Trump and Netanyahu are dishonest, duplicitous and worse

Meetings between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are more akin to a master class in posturing and duplicity than in diplomacy. This month’s meetings were no exception.

Both men are master manipulators, products of our media age. They create illusions that they insist are real. They repeat a lie over and over, and with such force, that it becomes real for those who trust them. Those who do not believe in the illusion are threatened, belittled, or shunned.

Both leaders have utilized their craftiness to achieve personal success in domestic politics. They have developed strong constituent bases, followers who believe that their leadership must be supported and protected. At the same time, they are polarizing figures who have contributed to creating deep fissures within their countries.

Because the illusions they project are based on lies, there are limits to their successes. In the first place, reality invariably presents a strong check to illusions. And ignoring reality can result in social unrest and political chaos.

For example, President Trump promoted his signature budget plan — which he called the “Big Beautiful Bill” — promising that it would be fiscally sound and bring greater prosperity to more Americans. Instead, it appears that it will dramatically increase the nation’s deficit while potentially causing 17 million Americans to lose their healthcare.

For his part, Netanyahu has prolonged his war on Gaza (and Lebanon, Syria, and Iran) promising that it would lead to “total victory,” making Israel more respected and secure. Instead, it has led to his being indicted for war crimes and Israel seeing its international standing diminished because of its genocidal policy.

Truth wins out. And so, we can expect the day to come when Trump voters lose their health care plans and see their rural hospitals forced to close and realize that the illusion of the “Big Beautiful Bill” didn’t include them. Much the same will occur in Israel when Israelis realize that “total victory” is a farce — the conflict with Palestinians will continue as long as they are denied rights — and as tens of thousands of young Israeli soldiers return from having served multiple tours of duty in Gaza with PTSD, wreaking havoc at home and in their communities.

With this as a backdrop, it was both fascinating and deeply disturbing to see the two master manipulators at work with and on each other last week: a bizarre exercise in log-rolling flattery. As we say in colloquial English: “They laid it on thick.”

Netanyahu, the indicted war criminal, gave Trump the letter he sent to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating him for the peace prize. And Trump returned the faux compliment calling Netanyahu “the greatest man alive.”

All of this can be dismissed as buffoonery or maybe even harmless puffery — just two manipulators playing each other. But where the efforts of these two become truly dangerous is when they and their acolytes come to believe the deceit and attempt to extend their efforts to supplant reality with illusion through policies that impact others.

From what little we know of what transpired in the meetings between Trump and Netanyahu, what’s clear is that the ideas driving both are not reality based. Trump’s plan was to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza to a location outside of Palestine where housing will be provided so they can live productive lives, making way for Gaza to become a Riviera-style resort. This was trashed early on as being based on illegal ethnic-cleansing and blatant colonialism.

Netanyahu appears to have nothing better to offer than a slight modification of Trump’s idea. He wouldn’t expel all of Gaza’s Palestinians. But he would force as many to leave as possible to other countries that would take them. Those who remain would be “relocated” to what the Israelis are calling “a humanitarian relocation site” where Palestinians can be provided for and “deradicalized.”

Both plans share three elements. First, to sell their ideas, both Trump and Netanyahu clothe them in humanitarian language. Second, no matter how they try to dress them up, both plans are designed and offered without consideration for what Palestinians really want. And finally, therefore, both are delusional and destined not only to fail, but to exacerbate an already volatile situation.

Maybe the biggest illusion projected by both men is the notion that their “plans” will create the conditions for regional peace. Ignoring the reality that a root cause of tension in the Middle East is the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians, their proposals only add to that dispossession and the resistance it spawns in Gaza (all the while compounding the same dispossession in the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

As history has shown, it is perilous to ignore the humanity of Palestinians. It is also foolish for Trump and Netanyahu to assume that their projected illusions will be believed in the Arab world, making possible an “era of peace.” This fantasy only exists in their minds and in the minds of the sycophants who surround them.

As a great Republican president (may have) said 160 years ago, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

• Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community.