Israeli analyst Ran Adelist said it was “interesting to see how the United States and the Israeli occupation entity, despite being tens of thousands of kilometers apart, are today undergoing similar processes in their internal conflicts,” with political and social disputes forming the backdrop and “just one step away” from escalating into violence.
In an article published in Maariv, Adelist added, “Relations between the United States and ‘Israel’ are intertwined across a variety of fields, to the point that, despite the difference in scale, it is unclear which side influences the other, even as both need to preserve their operational independence. In particular, it is unclear which of the two will prevail internally in the struggle between democracy and dictatorship.”
“On the surface, because of the quantitative disparity, no comparison can be made. But in reality, Israel is a miniature version of America, and Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu share a personal, national, and social agenda that is anything but democratic. The prevailing claim is that we are dealing with two democracies, one the largest in the world and the other the only one in the Middle East. That is not true. They are conditional democracies. The condition is that the deep messianic, sectarian, economic, and nationalist currents do not fall into the hands of dictatorial leaders and a mindless public that blindly follows them—and that is precisely what has happened to both,” the Zionist analyst continued.
“In fact, the United States and Israel have never truly been democracies,” he wrote. “The United States acted after World War II as an emerging empire, while Israel, after the ‘War of Liberation,’ acted as a ‘state’ under siege, requiring the suppression of the hostile Arab sector. Thus, until Trump and Netanyahu came along and exposed the truth, we were dealing with a conditional democracy. What is ours is ours, and what is yours is ours as well. At the same time, in both countries, intractable identity problems came to the surface involving sectors that are not merely different but in conflict with one another, and both fell into constitutional crises with similar characteristics.”
Adelist drew a sharp contrast between Trump and Netanyahu while arguing that, despite their differences, both leaders share a highly personalized approach to power and political survival.
“There are no two people more different from each other than Trump and Bibi,” he wrote, describing Trump as a “childish megalomaniac” and “pathological narcissist” who clings to fragments of reality and frequently veers into embarrassing territory despite efforts by his aides to prepare him for public appearances.
Adelist portrayed Netanyahu as similarly focused above all on his political survival. He argued that, while Netanyahu remains “razor-sharp” when it comes to preserving his position, he treats everything else as secondary.
The analyst also pointed to what he described as a parallel media environment surrounding the two leaders. He cited the Israeli Channel 14 and Fox in the United States, accusing both outlets of promoting “wild conspiracy theories” and broadly defending their respective leaders.
According to Adelist, Trump and Netanyahu operate within political “bubbles” that filter out information that challenges their worldview. “When something bad happens,” he wrote, “it is, for both of them, collateral damage.”
Adelist argued that the concentration of political power around both leaders has also shaped their handling of foreign and security policy. In his view, when leaders exercise near-total control domestically, they are likely to approach international affairs with the same highly personalized style of decision-making.
He described this as “a surefire recipe for losing on every external front,” arguing that domestic political protection can allow leaders to absorb military and diplomatic setbacks without facing immediate political consequences.
The Zionist analyst cited what he characterized as the war in Iran under Trump and the conflicts in Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, and Gaza, as well as more recently Turkey, under Netanyahu. He argued that both leaders can continue pursuing policies that bring them closer to catastrophe because of the political protection they retain at home.
He concluded that the two so-called leaders’ eventual decline could follow a similarly short trajectory, describing the parallels between their political fortunes as “striking.”
Source: Agencies (translated and edited by Al-Manar)