By Laura Aboli on Telegram
For decades, criticizing Israel in American politics was essentially forbidden territory. Politicians might whisper about it privately, but no one would dare say it publicly.
And yet suddenly, the tone is changing…
Even Gavin Newsom, hardly a political outsider and not someone who would previously have ventured into this territory, recently acknowledged that critics were “appropriately” describing Israel as an apartheid state. He even suggested that the trajectory of Israel’s leadership could eventually force the United States to reconsider its military support.
Just a few weeks ago, statements like this would have been political suicide.
So what changed?
In my view, this may well be another example of the strange political alchemy that seems to follow Trump wherever he goes.
Think back to the Epstein files. Democrats had access to those files for years, yet nothing happened; there was no urgency, no public pressure, and no appetite for disclosure. But the moment the media believed Trump might be implicated, suddenly everyone demanded their release. The spotlight only turned on when Trump’s name entered the frame.
And I suspect something similar may be happening now. By appearing closely aligned with Netanyahu, Trump once again becomes the lightning rod. The media and his political opponents cannot resist attacking him, and in doing so they are forced to shine a spotlight on something that had long been avoided: Israel’s extraordinary influence over U.S. politics.
And then something even more revealing happened…
Marco Rubio openly stated that Washington knew Israel was about to strike Iran, and that the U.S. acted first because that attack would have triggered retaliation on American forces.
Think about what that implies for a moment…
If the United States must act militarily because Israel is about to act… who is actually driving the sequence of events?
For decades this dynamic has existed quietly in the background. Now people are openly asking questions that were once unthinkable: why are American taxpayers funding Israel’s wars? Why should the United States be dragged into conflicts that many Americans do not want?
Whether people support Israel or oppose it is almost beside the point. What matters is that the conversation — the forbidden one — is finally happening in the open.
Trump has always acted like a lightning rod for the spotlight.
Wherever he stands, the entire media apparatus turns its cameras. He seems to understand that the fastest way to expose something that has been hidden for decades is sometimes to stand directly beneath the lightning and let it strike, even if he’s the one taking the blow.
And perhaps that is precisely the point. Exposing the unhealthy nature of Israel’s relationship with the United States may be the only way to make the public see it clearly enough to demand that it change, because only when that happens could any leader realistically put an end to it.
Brief, to the point, and absolutely spot on !