U.S. President Donald Trump points his finger towards Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as they shake hands during a press conference after meeting at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, U.S., December 29, 2025.
President Donald Trump has often been accused of starting the Iran war to help Israel — and yet now one of America’s major conservative newspapers is blasting him for not being pro-Israel enough.
“Iran’s regime began Monday by throwing a wrench into negotiations with the U.S., and President Trump spent the rest of the day scrambling to satisfy Iran’s demand,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Monday. “The result is a new cease-fire in Lebanon, rescuing Hezbollah for the moment, though the terrorists didn’t abide by the first cease-fire for even a day.”
The Journal proceeded to argue that “Hezbollah began this war with Israel on March 2, firing on soldiers and civilian targets on the orders of its Iranian patrons. The first Lebanon cease-fire was announced April 17 after Iran’s regime had said Israeli retaliation against Hezbollah was preventing the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. Mr. Trump pressured Israel and delivered the cease-fire, but Iran reneged on Hormuz—and its Hezbollah proxy kept firing.”
After adding that Israel refrained from attacking Hezbollah’s Dahiyeh stronghold in Beirut until Monday, after the attacks averaged 125 rockets and 49 drones every day for a week, the Journal described the next events as involving Iran’s state media reporting they had stopped exchanging messages with Trump because of Israel’s retaliation.
“The shamelessness is always striking,” the Journal opined. “Iran has repeatedly violated its April 7 cease-fire with the U.S. by firing drones and missiles at commercial vessels, U.S. forces and Gulf states. In recent days it has downed a U.S. drone over international waters and fired ballistic missiles at U.S. forces in Kuwait. Through it all, Mr. Trump has limited the U.S. responses to self-defense and insisted the cease-fire still obtains.”
Yet instead of recognizing these facts, the Journal concluded, Trump had blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pressured him into agreeing to a ceasefire against Lebanon.
“Lebanon and Israel suggested the deal is only partial,” the Journal continued. “As long as Hezbollah doesn’t attack Israeli territory, Israel won’t attack the terrorists in Dahiyeh, Mr. Netanyahu said. This is a recipe for managing the conflict, limiting it to southern Lebanon, where both sides expect to continue the fight.”
While this status quo is currently adequate for Israel, since they won the high ground in Lebanon and need time to protect themselves against fiber-optic drones, the Journal declared that “Hezbollah’s capital again has been spared the consequences of the group’s own actions. Iran is winning its proxy a refuge. Anytime it wants, Iran could tell Hezbollah to stop shooting and end the war, which Israel has no desire to wage. Instead it encouraged Hezbollah’s fire, so it could cut off U.S. talks when Israel inevitably responded in force.”
Expanding the critique beyond Israel’s war against Lebanon, the Journal expressed concern that Trump may take the same approach in his war against Iran.
“If it fires on U.S. forces in the Strait or Gulf, will he still try to salvage the cease-fire?” the Journal asked. “How about stepped-up attacks on Israel? How about claiming to quit negotiations? In each case, Mr. Trump has chosen to avoid escalation and keep talking. If he won’t send a different message, it will be difficult to get the regime to comply with a deal, no matter what it promises now.”
Despite being criticized for his recent policy toward Israel, Trump has actually been accused by some elements in his party of being too pro-Israel. Indeed, both the Democratic and Republican parties have seen a massive surge in anti-Israel sentiment since the Oct. 7th terrorist attacks. When it comes to Trump’s Republican base, this includes far right voters who are motivated by opposition to Israel’s alleged human rights violations, a desire to limit foreign spending in general, a belief in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of government and the anti-Semitic opinion that all Jews and/or Israelis should be blamed for the Israeli government’s actions.
Speaking with AlterNet in March about the issue of American anti-Semitism, Brandeis University historian Jonathan Sarna argued that one can criticize Israeli government policy without being anti-Semitic. He added that it can easily become anti-Semitic, however.
“If you go back to ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ — the great antisemitic forgery of the turn of the last century — that really began this sense that Jews are all-powerful, that they operate behind the scenes, and that whatever happens is ultimately their fault,” Sarna told AlterNet. “Before then, for centuries, the prevailing view was that Jews were persecuted and lowly because they had killed Christ, and that was what they deserved — they were powerless. That was their punishment. But ‘The Protocols’ flipped that.”
Sarna continued that “especially as Jews in modernity have begun to succeed economically, it doesn't much matter what the issue is — whether it is 9/11, which some blame on the Jews, or the crash of 2008, or now the war with Iran. You can predict before it happens that people will blame Jews, because as The Protocols taught people, it's always the Jews. It's the great conspiracy theory. And even many people who have never read The Protocols believe many of the things in it — just as many people have never read Darwin, but they know the word ‘evolution.’ This is simply the latest iteration.”
He concluded that “I can be critical of President Trump without being un-American. Most people who criticize President Trump or the Republicans would assure you how much they love America and hold a fundamentally positive view of it. It seems to me that it's deeply important for us to do the same with Israel — that is, to make clear that there is a huge difference between disliking the policies of the Prime Minister of Israel and hating Israel itself. If you wouldn't equate criticism of the President with hating America, there is no reason — and indeed it is wrong and wicked — to do so with regard to Israel.”