Israel owes Trump, but that can’t mean Hamas’s survival

President Donald Trump’s decision to order a strike on Iranian nuclear targets was yet another example of how he has proven to be a reliable friend of the State of Israel. If, as both Jerusalem and the Pentagon say, Tehran’s quest for a bomb has been set back at least two years—and can again be smashed by subsequent Israeli and American military efforts as needed—then it’s clear that the president has altered the strategic equation in the region in favor of the Jewish state and against its enemies. He has also continued to supply Israel with the arms it needs, rather than slow-walk them, and to encourage its campaign to destroy Hamas in Gaza, rather than to hamstring its efforts, as the Biden administration did.

Put in context with his groundbreaking pro-Israel decisions during his first term, the president added to a record that eclipses the support offered by any other administration since the founding of the modern-day Jewish state in 1948. All of which means that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is obligated to Trump above and beyond the normal deference owed to Israel’s superpower ally.

A price too high?

Yet exactly how far should Netanyahu go to pay that debt when the president demands that he go along with plans that may or may not be in his country’s best interests?