Shortly before Israel’s 2015 elections, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, going over the heads of the president and the Democratic Party and ignoring criticism from the American and Israeli media and most major Jewish organizations in the United States. He did so for three reasons: A desire to win the elections scheduled for two weeks later, strong hostility toward President Barack Obama and a deep-seated aversion to several world powers’ nuclear deal with Iran. At the time, there were those who claimed he was inflicting severe strategic damage on Israel’s relationship with the Democratic Party. Netanyahu ignored them. He won the election, rid himself of Obama a year later and got Donald Trump instead.

On Aug. 15 this year, Netanyahu did it again, but with the opposite goal in mind. He ignored the Democratic Party, significant chunks of the GOP, the media and almost all US Jewish organizations (including AIPAC and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations). However, this time he did not do so to spite an incumbent president, but rather to support him.

In his last-minute decision to ban the entry of two Democratic congressional representatives hostile to Israel, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, Netanyahu put out a Trump flag. While he has turned Israel into an empire — according to a book recently published by his acolytes — his own empire is a protectorate of Trump.

In barring the two lawmakers, a decision that has met harsh criticism in Israel and the US Jewish community, Netanyahu is defying everyone. Even his closest confidant and ally, Israeli Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer, has stated that Israel must allow them to visit. Netanyahu knows what he's doing. He is a consummate PR professional and understands as well as anyone that keeping out Omar and Tlaib makes them martyrs with massive sympathetic media coverage and causes grave damage to what little is left of American bipartisan support for Israel.