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They Admit Defeat Without Acknowledging Its Causes

When the results become undeniable, yet those responsible remain prisoners of their own illusions ... Two twins sharing defeat and the chaos of the Middle East, but unwilling to share responsibility for the reasons behind it.

Defeat is not always about losing a battle, retreating at the ballot box, or even finding yourself surrounded by opponents you never imagined would unite against you. The most painful defeat is to see its consequences unfolding before your very eyes, reluctantly acknowledge them, and then search for their causes everywhere except in the mirror standing right in front of you.

That is precisely the picture that brings Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu together: two twins of defeat and partners in manufacturing chaos in the Middle East, even if their paths have differed and the arenas of their failures have not been the same. Both appear to be living in a world whose expiry date has passed, yet they insist on managing the present with the tools of the past, seeking explanations for the erosion of their influence in the conspiracies of others rather than in the consequences of their own actions.

Trump, who during his first years in office left virtually no domestic or foreign policy issue untouched by controversy, and no ally, adversary, or even country far removed from his political geography without engaging it in one confrontation or another, now seems to have suddenly discovered that his opponents are far more numerous than he imagined. From immigration to the economy, from judicial institutions to the media, and from traditional allies to international rivals, his approach to governing was less that of a president seeking common ground than that of a man who sees every disagreement as a personal battle and every battle as an opportunity to prove that he cannot be defeated.

The war with Iran alone was not responsible for this shift in the American political mood, nor can the Republicans' electoral decline be reduced to its repercussions. The fronts that have widened against Trump are the product of a prolonged accumulation of policies, decisions, and polarization, eventually reaching electoral strongholds that had remained immune to this kind of decline for decades. Nevertheless, the president could find no simpler explanation than to claim that if his own name had been on the ballot, this defeat would never have happened!

What a wonderfully absurd recipe for explaining electoral defeat! Hundreds of Republican candidates running for seats in both chambers of Congress and for state governorships, many of whom enjoyed his support and endorsement, apparently failed to meet the required standard. Or perhaps the voters simply misunderstood the genius of the political project he leads. The possibility that the policies themselves had driven voters to punish the party seems not even worthy of being placed on the discussion table.

Across the Atlantic, Benjamin Netanyahu appears no more willing to revisit his political memory. He has conveniently forgotten the four years of his premiership that brought him to the brink of political collapse, amid an unprecedented judicial crisis, mass demonstrations flooding the streets, and a social and political divide that threatened to dismantle what had been presented as a model of Israeli democracy. October 7 was not merely an event that interrupted the course of his political downfall; it became a turning point that reshuffled priorities and opened the doors to a prolonged war, one that could postpone the questions of accountability, but never erase them. It ultimately drove Palestinian citizens of Israel to the ballot boxes in unprecedented numbers, seeking to defend themselves.

But what have all these years of war brought other than an even heavier burden of questions? The unspoken sentiment among Israelis is that the country has not experienced an event of such magnitude, shock, and disruption to its sense of security since the Holocaust. Nor were the subsequent failures to decisively settle the confrontations on the various fronts Netanyahu proudly lists merely military details that could be brushed aside with a victorious speech or a press conference. The war that Israelis were promised would restore their security and deterrence has instead left them with a more complicated regional reality, a more divided society, and institutions confronted with difficult questions of responsibility and accountability, in addition to human, political, and economic costs that cannot simply be erased from memory.

Yet Netanyahu continues to present himself as the man who saved Israel from existential threats, as though the years preceding October 7 had nothing to do with his responsibility, as though the management and outcome of the war did not warrant scrutiny, and as though the multiplication of military fronts were proof of victory rather than evidence of an expanding circle of danger.

This is precisely where the stories of the two men intersect. Trump wants to convince Americans that the defeat of his candidates is not a defeat for his political project, while Netanyahu wants to convince Israelis that his failures do not constitute a failure of his leadership. The former blames candidates, circumstances, and voters for what happened; the latter invokes external threats to postpone the reckoning at home. Both acknowledge the outcome once denying it becomes impossible, yet refuse to acknowledge the path that led them there.

Perhaps the most strikingly ironic aspect is that the two men, whose political and strategic partnership brought them together in manufacturing many of the region's scenes of chaos, now appear to be asking others to pay the price for their mistakes. Trump wants Americans to place even greater confidence in him despite the widening front of opposition against him, while Netanyahu wants Israelis to renew his mandate despite the fact that the record of his years in power has become part of the very problem from which they are searching for a way out.

The problem is not that a politician loses an election or fails to win a war; these are possibilities inherent in the life of nations and governments. The real problem is treating defeat as a passing incident, criticism as treason, change as a conspiracy, and everyone who disagrees as an enemy who must be eliminated.

For politics, regardless of the power of weapons, the influence of money, or the noise of public platforms, remains governed by an unchanging rule: you cannot pick a fight with the entire world and then expect the world to stand behind you when you need it.

And so, the two men admit defeat without acknowledging its causes. One searches for his missing name on the ballot papers, while the other searches for a victory that his multiple fronts have failed to deliver. Between them, the Middle East continues to pay the bills for their illusions, while the world waits for those in power to grasp a simple truth: change does not ask anyone's permission before knocking on their door, and detachment from reality does not stop the hands of the clock; it merely makes the eventual collision with reality more costly and painful.

For nothing is more dangerous to the defeated than defeat itself, except the belief that it is the world that has misjudged his victory.