At first glimpse, it could well appear as if President Trump is purging elements of his administration who are staunch pro-Israel advocates, and that this is indicative of an internal shift.
Three senior US officials were recently dismissed from their roles, which Israeli media reports say is connected to their hardline pro-Israel stances. While no official confirmation of such motives exists, the prospect of this making a difference has been deemed questionable.
US President Donald Trump has allegedly sacked two National Security Council (NSC) officials.
One is Israeli-American, Merav Ceren, who headed the Iran and Israel portfolio. Eric Trager, who oversaw Middle East and North Africa policy for the NSC, was reported in the Israeli Press to have been let go, despite contradictory reports emanating from the US.
What is significant about the reported sacking of the two above-mentioned officials is that they were both hired by Mike Waltz while he was still Director of the NSC. Waltz was originally reported to have been fired by Donald Trump, following alleged coordination on the issue of Iran with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
At the time, the American President was said to have been furious with Waltz for going behind his back to deal with Netanyahu. This led to a series of feature articles and opinion pieces, along with social media commentary, which alleged that Trump was purging pro-Israel elements and that this would lead to a policy shift.
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Waltz was indeed removed from his position as NSC Director, but contrary to reports about his total ousting, he was instead granted the new position as US ambassador to the United Nations. After he was forced out of his top position, American policy did not seem to dramatically shift as many had hoped for.
The third official that is set to be replaced is Morgan Ortagus, who handled the US’s Lebanon file and served as a deputy Special Middle East Envoy. Ortagus instantly began stirring internal tensions inside Lebanon after adopting hardline and aggressive stances vis-à-vis Hezbollah. She has been dubbed the most pro-Israel US official to handle the US’ Lebanon file and caused continuous backlash that even impacted the standing of Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.
All three are hardened pro-Israel Zionists who advocate positions pretty much identical to those of Israeli government officials under the current Netanyahu-led coalition. Their dismissals have also come at a particularly important time, as the US appears to be at a make-or-break point with both its Iran and Hamas negotiations.
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At first glimpse, it could well appear as if President Trump is purging elements of his administration who are staunch pro-Israel advocates, and that this is indicative of an internal shift. However, this conclusion is flawed.
To begin with, you would be hard stretched to find a single member of the Trump administration that isn’t a hardline Zionist; every one of importance supports Israel to the hilt. Where there is a split is in the way different figures within Trump’s leadership team see the best way to support Israel. While some have come off as extremely dogmatic and seek an all-out war with Iran, while the war on Gaza rages on, others have expressed an interest in concluding deals instead.
If there is any major schism inside the White House and Pentagon, which will impact policy, it is over the approach to the war in Gaza and the goal of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. It does appear that such a split even exists within the pro-Israel Lobby in Washington itself.
Yet, other than some minor policy adjustments, there is no evidence to suggest that Donald Trump is pursuing a policy that is somehow excluding Israel. So far, all these indications appear to have come almost solely from Israeli media sources.
The narrative about the Trump-Netanyahu feud that both sides have now denied was a major story only weeks ago, as political commentators from just about every perspective broke it down in a way that considered the split to be true.
The Jerusalem Post, which has all but ruined its reputation completely and become a tabloid-style outlet in recent years, even published a piece citing sources who claimed Trump was about to recognize a Palestinian State.
Although it is impossible to separate fact from fiction in regard to stories surrounding the Trump-Netanyahu relationship, it suffices to say that we’ve seen this exact same playbook before. Former US President Joe Biden, we heard, would have these allegedly dramatic blow-ups with Netanyahu.
In fact, the US and Israeli media fiction began all the way back in December of 2023, when we heard about Joe Biden hanging up a phone call with the Israeli PM. Every month or so from that point, we were fed new stories from anonymous sources, claiming that Biden had set red lines with Israel or even sworn at Netanyahu. None of this translated into any meaningful change to US policy towards Israel. It was precisely the opposite; Israel was only emboldened to escalate the pace and scale of its daily war crimes.
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If we take the example of former US President Barack Obama, there is actual evidence that the American leader did hold disdain for Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2011, then French President Nicolas Sarkozy said, about Netanyahu, to Obama: “I can’t stand him. He’s a liar”. To which Obama replied: “You’re tired of him; what about me? I have to deal with him every day”.
Evidently, even though Barack Obama personally expressed his displeasure with the Israeli PM, he still granted Tel Aviv what was the largest recorded US aid pledge. There were no significant breakthroughs that changed US policy towards Israel either.
The Obama example is important because it demonstrates that even in the event that Trump does actually dislike Netanyahu, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything for Washington’s policy direction.
Donald Trump’s campaign was almost entirely bankrolled by ultra-Zionist billionaires, the most notable of which was Miriam Adelson, who is known to have close ties to Benjamin Netanyahu. The Trump administration is still staffed entirely by Zionists and would not even allow a single voice critical of Israel to assume any position.
Ultimately, the Israel Lobby also appears to be winning in terms of dictating the course of the indirect Iran nuclear deal negotiations. Steve Witkoff spent just as long meeting with Netanyahu’s closest aide, Ron Dermer, and Mossad Chief David Barnea, as he did attending the Iran negotiations in Rome, during the last round of talks.
Also, the US President’s rhetoric on Iran is quite literally prone to change every twenty-four hours. While the most influential think-tank over the Trump administration, the Heritage Foundation, recently published a policy brief arguing in favour of a limited series of strikes against Iran, intended to take out its nuclear program.
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As for the reality on the ground in Gaza, the Trump administration gave the green light for Israel to starve the civilian population for 80 days, before endorsing the catastrophic privatised aid scheme we now see luring in helpless Palestinians so that they can be massacred by Israeli soldiers. There is no ceasefire that is being put on the table that offers an end to the war, either, only a brief pause that will allow Israel to get more of its imprisoned soldiers out.
During Donald Trump’s first term in office, he fired John Bolton as his National Security Advisor. When that happened, it encouraged analysts to speculate on whether the US President was finally going to stand up to the pro-war hawks in his administration. Evidently, that didn’t happen at all.
The real question that everyone needs to ask themselves here is this: Why were these people chosen to lead the Trump administration in the first place? If we are going to see some kind of dramatic shift in US-Israel relations, it will manifest itself in clear results on the ground. So far, we have theater and internal disputes that nobody can actually verify.
– Robert Inlakesh is a journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. He focuses on the Middle East, specializing in Palestine. He contributed this article to The Palestine Chronicle.
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