to Israel's insistence on maintaining a presence on Syrian territory.” (4)
Harel’s report based on his government sources reflects the standard the-US-made-me-do-it position that allows Trump to claims for another two minutes or so that he is the Peace President who has established his Everlasting Peace Plan in the Middle East.
Not that Netanyahu had much of a choice. At this stage of the war, which he entered into largely due to Netanyahu's persuasion, Trump has become the final, if not the exclusive, arbiter. In fact, the contention that Israeli foreign policy was hijacked by the American president has a basis in fact. Just as Trump forced the conclusion of the previous 12-day war against Iran in June, he has now imposed temporary cease-fires in Iran and in Lebanon.This lets Netanyahu claim to the Israeli public and political parties that he’s a relentless hardliner who would be crushing Israel’s enemies right and left if the US weren’t holding him back. The truth is that the US and Israel initiated a war against Iran that they are losing at the moment. Trump may or may not be willing to take the plunge of making a massive ground invasion. But his clown-show diplomacy that has so far been on display isn’t going to produce the kind of complicated settlement that would be required to actually end the Iran War and create an environment where some long-term structure for actually peace in the Middle East could take place.
And Israel since its founding has never accepted its own official national borders as permanent. Netanyahu is Captain Ahab and Iran is Moby Dick. It’s his life’s dream to turn Iran into a failed state. This is not in any realistic view of the national interest of Israel as it currently exists in its present official borders a policy protecting Israel’s national interests. But Netanyahu and even most of the opposition in the Knesset are committed to further expansionism.
Harel describes the determination of the Netanyahu government to continue the current war in what is probably the most polite way it could be phrased:
The stoppage of fighting on the two fronts voids the war's momentum, and lowers the likelihood of its resumption. Israel is halting the campaign in Lebanon with its craving half-fulfilled. Netanyahu will have a hard time persuading the public that the war's goals were achieved given that Hezbollah is not disarmed and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is still intact. [my emphasis]Quaint as it may sound in this context, the world’s system of nation-states and of international law does not allow for unprovoked attacks by one sovereign nation on another. Neither Netanyahu nor Trump care about that in principle or in practice, except to the extent that potential victims of attack from the US and Israel can be translated into effective oppositions by enough other countries.
Iran and Hezbollah don’t seem to be ready to surrender:
Trump acceded to Iran's request for a cease-fire in Lebanon, which is aimed at leaving Hezbollah on its feet despite the blow it suffered. Despite their desire for a truce so they can recover, top figures in the Shi'ite organization threatened the Lebanese president and prime minister after they had agreed to a meeting between the Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to Washington.Netanyahu presumably isn’t disturbed by that kind of description of his policies, because it lets him claim that the weak-kneed Americans caved in on this point, not the staunch Netanyahu government who is determinedly pursuing Israel’s territorial ambitions.
This may be the most important part of Harel’s report:
The prime minister [Netanyahu] took an overly optimistic line regarding regime change in Tehran, and Trump was swept up after him. This week, Mossad head David Barnea had to explain that the campaign to topple the regime will continue, even if the war ends. But that depends mainly on what Washington will say, and what a possible agreement between Iran and the U.S. will stipulate. [my emphasis]
Negotiations have to cover a lot
So far, Trump’s negotiations with Iran haven’t been able to produce an end to the war or a new nuclear-nonproliferation agreement after Trump 1.0 just threw out the JCPOA agreement that the Obama Administration negotiated and which was considered a model of an enforceable agreement of this type.
So far, Trump’s negotiations with Iran haven’t been able to produce an end to the war or a new nuclear-nonproliferation agreement after Trump 1.0 just threw out the JCPOA agreement that the Obama Administration negotiated and which was considered a model of an enforceable agreement of this type.
Harel touches on a number of key issues to be resolved if the Trump team somehow finds a way to establish agreements despite their only model of negotiation is Mob protection-racket style. I’m listing some of them as well as some others on which he didn’t focus in his long article. Ask yourself while scanning them if the Trump 2.0 regime has shown anything remotely close to the diplomatic creativity and professionalism resolving them would require.
Reaching a permanent ceasefire between Iran on the one side and the US and Israel on the other. This in itself wouldn’t require resolving all the issues listed here but it would involve several of them.
- Illegal Israeli occupations in Lebanon, and Syria. Gaza and the West Bank are also illegally occupied territories but those are not part of Iran’s goals in the current war.
- Navigation of the Strait of Hormuz
- Navigation of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden next to Yemen
- Iran’s uranium enrichment, including its current supply of enriched uranium
- Iran’s supply of conventional missiles
- Iran’s path to developing a nuclear bomb
- Efforts by Israel and the US to oust the Iranian government including US and Israeli regime-change operations inside Iran
- Iran’s support of Hizbollah and the Houthis
- Reparations to Iran from the US and Israel for damage caused during the current war
- Release of frozen Iranian funds controlled by the US
- The massive US sanctions imposed on Iran
- US bases in the Middle East
As Harel notes politely: “Despite the Americans' vast military advantage, the gap between the skills of the two sides' negotiators is worrisome. Talks on a nuclear agreement require patience and expertise, and the Iranians are far more adept in those categories than the Americans.” That’s certainly is a worrisome gap! Although I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen the word “worrisome” used as a synonym for “wide as the Grand Canyon.”
He also notes: “Last week, Trump threatened to annihilate the Iranian civilization, and then swiftly announced a new cease-fire. This week he quarreled with the pope, and accused him of being "weak on crime."
Harel is careful to assign responsibility for the whole current mess to … Palestinians: “The lethal flapping of the butterfly's wings, which began with the appalling massacre perpetrated by Hamas on October 7, set in motion a lengthy series of regional changes whose peak was the second attack on Iran initiated by Israel and the United States.” But he goes on to observe drily, “Israel's boasting about their total defeat [of all their enemies] was not backed up on the ground.” Another smooth euphemism, this time meaning “bogus.”
Harel does have a gift for phrasing things politely:
Poised in the middle [between Iran and the US-Israel alliance] is an American president whose comportment is giving rise to growing doubts about his mental condition; an Israeli prime minister who replaced a cautious, suspicious approach to military adventures with a readiness to undertake almost every possible risk to remain in power and evade potential imprisonment, while waging a planned campaign of destroying Israeli democracy and the country's international standing; and a new Iranian supreme leader who was seriously wounded during the assassination of his father, the previous leader, who is in hiding underground and whose status in Tehran's decision-making system remains unclear. [my emphasis]Also, apparently not having enough trouble on its hands, Israel would like to take on Türkiye militarily, as well! (Türkiye is a NATO ally.)
In his final paragraph Harel offers this observation:
A Pew Research Center poll published last week found that a majority of the American public, even among under-50 Republican voters, has a negative or very negative view of Israel. A pair of Israeli researchers who analyzed the data, Prof. Ted Sasson and Dr. Avishay Ben Sasson-Gordis from the Institute for National Security Studies affiliated with Tel Aviv University, describe a total collapse of Israel's standing among young Americans, including among a public that Israel viewed as salient supporters. It's happening even among under-50 Christian Evangelicals.Trump’s cheerfully posting AI images of himself as Jesus Christ is probably not helpful on the US public-opinion front, either.
Notes:
(1) Rapoport, Meron (2026): Less Jesus, more Genghis Khan: How Netanyahu sees Israel’s place in the world. +972 Magazine 03/31/2026. <https://www.972mag.com/netanyahu-genghis-khan-jesus-sparta/> (Accessed : 2026-16-04).
(2) Matthews, Sean (2026): Saudi Arabia pressed US to secure a Lebanon ceasefire to preserve Iran negotiations, sources say. Middle East Eye 04/16/2026. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-pressed-us-ceasefire-lebanon-preserve-iran-negotiations-sources-say> (Accessed : 2026-17-04).
(3) Harel, Amos (2026): Trump Dictates the Terms in Lebanon and Iran, Leaving Netanyahu Boxed In. Haaretz 04/17/2026). Gift link: <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-04-17/ty-article/.premium/trump-hijacked-israeli-foreign-policy-so-netanyahu-had-no-say-in-lebanon-truce/0000019d-97f2-d290-afbf-b7f6aed40000?gift=d119d9a0330b4f03b0c4e1cedc417d30> (Accessed : 2026-17-04).
(4) Khoury, Jack (2026): Syria’s al-Sharaa: Israel talks not deadlocked but face 'great difficulty' over presence in Syria. Haaretz 04/17/2026. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-security/2026-04-17/ty-article-live/trump-says-war-in-iran-should-be-ending-pretty-soon/0000019d-9934-d9bd-abfd-fbf508480000?liveBlogItemId=1200413739#1200413739> Accessed: 2026-17-04).
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