WASHINGTON, DC — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu famously sees Winston Churchill as his model of wartime leadership.

A bust of Britain’s World War II prime minister keeps a stern and watchful eye over his office, and the premier regularly invokes Churchill in his landmark speeches, especially in his addresses to the US Congress. (Netanyahu surpassed Churchill as the world leader to give the most such speeches when he delivered his fourth in 2024).

Yet while Netanyahu presents Churchill in his speeches as a brave lone voice insisting on the necessity of war against evil over naive diplomacy, in fact, after World War II, the British prime minister argued for high-level Cold War diplomacy to avoid military conflict. “Meeting jaw-to-jaw is better than war,” said Churchill during a 1954 luncheon in Washington, DC.

And though Netanyahu may mold himself after the wartime bulldog, US President Donald Trump has displayed a clear preference for the postwar Churchill’s approach.

Trump is certainly willing to order the targeted use of US military force — as seen in Yemen, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia and Nigeria — but he believes in giving direct talks and international summits a chance.

In his October Sharm El-Sheikh summit marking the ostensible end of the fighting in Gaza, Trump had world leaders standing awkwardly behind him as he called them up one by one to thank them.

“Together, we’ve achieved what everybody said was impossible. At long last, we have peace in the Middle East,” beamed Trump. “After years of suffering and bloodshed, the war in Gaza is over.”

On Iran, too, Trump is creating space for diplomacy.

He issued a series of unequivocal threats against the Islamic Republic if it killed protesters. “I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots… we’re going to hit them very hard,” he said in early January.

Then Iran went ahead and killed thousands of protesters and, while he ordered significant US firepower to the region, Trump agreed to hold high-level talks with the regime.

Netanyahu came to the White House on........

© The Times of Israel