When Bill Clinton first met Netanyahu in the summer of 1996, Netanyahu lectured him about the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Clinton emerged from the meeting exasperated. \u201cWho the fuck does he think he is?\u201d Clinton asked his aides<\/a>. \u201cWho\u2019s the fucking superpower here?\u201d<\/p>\n And then there were his relations with Barack Obama, which were bad from the beginning \u2013 and got worse when Obama tried to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. During a hot mic incident in 2011, before the deal was even an issue, French leader Nicholas Sarkozy told Obama that Netanyahu was \u201ca liar\u201d. Obama replied<\/a>: \u201cYou may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day.\u201d<\/p>\n The journalist Jeffrey Goldberg kept a running list<\/a> of the insults that he had heard Obama staffers direct at Netanyahu in private. One of them was \u201cchickenshit\u201d.<\/p>\n Why has Netanyahu exasperated so many US presidents and their aides? One reason is that he has been extremely singleminded in advancing what he sees as the interests of his country.<\/p>\n But the same goes for a lot of other global leaders, too. As a result, it can be tempting to explain the tension by looking at Netanyahu\u2019s personality \u2013 and there may be some validity to these explanations.<\/p>\n But more broadly, it is the unique nature of US-Israeli relations \u2013 and the place that the country has in American domestic politics \u2013 which explains why Netanyahu has stressed so many presidents out.<\/p>\n One of the reasons the Israeli leader so frustrates American presidents is that they cannot just ignore him or cut his country off from US support. There are a number of large pro-Israel constituencies in the United States \u2013 and modern presidents have always felt pressure to please them.<\/p>\n Furthermore, Netanyahu has been more than happy to mobilise domestic US pro-Israel groups against American presidents when he has felt the need.<\/p>\n When Netanyahu visited Washington, DC in 1998 to face pressure from Clinton to relinquish territory in the West Bank, he spent the night before giving a speech to a thousand members of the pro-Israeli Christian right, a group vocally opposed to Clinton. He also met with prominent Republicans. \u201cI know where you were last night,\u201d Clinton reportedly remarked<\/a> wryly the next day.<\/p>\n Netanyahu was also particularly active in rallying opposition<\/a> to the Obama administration, especially its nuclear deal with Iran.<\/p>\n Whenever Obama tried to pressure the Israeli leader to take a step like building fewer settlements in the West Bank, opposition would erupt at home \u2013 stoked by Netanyahu. Figuring that the political pain wasn\u2019t worth it \u2013 especially given Netanyahu seemed intractable anyway \u2013 Obama eventually decided to back off<\/a>.<\/p>\n More recently, as casualties mounted in Gaza during Israel\u2019s assault on the territory following the Hamas attacks of October 7 2023, Joe Biden is reported<\/a> to have called Netanyahu a \u201cfucking liar\u201d over his conduct of the conflict.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no coincidence that many of Netanyahu\u2019s clashes have been with Democratic presidents. This is not only because they have tended to be more willing to question Israel, but also because he himself seems to have decided to make a strategic choice to align himself<\/a> with the conservative right in recent years.<\/p>\n Critics of Netanyahu\u2019s strategy have warned that by turning support for Israel into an increasingly partisan political issue in the US, Netanyahu was risking the eventual loss of support for Israel among the American left<\/a>.<\/p>\n At a minimum, his alignment with the Republican Party has made him reliant on the continued goodwill of that party and its presidents. But it is now a Republican president, Donald Trump, telling him he has \u201cno fucking judgment\u201d<\/a>. So what went wrong, and what does this mean?<\/p>\n
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