How Israel Lost Its Way and How Trump Can Save Lebanon

By Thomas L. Friedman

If you are looking for two pictures that summarize where Israel’s geopolitical strategy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has taken the country, you could not do better than a couple of snapshots featured over the weekend in the Israeli press. The first is a photograph of an Israeli soldier using a sledgehammer to smash a statue of Jesus in Debel, a Maronite Christian village in south Lebanon a few miles north of the Israeli border.

The picture, the Times of Israel diplomatic reporter Lazar Berman wrote, “so perfectly encapsulated some of the worst tropes about Israel and Jews that many instinctively assumed it was an A.I.-generated product meant to slander the Jewish state. Friends of Israel who thought the photograph might be........

© The New York Times