Once upon a time, a meeting between the president of the United States and the prime minister of Israel was a source of pride for both Israeli and American Jews, who saw it as a collaboration between two democratic leaders. Yet I know I'm not alone in saying that pride was not the emotion that overwhelmed me when I saw the friendly photo of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office on Monday. It was disgust and depression.
Both aspire to be autocrats, both work to undermine the rule of law and the so-called elites in their own countries, both want to destroy what they call the "deep state" of professional civil servants. Both are turning their countries away from the once universal ideal of being a "light unto the nations" toward a narrow-minded, crude ethno-nationalism of "might is right," ready to normalize ethnic cleansing. Each sees political opponents not as legitimate opposition but as internal enemies, and both have filled their governments with incompetent cadres, elected solely out of loyalty to the leader, not the laws of the land.
Both are distancing their countries from democratic, traditional allies. Both present territorial expansion as a divine right "from the Gulf of Mexico to Greenland" and "from the West Bank to Gaza."
In 2008, Farid Zakaria published a prophetic book, "The Post-American World." He argued that while the United States would remain the dominant world power, the "rise of the rest"—nations like China and India—would mean a decline in relative American supremacy as the Cold War era waned.
Trump and Netanyahu, each in their own country, are creating a “post-American” and “post-Israeli” world. By “post-American” I don’t mean an America that is relatively losing power, but an America that is deliberately abandoning its core identity as a country that, at its best, is dedicated to the rule of law at home and the progress of all humanity in the world. By “post-Israeli” I mean an Israel that is consciously rejecting its core identity – a proudly proclaimed democracy based on the rule of law in a region of authoritarian leaders, a democracy that will always prioritize lasting peace with the Palestinians (if its security is guaranteed) over the permanent appropriation of the West Bank and Gaza.
It is simply impossible to imagine that Trump or Vice President J.D. Vance would aspire to build the America that Ronald Reagan described in his farewell address on January 11, 1989. Reagan spoke of the need to instill in our children an understanding of “what America is and what it stands for in the long history of the world.” That America was a moral and political beacon, “a tall, proud city built on rocks stronger than the ocean, beaten by the winds, blessed by God, and filled with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports bustling with commerce and creativity. And if those cities had to have walls, those walls had doors, and those doors were open to anyone who had the will and the heart to come here.”
Instead, Trump and Vance want to reshape our country into a post-Reagan America—an America that shows contempt for democratic allies, based on free markets and the rule of law, like the European Union. Trump recently declared that the European Union was created to “screw up the United States”—a sentiment he repeated while sitting next to Netanyahu in the Oval Office. The sheer malice and historical ignorance contained in that statement is breathtaking.
Trump and Vance also want to take us to a post-American world that welcomes courageous defenders of freedom on its borders - most notably Ukraine - with demands for mineral wealth in exchange for reluctant military aid.
Ultimately, they want to lead us into a post-American world that has no interest in preserving, let alone strengthening, its soft power—the power to win allies and attract talented immigrants—a concept popularized by Harvard political scientist Joseph S. Nye. They despise soft power, completely unaware that by losing it, we lose the ability to rally other nations around a shared vision of a world more open to our interests and values—the greatest strategic advantage we have ever had over Russia and China.
By blindly shrinking his own government and undermining many of our traditional allies, “Trump is not just destroying careers and values—he is literally making America weak again,” Larry Diamond, an expert on democracy at Stanford, told me. That is, I can imagine, the furthest the America I grew up in—and the America I want my grandchildren to grow up in—could get away from itself.
Netanyahu is working hard to create a similar post-Israeli order. Trump fired the FBI director for not being loyal enough to him; Netanyahu is on the verge of doing the same with Ronen Barr, the respected head of the Shin Bet — Israel’s equivalent of the FBI — at a time when Barr is investigating some of Netanyahu’s closest aides for alleged ties to the Qatari government.
Netanyahu himself faces a corruption trial. He is accused by the opposition - and many relatives of the hostages - of prolonging the war in Gaza to appease the Jewish supremacists who keep him in power and potentially out of jail. The extension also delays the formation of a commission of inquiry into the disastrous war, which began during his term and for reasons directly linked to the failure of his policies: his belief that Hamas could be bought off with bags of money from Qatar.
He is also trying to remove Israel’s independent and courageous attorney general, who he apparently views as disloyal. Since returning to power in late 2022, Netanyahu has also embarked on a mission to undermine the Israeli Supreme Court’s authority to review decisions by the executive and legislative branches. This is tied to his party’s religious-nationalist agenda to annex the West Bank and Gaza and expel as many Palestinians as possible — a goal that can only be achieved if the court loses its power to restrain the prime minister and his coalition of Jewish supremacists.
Netanyahu's goal today is "to dismantle all the essential elements of democracy," Miki Gitzin, director of the New Israel Fund, wrote in Haaretz on Sunday. "The method is simple: you create a whirlwind of bold, illegal moves, simultaneously and on all fronts. While the public is preoccupied with the dismissal of the head of the Shin Bet security service, you push through draconian laws against NGOs. When everyone is preoccupied with the status of legal advisors, you push through bills that make it easier to disqualify Arab candidates."
The public and the opposition are becoming so overwhelmed that it is becoming difficult for them to navigate the onslaught of events, he added, and resistance is gradually dissipating. Sound familiar?
Trump and Netanyahu’s domestic strategies have merged with the misuse of anti-Semitism as a weapon to silence or delegitimize critics. Readers of this column know that I have no respect for students on campus who criticize Israel’s actions in Gaza without uttering a word of condemnation of Hamas—let alone a word of support for the Ukrainians whose democracy is being destroyed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. But this is still a free country, at least for now, and as long as people don’t resort to violence or harassment of other students, whether in class or out, they have the right to say whatever they want, including advocating for a Palestinian state in any form.
“President Trump has taken a real phenomenon that really demands attention — anti-Semitism emerging in discussions about Israel — and used it as justification for cracking down on immigration, higher education, and free speech about Israel,” Jonathan Jacoby, national director of Project Nexus, which works to combat anti-Semitism and preserve democracy, told me.
As an American Jew, I don't need or want Trump's cynical defense. He's still the same man who defended white nationalists and neo-Nazis protesting in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, saying there were "very good people" among them. Vance, on the other hand, has embraced the German AfD party, known for its sympathies for Nazism and Holocaust minimization, whose leaders are calling on Germans to stop repenting for Nazi crimes.
As Rabbi Sharon Braus of the Los Angeles ICAR community eloquently warned in a sermon on March 8: "We, Jews, are being used to promote a political agenda that will seriously undermine the social fabric and institutions that are best placed to protect Jews and all other minorities. We are being exploited. Our pain, our trauma, is being misused to destroy the dream of a multiracial democracy and advance the cause of a white Christian nation."
Netanyahu — like Trump and thanks to Trump — has a sense of impunity, a belief that nothing can bring him down. That mindset trickles down through the system, leading to incidents like last month, when Israeli forces killed 15 paramedics and rescue workers in southern Gaza — an incident about which, as a senior Israel Defense Forces officer told Haaretz, “the lower chain of command simply lied.”
Fortunately, Israeli civil society has shown great fighting spirit - much greater than America's so far - and this is not surprising. For while Trump can attack American elites with the cheers of his base, Israelis know that their country cannot survive without its technical, scientific and military elites. That is why this month 18 former heads of Israel's security services - the army, Mossad, Shin Bet, military intelligence and police - declared that Netanyahu is unfit to serve as prime minister because his "conduct poses a clear and imminent threat to Israel's security and its future as a Jewish democratic state."
For all those who want to prevent the emergence of a post-American and post-Israeli world, I have only one message: this is the fight of our lives. I am fully committed - and I am not tired. And you?
The commentary was published in the "New York Times"
Translation: A.Š.
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