لحظة ادراك

 

The Great Tuesday

When Americans say “Enough,” and the Israelis get there a week earlier... The question remains: What will the losers do when they awaken from their coma and confront the transformations unfolding around them?

When results of such magnitude come in, not even AIPAC’s millions or Musk’s influence can stand in their way. After a long journey marked by bloodshed, recklessness, bullying, and daylight robbery, certain days are bound to arrive whose significance cannot be measured by the number of ballot boxes closed or votes counted, but rather by the profound shifts they reveal in the public mood and the cracks they leave in the walls of power. The Great Tuesday, as we might call this extraordinary electoral coincidence, was no ordinary election date in two countries separated by thousands of miles. It seemed instead like a dual referendum on a single political experiment, one that brought Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu together and pushed the world to the brink of turmoil that could no longer be dismissed as mere collateral political damage.

In Israel, the elections delivered a message that went far beyond the boundaries of party competition: a substantial segment of society was no longer willing to bear the cost of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies, nor to continue following a government that had made multiple wars the defining feature of its political existence and successive crises a means of postponing its domestic obligations. In the United States, the midterm elections likewise revealed that a substantial segment of Americans was no longer willing to pay the price of the Trump experiment, with all its domestic polarization, unprecedented economic hardship, turmoil in international relations, and declining trust in allies, friends, and adversaries alike.

Thus, on opposite shores of the ocean, the scene unfolded as though voters were telling the two men what diplomacy had failed to say for years: nations do not belong to their rulers, and peoples are not obliged to pay the price of their ambitions indefinitely.

When One Loser Calls Upon Another

Perhaps the strangest irony in this story is that Benjamin Netanyahu did not content himself with managing his electoral battle inside Israel. Instead, he summoned the President of the United States into the arena, in a spectacle for which it is difficult to find a precedent in political and diplomatic conventions. A prime minister openly seeking the intervention of another country's president to secure his political survival, as though Israeli elections were no longer an exclusively Israeli affair, and as though the ballot box required a certificate of good conduct from the White House.

Donald Trump, for his part, saw no reason to hold back from joining the battle. He threw his support behind Netanyahu, reminding Israelis of what his administration had done for Israel, as though the relationship between the two countries had become an open ledger in which military and political assistance was recorded, only to be collected later in the form of electoral votes.

Nor did matters stop there. The intervention reached an unprecedented level when Trump entered into a verbal confrontation with the Israeli president over his position on Netanyahu’s pardon request. At that point, it was no longer simply a case of electoral support for a political ally. It seemed as though the President of the United States was treating the sovereign institutions of an allied country as an extension of his own personal sphere of influence.

Yet the irony is that summoning one another did nothing, according to the premise underlying this scene, to change the direction of the electoral winds. Trump could not give Netanyahu the electoral capital he needed, just as Netanyahu could not provide Trump with the image of an international victory he so desperately sought.

It was as though the two men had called upon each other to rescue a single vessel, only to discover that the sea was wider than their calculations, and that the holes in their ship could not be plugged with speeches and declarations.

An Alliance of Interests or a Shared Destiny?

It would be politically naive to believe that the relationship between the two men was merely a personal friendship or a passing convergence between two leaders. There was a profound intersection of interests and political visions, in their approach to power, opponents, and institutions, and in their shared conviction that possessing strength grants its owner the right to redefine the rules of the game.

Trump sees the world through the window of deals, where every position has a price, every ally comes with a bill, and every crisis represents a commercial or political opportunity. Netanyahu, meanwhile, sees the region through the lens of security, force, and hegemony, where wars do not necessarily end in settlements but can instead become instruments for reshaping geography and politics.

Between these two windows, a partnership emerged whose consequences were not confined to the United States and Israel. They extended to Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, and ultimately reached Washington’s relations with its European and Arab allies.

The Immediate Consequences of a Catastrophic Midterm Election

When ballot boxes punish the occupant of the White House, and the war with Iran shifts from a project promising victory into an electoral liability threatening his political future, the night of November 3, 2026, will not be an ordinary night in American political history. The ballot boxes that Republicans approached with the confidence of victors delivered a message Donald Trump had no desire to read: American voters had pulled the political ground from beneath his feet, handing Democrats control of both chambers of Congress in a defeat that went beyond the loss of seats to resemble a popular referendum on his presidency and policies.

It was not simply a matter of anger over rising prices or declining purchasing power, although the economy featured prominently in voters’ calculations. The war with Iran was also one of the heavy burdens that forced Republicans to pay a steep political price. Wars launched with promises of swift victory do not always retain their power to persuade when they turn into an open-ended bill, with weapons expenditures rising alongside the growing lists of anxieties inside American homes.

Trump, who had grown accustomed to presenting himself as the man capable of subduing adversaries and forcing the world to march to his rhythm, discovered that ballot boxes, too, possess their own instruments of deterrence. The voter who granted him a mandate two years earlier was under no obligation to issue him an open-ended pardon.

In Tehran, meanwhile, the results may look like an unexpected political gift. Trump, who entered the confrontation with Iran betting on military force and economic pressure, now finds himself facing a hostile Congress capable of obstructing his agenda, reopening investigations into his administration, scrutinizing military spending, and raising the political and financial costs of continuing the war. But this does not mean Democrats will grant Tehran a mandate to claim victory, nor that Washington will abandon its security interests. American calculations regarding Iran extend far beyond the identity of the party in power.

The irony is that Trump may find himself facing two equally bitter choices: either pursue a settlement presented as a realistic way out of the quagmire of war, but which could be perceived as a retreat from his promises and threats; or cling to escalation, with all the additional risks of attrition it entails, while handing his Democratic opponents a rich supply of political ammunition with which to hold him accountable and tighten the pressure on his administration.

In Israel, these transformations will hardly pass without concern. Benjamin Netanyahu, who had counted on an American ally to provide him with political and military cover, may discover that Washington, which he had grown accustomed to approaching through the White House, is no longer what it once was. Congress itself has become a new battleground over the future of the American-Israeli relationship.

But the bigger question is not whether Trump has lost the midterm elections. It is whether he can continue waging a foreign war while losing his battle at home.

Presidents may declare wars and raise victory flags above their podiums, but they cannot always convince their people that bloodshed, expenditures, and fears are merely minor details on the road to glory.

American voters have reshuffled the cards, perhaps forcing Trump to confront a truth he has long ignored: not everyone capable of igniting wars is capable of controlling how they end, and not everyone who holds the escalation button possesses the keys to escaping its consequences.

Trump’s defeat does not necessarily mean the end of the war with Iran. It does, however, mean that the war has entered a new phase. It is no longer merely a confrontation between Washington and Tehran; it has also become a battle within Washington itself, between a president determined to preserve his image of strength and a Congress that now possesses the political and oversight tools to constrain his actions.

So, how many Great Tuesdays will the world need—Tuesdays of such magnitude—to rid itself of tyranny, bullying, and hegemony?