Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has ignored President Trump’s request to stop the bombing of Gaza during negotiations with the leaders of Hamas over the latest peace proposal. It appears that Trump may be changing some of his views and slowly beginning to realize that, as the Jewish New York Times Columnist, Tom Friedman, wrote last May 9, “Netanyahu is not our friend.”
In just the last few days, Trump has said emphatically that he will not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, criticized Israel’s bombing of Qatar, and has publicly called for Israel to stop bombing Gaza during the peace discussions.
In addition, Axios reported this past weekend that Trump expressed his frustration in a phone call with Netanyahu telling him “You are always so f——ing negative.” Hopefully, Trump was not fooled by Netanyahu’s showy flattery nominating him for the Nobel peace prize at a White House dinner. AI defines flattery as “excessive or dishonest praise given to further one’s interest rather than to genuinely admire another person.” That is exactly what Netanyahu was doing, and everyone knew it.
Several former presidents have been angered by Netanyahu or by actions or demands by earlier Israeli leaders. According to a 2024 CNN story “Netanyahu earned the undying enmity of former President Barack Obama for trying to tank the Iran nuclear deal” and that former President Bill Clinton “exploded” after his first meeting with Netanyahu saying “Who’s the f——ing Superpower here?”
In fact, according to AI and several news reports, almost every U.S. President since Eisenhower, both Democrats and Republicans, have expressed anger or frustration with Israel’s demands, wars, and settlement policies.
Eisenhower went the furthest. According to AI, he was “furious” with Israel for its demand for the U.S. to go with it to war with Egypt over the Suez Canal. “Eisenhower threatened to impose economic sanctions and cut off all aid to force Israel to withdraw its troops from the Sinai Peninsula. The pressure worked and Israel pulled back its forces.” What is most amazing is that Eisenhower did this on national television just one week before the 1956 Presidential election.
A recent Washington Post poll revealed that, “Many American Jews sharply disapprove of Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza, with 61% saying Israel has committed war crimes….and about 4 in 10 saying the country is guilty of genocide against the Palestinians….”
This poll of 815 American Jews also said 68% gave “negative marks to Netanyahu’s leadership of Israel.” The same report said hundreds of thousands had turned out for pro Palestinian demonstrations across Europe, including 250,000 in Rome.
Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has now been condemned by huge majorities in 95% of the countries in this world in both street protests and official actions by national governments and the United Nations.
The U.S. has stood as Israel’s only significant ally, along with a very few tiny countries afraid of losing American foreign aid. It is obvious that our Congress would have led the condemnation of what has gone on in Gaza if it had happened in any other country than Israel. In this situation, the silence by members of Congress has been deafening, apparently because of fear of money directed by the Israel Lobby.
To me, this one-sided slaughter of the Palestinian people in Gaza is the most cruel thing I have seen, heard, or read about in my lifetime. I was born in 1947, so I was not exposed to the daily horrors of World War Two as I have been to what has gone on in Gaza.
After what happened to the Jews during the Second World War, you would have thought they would have been the last people to commit genocide against other human beings.
World War Two, of course, was a real war. I believe it is inaccurate to speak of the “war” in Gaza because it has been so one-sided. It is about like the University of Tennessee football team taking on a second grade team of little boys. No one would call that a real game. The extreme hatred and cruelty Israel has exhibited over the last two years far exceeds several of the key tenets of Just War.
First, Bellevue College Principles of a Just War say a “just war can only be waged as a last resort. All non-violent options must be exhausted before the use of force can be justified.” Even if Israel’s early force was justified, its war could and should have been stopped long ago.
More important are the last two of the seven tenets. “The violence used in the war must be proportional to the injury suffered.” In the October 7 attacks on Israel, two hours of violence by Hamas have led to two years of bombing, killing, destruction and displacement by Israel, and, worst of all, its use of starvation as a tactic of war.
The seventh tenet, and many feel the most important of all, “weapons used in war must discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. Civilians are never permissible targets of war, and every effort must be taken to avoid killing civilians.”
In its war in Gaza, the Israeli military has bombed hospitals, schools, tent cities and even churches and have murdered desperate, unarmed people trying only to get pitiful bits of food.
At least 67,000 people have been killed by the IDF, two-thirds of whom have been women and children, and less than five percent have been members of Hamas.
Christians who somehow still believe it is acceptable to starve and kill thousands of little Palestinian children, or make them undergo amputations without anesthesia and medicine, should re-read Matthew 25:40.
I assume that most Jews do not study the New Testament, but the Bible tells us in both the Old Testament and the New that God wants us to “seek peace and pursue it.”
