Mona Charen

And in this, Trump had part of a point.

The U.S.

spends 10 times more on defense, and plus the U.S.

provides the nuclear umbrella.

And so while the Europeans are now having to think about possibly looking for friendlier climes, looking for people who do agree with them about democracy, about the rule of law, about international law and all of those things, where Trump seems far less like a traditional American and more Putin-esque.

And yet, still, the challenge, the actual just physical challenge of Europe, the idea that they are going to be able to replace the American contribution defense-wise is very tough.

So it is worrisome on many levels.

First of all, there's sort of a pincer movement where you have people on the progressive left who despise Israel because they consider it a settler-colonialist imposition on the Middle East that is a sort of a cat's paw for imperialism in the West.

And then you have the hatred of Israel and

frankly, end up Jews coming from the hard right in the United States, the Tucker Carlsons and so forth, who are influencing the younger generation of Republicans.

So the hatred for Israel is coming from both sides.

And Netanyahu seems to have made a calculation that he's aware of this declining support for Israel in the United States.

And he seems to be saying, yep,

In the future, we're not going to have the U.S., and so we're going to go for everything right now while we've got Trump, try to get everything done, eliminate Iran as a threat, eliminate Hezbollah, Hamas, and then we will be secure and we won't have to worry about American good opinion.

Although –

I don't know.

It could be that the Israelis are happy to see the Saudis being the ones to push Trump to continue the war so that it doesn't fall on them.

But I think they would be happy to continue the war as well.

So could I just—I agree with pretty much everything you said, with one exception, where you talked about the progressives were broadly pro-Israel until Gaza.

I don't think that's quite right.