Donald Trump speaks the truth about Israel

But angry presidential leaks about Israel should give us deja vu

“Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

That is reportedly what Donald Trump told Benjamin Netanyahu: the Israeli prime minister wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

There is more - which we will come on to.

But it’s first important to confront the inevitable sense of deja vu. Under Joe Biden, there was a near-constant drip of leaks to the media suggesting that the then-president was displeased with Netanyahu, exasperated by Netanyahu, furious with Netanyahu, losing patience with Netanyahu. These leaks often found their way to Axios, and especially to its reporter Barak Ravid, an Israeli journalist and former Israeli intelligence officer.

Take January 2024: four months into the genocide. It was reported that, on 23 December 2023, Biden ended a phone call with Netanyahu by saying, “This conversation is over,” after the Israeli prime minister refused to release Palestinian tax revenues he was withholding. A US official summed up the mood like this: “The situation sucks and we are stuck. The president’s patience is running out.”

The following month, Politico reported that Biden had called Netanyahu a “bad fucking guy”, which the White House denied.

That same month, NBC News reported that Biden had called Netanyahu an “asshole” and “this guy”, complained that he was “giving him hell”, and found him impossible to deal with. One US official anonymously briefed that Biden “just feels like this is enough. It has to stop.”

In March 2024, Biden was caught on a hot mic being pressed by a Democratic congressman over the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. The then-president replied: “I told him, Bibi, and don’t repeat this, but you and I are going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.”

In April 2024, after Israel slaughtered several foreign aid workers and their Palestinian driver in the bombing of a World Central Kitchen convoy - and therefore provoked outrage because white Westerners were among the victims - a US official told Axios’s Barak Ravid: “Biden is pissed. The temperature regarding Bibi is very high.”

That same month, Axios reported that Biden told Netanyahu that, if Israel did not change course in Gaza, “we won’t be able to support you.”

And in October 2024, it was reported that Biden had repeatedly accused Netanyahu of having no strategy, and had shouted “Bibi, what the fuck?” at him in July, after Israeli strikes near Beirut and in Iran.

What did all this mean? To be blunt: it meant shit.

All of it was blatantly for the benefit of domestic US audiences, because growing numbers of Democratic voters were rightly enraged that their administration was arming and facilitating a genocide.

At least $29bn worth of weapons were signed off by Biden so Israel could continue wiping Gaza from the face of the earth and exterminating the Palestinian people. Netanyahu behaved exactly as he wished. He committed whatever war crimes and crimes against humanity he wished. And all of it was facilitated by Joe Biden’s administration.

Now, under Trump, we are seeing a similar pattern.

In May 2025, Axios reported that Trump was frustrated by what it described as the “ongoing war in Gaza” - it is, of course, a genocide - and told aides to inform Netanyahu that he wanted him to “wrap it up”.

In September 2025, the Wall Street Journal published a story headlined: “Trump Has Heated Call With Netanyahu Over Israeli Strike on Qatar.” According to the report, Trump told Netanyahu that his decision to target Hamas political leaders in Qatar was not wise.

Then, in May this year, Barak Ravid reported for Axios that after a phone call in which Trump and Netanyahu discussed a new effort to reach a deal with Iran, Netanyahu’s “hair was on fire.”

Which brings us to the latest Axios report.

A US official summarised Trump’s remarks to Netanyahu as follows: “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.”

Another source claimed that Trump was “pissed”, and at one point yelled at Netanyahu: “What the fuck are you doing?”

Well. Whatever the motives for this leak, if Trump really did tell Netanyahu that “everybody hates Israel”, then he has finally processed something which has been obvious for some time: there has been a dramatic shift against Israel in Western public opinion.

A poll earlier this year found that 60% of US adults had an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with just 37% who had a favourable view. In other words, unfavourable outstripped favourable by 23 points. In 2022, the opposite was true: favourable views led by 13 points. Even more strikingly, 28% now had a very unfavourable view - nearly triple the 10% recorded in 2022.

The partisan split was revealing. Some 80% of Democrats and Democratic leaners viewed Israel unfavourably, up from 53% in 2022. Among Republicans, Israel still retained majority support: 58% favourable, 41% unfavourable. But even that represented a dramatic narrowing. And among Republicans under 50, 57% now had an unfavourable view of Israel.

We have already seen the MAGA coalition fragmenting over Israel, with high-profile examples including Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and Marjorie Taylor Greene. So is Trump feeling pressure from within his own coalition? Or does he simply believe that Israel’s mayhem is undermining US strategic interests?

Because those interests are under strain. This week, Iran indicated it would suspend peace talks with the US in protest at Israel’s murderous onslaught in Lebanon. The US and Israel, of course, lost their war with Iran. Netanyahu played a pivotal role in convincing Trump to join that calamitous war, as New York Times reporting made clear. Iran now has leverage, not least because of the Strait of Hormuz, and it is using that leverage to try to win concessions - not just for itself, but elsewhere in the Middle East, most notably over Israel’s criminal war against Lebanon.

Trump is clearly frustrated because the longer the Iran crisis drags on, the greater the economic costs for the United States - and therefore the greater the political costs for him. Asked by CNBC about the possible collapse of peace negotiations with Iran, he reportedly said: “I don’t care if they’re over, honestly. I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less.”

Because of course that is exactly how someone who does not care speaks.

Now Mark Levin, the right-wing commentator who called for Trump to nuke Iran, is furious. He thundered that the Axios leak was “a violation of federal law” and had “provided support to the Iranian regime and its Hezbollah proxy.” He demanded to know whether there would be an FBI investigation into whoever leaked the call.

Many have pointed out that, in practice, this means Levin is calling for Trump to be arrested - something, finally, we can all unite around - because, like Biden before him, Trump is apparently angry at Netanyahu while refusing to do anything meaningful about it, and therefore may well have leaked it himself.

And while Washington leaks, Lebanon is being slaughtered.

About 3,500 people have been killed by Israel, and more than 10,000 wounded, since Israel’s dramatic escalation in early March. That includes at least 121 paramedics and first responders. In one horrific example I watched, first responders were treating a father and his daughter injured by an Israeli strike - and then a second Israeli strike hit them.

This is known as a “double tap” strike. You attack once, wait for first responders and bystanders to come to the aid of the wounded, and then attack again. ISIS used double tap strikes. That is the company Israel keeps.

Israel has occupied much of Lebanon. It is demanding residents flee entire cities. It is razing villages to the ground. But none of this is achieving victory. It is achieving only mass slaughter and destruction.

Hezbollah, we were told, was supposed to have been defeated, not least after the pager attacks. Instead, it is inflicting far greater damage on the IDF than expected. Israel has been here before. It was previously forced out of Lebanon by attrition.

A new poll shows that 87% of Lebanese people regard Israel as their enemy — a figure which cuts across religious, ethnic and sectarian divisions. Strikingly, 51% believed Israel should be destroyed, while just a third supported a peace agreement with Israel. If Israel believes there is a military solution to Lebanon, it is deceiving itself. Its crimes are simply generating ever greater hostility.

And this brings us to another phone call between a US president and an Israeli prime minister.

In 1982, Israel launched its second invasion of Lebanon, seeking to crush the PLO led by Yasser Arafat. Israel committed hideous crimes. Ronald Reagan - a right-wing Republican president - recorded in his diary that he was “angry”. He rang Israel’s then-prime minister, Menachem Begin, and told him that the assault “had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered.” He specifically used the word “holocaust” to describe what Israel was doing, and said the symbol of the war was becoming the image of a seven-month-old baby with its arms blown off.

Twenty minutes later, Begin rang Reagan back to say he had ordered an end to the barrage, and pleaded for their continued friendship.

Think about that.

Ronald Reagan took a harder line with Israel than either Joe Biden or Donald Trump - even though Israel is committing far graver crimes today, armed and facilitated by the United States.

Both presidents have armed and facilitated war crimes. Both are complicit. Whatever they allegedly say behind closed doors, both must face justice.