Borrowed Power |
Trump, Netanyahu, and the Fantasy of Exemption
Donald Trump’s pressure on Isaac Herzog to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu is not merely crude. It is revealing. The claim is simple enough for a child to understand, which is perhaps why so many adults in politics find it irresistible: the leader is too important to be judged while war is underway. He must be spared inconvenience. He must be protected from interruption. He must be allowed to concentrate on history. Trump has pushed that line repeatedly, while Herzog has insisted that Israel is a sovereign state governed by law, not by outside pressure. Reporting this week also indicates that the relevant Justice Ministry unit does not recommend a pardon at this stage, and Trump has now escalated from pressure to insult, calling Herzog “weak and pathetic” and “full of crap.”
This is not strength. It is political infantilism dressed up as urgency.
War is not a curtain behind which leaders get to hide their legal problems. It is the opposite. War is the moment when fantasy sends the bill. Its real cost is not commentary, not polling, not the bruised feelings of powerful men. Its real cost is death. Bodies torn apart. Families waiting for calls that should never come. Civilians displaced. Cities damaged. Fear made ordinary. To say that such a moment exempts the leader from judgment is not seriousness. It is moral laziness in executive form. The dead do not testify on behalf of exemption. They testify against every political lie that made them more disposable.
The deeper problem is not Trump alone, or Netanyahu alone. It is the exhausted fantasy that political order can still be carried by one man. Modern states........