From “America First” to “Israel First”

At the beginning of his last election campaign, Donald Trump delivered a speech that, on the surface, seemed to be a reversal of traditional American politics. He raised the slogan “America First” and pledged not to involve the United States in foreign wars, presenting himself as a candidate who would save Americans from the drain of blood and money in military adventures that brought them no benefit. However, this rhetoric quickly collided with a completely different reality, a reality that revealed that “America First” was merely an electoral slogan, while the actual policy placed Israel at the forefront of priorities, even at the expense of everything Trump claimed he sought to protect.What the region witnessed in successive explosions, and what it is witnessing today in increasing American involvement behind Israel, proves that the American administration has not moved away from the logic of wars, but rather has reproduced it in a more blatant way, where American interests have been organically linked to Israel's agenda, and Washington has been transformed into an open political and military umbrella for its wars, without any regard for regional repercussions or the cost that Americans themselves pay from their money, security, and stability.Under Trump, the United States transformed from a power claiming to manage conflicts into a direct party in fueling them, and from a country talking about withdrawal to a player pushing to expand the scope of fire, not in defense of its national security, but in defense of the Israeli project, until it became clear that American blood, like the blood of the peoples of the region, could be sacrificed if it served to keep Israel superior and protected from any accountability or pressure.This absolute bias revealed the falsity of the claim that Trump represented a break with the traditional establishment in Washington, as it quickly became clear that he had reproduced the essence of American policy itself, based on presenting Israel as an indisputable strategic priority, and on justifying all its aggressive policies, no matter their human and political cost, and no matter how much they destabilized the Middle East and pushed it towards open wars with no horizon.The most dangerous aspect of this path is that Trump did not hesitate to gamble with American interests themselves, whether by endangering American soldiers, or by draining the public treasury, or by deepening hatred towards the United States in the region and the world, all in order to maintain the image of “the ally who does not abandon Israel,” even if the price was burning the entire Middle East, and turning it into a permanent conflict zone that serves only one project.Trump's foreign policy was not an exception to the rule, but rather a more explicit expression of it, as the mask quickly fell, and it became clear that “America First” was nothing but an empty slogan, while the constant truth, confirmed by the facts, is that Israel has remained and will remain first and foremost among American priorities, even if that contradicts the interests of Americans themselves, and even if the whole world pays the price for this blind bias.In contrast, the Gaza war created a deep rift within American consciousness itself, where the official narrative no longer enjoyed the consensus it had for decades. Instead, American public opinion, especially among young people and economically disadvantaged classes, began to raise fundamental questions about the utility of this absolute bias. With the escalating scenes of destruction and killing in the Gaza Strip, a new internal discourse emerged, clearly speaking about American tax money that citizens need for health, education, and social security, but which is being diverted to support Israel and its open wars, at a time when millions of Americans are suffering from suffocating living crises.This shift is no longer marginal or isolated, but has become part of a broad public debate that questions the role played by American politicians, and with them a large number of former presidents, in dragging the United States into wars that do not serve its national interests or its internal security, but rather serve Israel's agenda and its regional superiority. As this awareness expands, the ability of traditional discourse to market wars as a defense of “values” or “national security” is diminishing, to be replaced by a simple but dangerous question: Why do Americans pay the price for wars that do not concern them, and why are Israel's interests always prioritized over the needs of American society itself? This question is likely to reshape American policy in the future, and to put this historical bias to an unprecedented test.