Author: Cozmin Gușă
Yesterday, I received several videos featuring the supporters of an Israeli football team, Beitar Jerusalem, which had been hosted in Ploiești for a European Cup match. The footage is from their march through Bucharest. It hasn’t aired in Romania yet, although it was filmed two days ago, but it has already run on CNN and BBC. Why? Because a few hundred Israeli fans were chanting: “Death to Arabs” and “Fuck you, Palestine!” I know how football fan groups behave—they often go to extremes—but they always reflect a certain state of mind in the population, to varying degrees of explosiveness. In the case of the Israeli supporters, it’s clear this reflects the mindset of Bibi Netanyahu’s backers. These videos are circulating on social media, where discussions have once again emerged regarding the real purposes and influence that Jews might have in Romania.
Over the past two years or so, in response to the horrors in Gaza, the Western world has witnessed a powerful and widespread mobilization against Israel, one sometimes involving millions in the streets. After Israel’s attack on Iran, these protests intensified and have now spread to most sports arenas, where it has become common to hear chants against Netanyahu and Israel. At airports around the world, Israeli passengers are verbally and even physically assaulted. Clearly, a wave of anti-Israel outrage with undertones of hatred has taken shape, something we haven’t seen since about 85 years ago, during the Nazi era.
In this critical context that is now impossible to ignore in the media, the process of recognizing the Palestinian state began, including by governments that had previously supported Netanyahu’s regime and its atrocities. France led the charge, with the largest Jewish and Arab Muslim communities in Europe, followed by other countries like the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada. In the Netherlands, people even clearly state that the bloody Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 was actually orchestrated by Bibi Netanyahu. And more interesting for today’s topic: the pro-Palestinian declarations of the British Prime Minister came immediately after his meeting with Trump, so we can be sure these declarations had the U.S. president’s approval.
Trump currently finds himself cornered on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He was the one who encouraged Bibi to continue the bloodshed in Gaza, then to attack Iran, and ultimately ordered the U.S. strike on Iranian bases. Elon Musk—clearly with the covert support of some Pentagon generals—launched an attack on Trump two months ago over the case of the Jewish pimp Epstein. Journalists like Tucker Carlson have categorized Epstein as a Mossad agent. Subsequently, U.S. media has placed Trump in the category of those blackmailed by Mossad, to explain his irrational support for Netanyahu’s regime. But Trump cannot easily distance himself from Bibi, not just because of the presumed blackmail, but also because his largest sponsors are Jewish billionaires who themselves support Netanyahu’s atrocities.
So, Washington turned to the leaders of loyal U.S.-allied countries, especially the Netherlands, the UK, and Canada, who are now trying, by recognizing Palestine, to exert intense diplomatic pressure that might somehow force Netanyahu to withdraw from Gaza, and eventually even lead to his removal from power in Israel. However, Trump wants all of this to happen without his or the U.S.’s direct involvement because he knows that if he openly betrays the Israeli cause, his days as America’s leader are numbered. He knows better than anyone how he returned to the presidency in 2020 and is certain that the same powerful Israeli lobby could now bring about his downfall.
The question is: will Trump succeed with this indirect and unacknowledged strike against Bibi Netanyahu’s regime?
And this is where Vladimir Putin enters the picture.
How, exactly?
You already know that Trump shortened the 50-day window he had given Putin to make peace in Ukraine. In response, Sergey Lavrov and Dmitry Medvedev mocked Trump, while Putin replied just yesterday with fatal irony, saying that Trump belongs to the category of the disillusioned, those who lack realistic expectations. As a military reply, Putin launched a strike on Kyiv and unveiled Russia’s new, unstoppable, sophisticated weaponry which is set to be deployed even in Belarus. Well, this doesn’t sit well with Trump, who lost his composure and announced that he had stationed two nuclear submarines off Russia’s coast, with the childish excuse that he did so in response to comments made by former president Medvedev, something that in no way improves the American leader’s situation.
Trump now finds himself once again at Putin’s mercy. If Putin becomes conciliatory and quickly sits down with the Ukrainians for peace negotiations, Trump could score a symbolic victory, something that would keep him afloat temporarily in his complex domestic predicament, and possibly empower him to resolve Netanyahu’s fate as well. But if Putin ignores Trump and refuses to start negotiations, the American president will be left with only one option: radical escalation toward open war with Russia, a path that throws him into turmoil and undermines the very structure on which he has built his presidency over the past six months. Meanwhile, China, which is closer to Russia now than ever, is watching and waiting for America to stumble. And then we’ll be back to talking about how golfer Trump—or, rather, blunderer Trump—must face a geopolitical game inspired by both chess and Go, woven together by the Putin–Xi duo.
