WSJ: Netanyahu Flips the Script

“If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you . . . ” These lines from Rudyard Kipling’s “If” echoed through my mind on June 8 as I sat down with an intense but cool- and calm-seeming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for an off-the-record conversation in his Jerusalem office. Israel’s latest strikes against Iran had not been launched, and the conventional wisdom held that Bibi, as friends and foes alike call the longest-serving prime minister in Israel’s history, had his back to the wall.

Reports that the Israeli prime minister was on the outs with President Trump were all over the news. Mr. Trump hadn’t visited Israel on his recent trip to the region, Mr. Netanyahu’s critics pointed out, and the Gulf countries were making deals with the Americans while Mr. Netanyahu’s Israel watched from the sidelines.

For decades, Bibi’s popularity among conservative Americans helped cement his strength among Israeli conservatives. But that seemed to be changing early last week. From MAGA-world voices like Tucker Carlson came a chorus of anti-Israel, anti-Netanyahu critiques. Was Mr. Trump’s apparent warmth toward an Obama-style nuclear agreement with Iran a sign that American Republicans were throwing Bibi under the bus? Would Israel lose a historic opportunity to settle scores with Iran because Mr. Netanyahu had mismanaged Israel’s relationship with the GOP?

Internationally, public opinion had turned against the prime minister and the nation he leads. United Nations resolutions, International Criminal Court arrest warrants, demonstrations, antisemitic outbreaks at elite universities and, most recently, a diplomatic effort from France to get Western countries to recognize a Palestinian state: Many at home and abroad blamed Mr. Netanyahu for Israel’s growing isolation.