An Israeli Named Trump. An American Named Netanyahu

The Netanyahu-Trump meeting on Friday at Mar-a-Lago will be the low-pressure encounter of the like-minded who share political interests and personal circumstances. The family resemblance is uncanny: Opposition to incumbent Democrats in the White House; strong in words, weak in deeds; repeatedly persecuted for corruption; politics as a family business. It is easy to add to the list of shared traits. 

But on a deeper level, Netanyahu and Trump are nothing alike. And how they differ could teach us something not only on the former-yet-hopeful U.S. president and the longest-serving Israeli prime minister but also on their respective constituencies. 

Trump so Israeli

Start with Trump. What’s the secret of his continuing hold on American attention? 

In a word: he’s so Israeli. Here’s what I mean by it: Israelis tend to entangle the personal and official. Open the newspaper any day, and you will surely find examples of Israeli leaders unhelpfully mixing opinions on policy with decisions with the power of policy. 

The chaos – or balagan – is cultural, as cabinet ministers, but also leaders in business, the army, the judiciary – everywhere – react to cultural expectations to voice personal opinions at the expense of official decisions. Not for nothing Hebrew is yet to coin a word for “accountability.”

Isn’t it Trump to a tee?  Trump never seemed to have internalized the difference between a Donald Trump tweet and the POTUS handle. He has not learned – nay, he gleefully ignores – basics standards of professionalism in America.  (Did you notice that Biden dropped out of the race via a personal letter, and not using the White House letterhead?) 

Trump gets attention by flouting American norms of professionalism. Like a true Israeli, he seemingly adhere to what Israelis adoringly call doogri, the direct, authentic private intention. It matters not whether Trump’s ramblings represent a lasting intention or real policy as long as he purports to speak from the heart – and necessarily off script. So doogri Trump purports to move the public through the unmatched authenticity that will ever elude the calculated speakers who must think before they speak, because they commit to what they say.  

Netanyahu so American 

If Israelis, to a first approximation, are very Trump-like in preferring doogri over professionalism, one exception stands out: Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu spent his formative years in the U.S., and in important ways he still thinks like an American.  

PM Netanyahu recites the US Declaration of Independence to his wife, in 2011. Credit: Israel’s PM Office

When Netanyahu attended high school in a Philadelphia suburb in the 1960s, his elder brother Yoni, serving in the Israeli army, asked his brother for his composition on Thomas Jefferson which, their parents informed him, received an A+. (The letter is in Yoni’s personal correspondence the family published as a book after he was killed in combat.)  Bibi’s education proved effective: On the evening before Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress in 2011, the prime minister and his wife “went out for an athletic walk” in Washington, D.C., and “while walking discussed the history of the United States,” according to the Prime Minister Office. “When the Prime Minister and his wife arrived at the Jefferson Memorial, the Prime Minister recited by heart the Declaration of Independence of the United States.” 

But Netanyahu’s American education is even more consequential than that.

Netanyahu is a formidable public speaker in the grand American tradition. His eloquence in Hebrew, no less than in English, is thoroughly American. Other Israeli leaders may have a similarly impressive command of Hebrew, but none is yet to match Netanyahu’s official voice, communicating specificity and gravitas. You can hear Netanyahu saying, in Hebrew, “I decided,” or “I ordered,” as if there’s an Oval Office or Situation Room in Jerusalem: There’s none.  You are unlikely to hear similar decisive phrases employed by other Israelis in command. Netanyahu’s Hebrew is like his English: serious, formal but not pretentious, precise, direct and grammatically correct. His delivery is confident and professional. In English, he sounds like an articulate American speaker; in Hebrew, he doesn’t sound at all like other articulate Israelis.  

You will not hear Netanyahu make the spontaneous asides so beloved of Israeli speakers who use them to insert a personal touch to a public statement. When Yair Lapid, a published author and prolific journalist, took the oath of office as Prime Minister, he felt compelled to personalize the prescribed oath formula, on his face an ironic smile, his voice modulated as if to ease off the solemn occasion. Netanyahu, by contrast, knows better.     

But different styles can bring about similar outcomes. Adlib Trump and scripted Netanyahu may speak differently, but both insist on speaking only when they have nothing to say.