Earlier this week at the G7 Summit on Lake Geneva, Trump once again seemed to throw Israel under the bus for defending themselves.
“Israel's fighting Hezbollah too long, and too many people are being killed, and you don't have to knock down an apartment house every time you're looking for somebody,” Trump said in a clip from Bloomberg News.
Much is being made of the fact that in an unwavering desire to make a deal with Iran, Trump has unloaded on Netanyahu with rhetoric that no other American leader has dared to use publicly.
According to Associated Press, Trump has even claimed credit for Israel's existence — "without me, there would be no Israel" — and cursed Netanyahu's judgment during interviews. He even described the Israeli leader as "crazy" and criticized recent Israeli attacks in Lebanon, which threatened to jeopardize negotiations between Washington and Tehran.
Jan Markell, founder and president of Olive Tree Ministries, says Trump has been the best friend Israel has had in the White House in the last 50 years, but the rhetoric is worrying her.
“Something seemed to change with the president after China. Again, I don't think we know what happened at that point in time, but I think he's listening to the wrong voices,” Markell says.
President Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping last month.
“I think two of the voices he's listening to are Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who, sadly, are two Jews who don't really appreciate Israel — the way we would like them to anyway and certainly not from a biblical perspective,” Markell states.
Markell prefers Trump listen to someone like his ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, because she says Huckabee is acting with a biblical worldview and a biblical perspective. Then again, she says the president may be only listening to his own counsel.
“Legacy, Nobel Peace Prize, midterm elections — many are driven by ego, and many are driven by ambition, and President Trump is in that camp where he likes to talk about himself. He loves to talk about his accomplishments,” Markell says.
Brigitte Gabriel is a national security analyst and defense expert, who is chairwoman of ACT for America. She is disappointed that Trump is pursuing a course of action that is throwing both Israel and the government of Lebanon under the bus.
"I'm disappointed with the whole deal, and it's not just Bibi (Netanyahu) against this deal. Actually, for the first time, you're seeing that the Lebanese government and the Israeli government are aligned on their disagreement with this deal,” Gabriel states.
She points out that the president of Lebanon, Joseph Aoun, is a Christian and that the Christians are working with the Israelis.
“They want to get rid of Hezbollah, and they do not want Lebanon to be a part of a deal made between Iran and the United States, basically throwing under the bus Israel as well as Lebanon,"
This Memorandum of Understanding, she says, is not a done deal.
"This is a 60-day exploration of what we could do together to make things better, avoiding destroying the whole infrastructure in Iran, but you cannot throw Israel under the bus. We heard, we don't even have to imagine, the Israeli reaction on all levels,” says Gabriel. “It's a betrayal for the people of Israel. It's a betrayal to the people of Iran. It's a betrayal of the friendship that we have between Israel and the United States.”
