In Israel, the Right Sees the America It Wants
Recent tensions aside, the nativist right has long seen itself in the Jewish state.
Having done so much to align Israel with the global nativist ascendancy that began in the 2010s, Benjamin Netanyahu decided late last month that American right-wingers needed to remember that supporting Israel is part of MAGA catechism.
The accused war criminal and Israeli prime minister has had enough of Marjorie Taylor Greene, Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz, and the other recent right-wingers defecting from Israel's genocide. "Israel is fighting Iran, and you can’t be MAGA if you’re pro-Iran, you can’t be MAGA if you’re anti-Israel. President Trump understands this, and he stands very strongly with us," Netanyahu told Breitbart. Those for whom the genocide of Gaza has been too much to bear are merely "the woke right," sneered Netanyahu.
Evidently taking umbrage at a foreign leader's presumption to define his movement – to say nothing of being called woke and pro-Iran – MAGA strategist Steve Bannon posted, "American Citizens Do Not Give 2 Fucks About Your Thoughts on MAGA , or What Our Citizens Need to Believe—They Care About Exposing Your Pathological Lies in Order to Keep Us Out of Your Next War." Even if MAGA-Israel tensions have been media spectacles without material impact thus far, Bannon likely spoke for many Trump loyalists. But however impertinent and self-serving Netanyahu is, he has a point.