Timing is everything, they say, and the timing of Marco Rubio’s trip to Israel earlier this week was terrible.
The secretary of state–cum–national security advisor did the sorts of things American politicians normally do when they travel to Israel. He wore a kippah and prayed at the Wailing Wall. He affirmed America’s “unwavering support” for Israel.
But the surrounding circumstances were far from normal.
Rubio touched down on Sunday, days after Israel launched an airstrike in Qatar—a U.S. ally—targeting Hamas negotiators who had gathered to discuss a Gaza peace deal proposed by the Trump administration. As Rubio arrived, Israel was intensifying its demolition of residential buildings in Gaza City.
On Monday, Qatar convened an emergency summit of Arab leaders outraged by last week’s strike and looking to issue a collective response. With Rubio in the middle of his trip, the Israeli government dropped another bomb, this time in the news website Axios: The journalist Barak Ravid reported, citing seven Israeli officials, that President Donald Trump had been pre-notified of the strike, though the White House has claimed otherwise.
Minutes before Rubio departed Israel for Qatar on Tuesday, the Netanyahu government began its ground offensive in Gaza City despite international condemnation. On the same day, a United Nations commission found that Israel was committing genocide against Palestinians.
Rubio’s trip had been planned long before the Qatar attack, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ever shrewd, used it to bolster Israel’s legitimacy at a crucial moment. As Israel faces mounting pressure, the official visit by America’s top diplomat bought Jerusalem time to expand its borders, ethnically cleanse Palestinian lands, and secure hegemony in the Middle East. During a joint press conference with Rubio, Netanyahu said he reserved the right to order further strikes on foreign countries to take out Hamas leaders, though Trump had warned Israel not to repeat its strike on Qatar.
Near the opening of the press conference, Netanyahu said to Rubio,
Your presence here in Israel today is a clear message that America stands with Israel. You stand with us in the face of terror, in the face of the incredible, I would almost say Middle Age lies… that are directed against us. The rising antisemitism in the world and the weak governments that are putting pressures on us because they collapse under the pressure of Islamist minorities and incredible vilification.
I want to thank you personally for your unwavering support of Israel’s right to defend itself, for standing firmly against those who seek to isolate and demonize our nation, and I’d like once again to extend our deepest gratitude to a great friend of Israel, a personal friend of mine, President Donald J. Trump.
Netanyahu’s remarks signaled a keen awareness that global opinion is turning against Israel. The “weak governments that are putting pressures on us” referred to Western nations, led by France, that intend to recognize the state of Palestine this month at the UN. Most of the world, of course, already recognizes a Palestinian state and wants Israel to do the same. Indeed, just last Friday, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly in favor of a two-state solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict.
Netanyahu, speaking alongside Rubio, also seemed keenly aware of Israel’s dependence on U.S. support—a dependence that becomes ever more fragile as America’s liberals and young conservatives turn against the Jewish state. The U.S. Mission counselor to the UN had called the Friday resolution a “publicity stunt” and “gift to Hamas.” But only nine other states—including Israel itself and such heavy hitters as Nauru (population: 12,000)—joined the U.S. in voting against it. Who will run diplomatic cover for Israel once Washington joins the global supermajority? And who will bankroll Israel’s military and underwrite its security?
Netanyahu himself has admitted that Israel may need to “wean ourselves off” U.S. military aid. But first, the Israeli premier, middle son of the militant Zionist Benzion Mileikowsky, intends to obliterate Gaza, consolidate control over the West Bank, and eliminate perceived threats across the region. Like a smack addict who promises to quit, he needs in the meantime to shore up his supply. That’s why Netanyahu—a very busy man—was ubiquitous in U.S. media following the horrific assassination last Wednesday of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
A pro-Israel evangelical and leader of America’s largest conservative youth organization, Kirk played a key role in stifling the surge in animosity toward Israel among young right-wingers. The death of Kirk could prove a serious setback for Jerusalem in the next few years, as the long reign of America’s Boomers—the only reliably pro-Israel Western cohort that matters—draws to a close.
Netanyahu’s spin on Kirk’s murder has been plainly—and shamelessly—motivated by considerations of political expedience. “I want to say a farewell to a great human being, a great friend of Israel, a great champion of Judeo-Christian civilization,” Netanyahu said on Newsmax one day after the murder. The next day, Netanyahu told Fox News that “the Islamists, the radical Islamists, and their union with the ultra-progressives” had tried to kill Trump and Netanyahu, and now “they got Charlie Kirk.” No evidence exists that Tyler Robinson—the ex-Mormon, pro-LGBT assassin—has jihadi ties.
That Rubio arrived in Israel the weekend after Kirk was shot dead made the visit’s timing only weirder. Back in America, flags were lowered to half-mast and fears of civil war had gripped the nation. Yet Rubio, perhaps America’s most powerful official after Trump, was with Netanyahu in Jerusalem, endorsing Israel’s pursuit of total military victory, rather than a diplomatic resolution, in Gaza—less than a week after Israel literally blew up U.S.-led peace talks.
It’s déjà vu. In June, Israel launched a surprise attack on Iran days before a round of talks between Washington and Tehran. The U.S. wanted a nuclear deal rather than a war, whereas Israel wanted to blow up diplomacy and topple Tehran’s government.
Then, as now, the Trump administration failed to put Israel in its place—so the possibility of Israel dragging America into another Mideast war still looms. “Rubio’s in Israel right now, and trust me, my sources are impeccable, they’re still pushing regime change in Iran,” said Steve Bannon, a former Trump advisor, on his podcast Monday.
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On Tuesday, Rubio warned that “time is running out” for a Gaza peace deal then, minutes later, departed Israel for Qatar to do damage control—America’s top diplomat, reduced to Israel’s clean-up man. Down below Rubio’s plane, Israeli troops rolled into Gaza City as thousands of Palestinians fled south. In Jerusalem, 250 American state legislators were gathering for the “50 States One Israel” conference. The legislators spoke of the importance of banning anti-Israel boycotts, codifying expansive definitions of antisemitism, and opposing pro-Palestinian voices.
Figures like Bannon have dismissed Israel as a U.S. “protectorate,” but Americans could be forgiven for wondering whether the “special relationship” has rather become a strange instance of reverse colonialism. The great Pat Buchanan, cofounder of this magazine, used to say that Capitol Hill was “Israeli-occupied territory.” In 1996, a frustrated President Bill Clinton, after meeting with a brash and presumptuous Netanyahu, asked aides: “Who the f— does he think he is? Who’s the f—ng superpower here?”
That last question has always been interpreted as a rhetorical one, as though Netanyahu had acted absurdly by not recognizing America’s superlative status. But three decades later, the question has lost its punch, because the answer is no longer obvious.
