Netanyahu putting all his eggs in Trump’s basket

Since the 1970s, every Israeli prime minister, leader or military chief who is awakened in the middle of the night and asked to name Israel’s most important strategic asset would immediately respond with the exact same words: The United States of America. More than Israel’s reported nuclear arsenal, more than the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), more than its vaunted air force and its Mossad and Shin Bet security agencies. Without American backing and the knowledge that it is always there for Israel, the Jewish state loses its relative advantage in the Middle East and elsewhere. If these generals and politicians are asked a follow-up question about the most sacred principle underlying that unwritten alliance between Israel and the United States, they would also not hesitate to declare, as one, the bipartisan US support of Israel.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, US President Richard Nixon and his mythological Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dispatched an urgent weapons airlift to save the IDF from the combined surprise attacks by the armies of Egypt and Syria. Since then, every thinking Israeli has known that the special relations nurtured with the leader of the free world are Israel’s most reliable insurance policy against its enemies.