Donald Trump turns on Israel

Not for the right reasons - but this is an opportunity

Donald Trump has turned on Israel.

Not because he has a conscience or undergone a Damascene conversion. Let’s get that out of the way immediately: do not give this man any credit. Along with Joe Biden, Trump has armed and facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its other war crimes across the region, including in Lebanon. Mouthing off about Israel is one thing. Doing anything practical to stop its crimes is another.

But what Trump said at the G7 should still be understood for what it is: a confession. Before the cameras, he complained that Israel’s war in Lebanon has dragged on too long, and that “too many people are being killed.”

Then he said something striking:

You don’t have to knock down an apartment house every time you’re looking for somebody. There are a lot of people in those apartment houses and they’re not all Hezbollah.

Trump here admitted that Israel - thanks to the weapons and support provided by the US - is destroying apartment blocks full of civilians.

Of course, the evidence for this is overwhelming.

That includes in Lebanon itself.

Take the Israeli attack on an apartment block in Ain El Delb in September 2024. The justification was that Israel was targeting a Hezbollah commander. The Israeli air raid hit the six-storey building, tipping it over down a hillside, killing 73 people and injuring 60 others. Of those killed, 23 were children.

AP carried the testimony of one survivor, who said it was worse than being trapped in a coffin.

The BBC also carried the story of Julia Ramadan, a young woman who was terrified about Israeli strikes in Lebanon and so went to stay at their family home in Ain El Delb, hoping for safety. She was killed.

In Gaza, this crime has been particularly widespread.

The Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 magazine has extensively covered Israel’s destruction of entire residential blocks in Gaza in order to kill a purported Hamas military target - including Hamas targets of no military value, or people with no military connection branded as legitimate Hamas targets, or indeed people who have no connection to Hamas at all.

They covered one example in which the Israeli army authorised the killing of around 300 civilians to target a Hamas commander, involving the destruction of several large multi-story apartment buildings. “Entire families with children were killed,” as one paramedic they quoted tells them.

In another example, the Israeli army destroyed a high-rise building to try to kill Mohammed Shabaneh, a Hamas commander. They didn’t kill him, but they killed dozens of civilians.

So when Trump suggests Israel is destroying apartment blocks full of civilians, he is not revealing something new. He is saying aloud what the US administration knows to be true - as it delivers weapons and support.

Trump further said:

I’m not happy with the way Israel has handled themselves with Lebanon and with Hezbollah. They should have been able to do the job faster. It just goes on forever. And when that happens, it throws a negative light on the big deal, and that’s the deal with Iran.

That’s not all. Following an Israeli attack on Beirut, Axios report that Trump told its reporter:

Why did Bibi have to do a fucking attack? I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement. I let him know that.

At the G7 summit, Trump also said:

Without the United States, there would be no Israel. Without me, there would be no Israel, because no other president was willing to do what I did.

It’s certainly true that Israel is dependent on US weapons, aid and support - whether that be subjugating the Palestinians, including occupation, apartheid and genocide, as well as invading and attacking Arab states.

Israel has received about a quarter of a trillion dollars in inflation-adjusted terms in US aid over the decades.

Trump also dismissed Israel as “the very small partner”.

What the hell is going on?

Trump has not suddenly been awakened to the horrors perpetrated by Israel. There’s a more straightforward explanation. He feels hoodwinked by Israel into launching a war he believed would be a devastating success, which has instead plunged his presidency into crisis, imposed mounting economic costs, and completely humiliated US power.

Trump further feels that Israel is now trying to sabotage attempts to end the war it promoted and which ended in humiliation for an already flailing superpower.

Indeed, the official agreement between Iran and the US represents a surrender by the aggressors .

It means the US signing up to such proposals as permanently ending the war, ending the naval blockade, a $300bn reconstruction plan for Iran, ending sanctions, and allowing the free export of Iranian oil.

As an article in Foreign Policy magazine puts it, it’s “a strategic calamity far greater than the U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War.”

Obviously, Trump cannot admit to feeling tricked by Israel, because that would make him look extremely gullible and weak. After all, Israel did not force him to launch the war with him.

But this catastrophe offers an opportunity. In the US, public opinion has dramatically shifted against Israel. Among Democrats, that’s overwhelming - but it includes a majority of younger Republicans, too.

The US patronage of Israel could come to an end, and those who perpetrated terrible crimes could, in time, face justice.

That may once have seemed utopian. It no longer is.