Commentary
With Trump’s weekend decision, Europe is now caught up in a war
Israel’s valet, Trump, has bowed to the demands of a war criminal who, like Putin, is under an International Criminal Court warrant. And here in Europe not a single government utters a word of condemnation.
As expected, Europeans have been humiliated and made fools of. Every one of our leaders – Italy’s included – was sound asleep. On Saturday, in a short Facebook post, I asked whether Donald Trump was capable of saying no to Israel, and who actually runs the world. Less than 24 hours later we had the answer.
Israel’s valet, Trump, has bowed to the demands of a war criminal who, like Putin, is under an International Criminal Court warrant. Yet here in Europe people keep drawing hair-splitting distinctions, and, unbelievably, not a single government utters a word of condemnation. We are now caught up in a war, because Iran may decide to target American bases not only in the Middle East but also in Europe and even in Italy. Trump warned no one, because he is an irresponsible man who treats the Europeans as his busboys – as we already saw at the G-7 summit, where he left without so much as a goodbye, and again on Saturday when France, Germany and the United Kingdom held a pointless meeting in Geneva with Iranian foreign minister Aragchi.
As for Netanyahu, he does not think us worthy of even a cursory WhatsApp message, while here, especially in Italy, we keep parroting the mantra that “Israel must defend itself.” Certainly – even if that means endangering our own citizens, the Iranian people and the thousands of Palestinians Israel continues to kill in Gaza. Only the foolish German chancellor Merz can claim that Israel is doing “the dirty work” for “all of us.” Israel wages its wars in systematic violation of international and humanitarian law, pursues interests opposed to ours and, with the United States-backed strike on Iran, has now started a war we never declared. Netanyahu shows Europeans – and Italy – nothing but contempt, methodically humiliating our diplomacy while the latter is childishly pleading for “de-escalation.”
This, after all, is what we deserve with leaders and media machines that never manage to foresee anything and treat war like the weather forecast or weekend traffic. That is how we behaved in the face of Gaza’s genocide: powerless, downright indifferent spectators. There is always an excuse for Israel, and we are ready to swallow even the biggest lies about Iran’s nuclear program – until we realize, as in Iraq in 2003, that we are marching to war without knowing why.
What will China and Russia do now? Beijing is worried because Iran, alongside Saudi Arabia, is its main oil supplier, and it fears Tehran, cornered by this Israeli-American attack, might close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a quarter of global crude flows – a move that would hurt all of us, not only the Chinese. Trump, who promised to end wars, is pleased: war on Iran is also a way to squeeze Europe, as we will learn when the tariff talks resume. The United States is drowning in debt and Trump wants us to foot the bill. Did anyone really expect something different?
The American president, at Netanyahu’s beck and call, is now gloating: Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this,” he boasted. He feels victory is at hand, in a conflict Netanyahu decided to start while Trump was still negotiating with the Iranians. Even while Trump is humiliating Europeans and their allies, he himself looks like a puppet manipulated by the Israeli prime minister – who, it must be said, also consults with Putin. The Russian leader is allied with Iran, which is supplying it with drones for the Ukraine war, but at the same time he also shares Netanyahu’s appetite for other people’s land. He does not want regime change in Tehran, but he seems unable to avoid a setback like the one already suffered in Syria. The West portrays Putin as a strategist, but he has failed to topple Zelensky or even keep Assad securely in power.
So what happens next? Netanyahu assures us that America’s entry into the war will “change history.” We should remember those words; we heard the same for Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. As we know, history was not changed in the way expected; and even worse, these warmongering pursuits will breed fresh chaos in the Middle East, the Mediterranean and right on our doorstep. Chaos is the tool the Netanyahu-Trump duo wants to use to decide the fate of peoples and nations: the ruined landscapes of Gaza and Iran await us too in the future. Did we really not know that already?
Originally published at https://ilmanifesto.it/siamo-entrati-in-guerra-senza-saperlo on 2025-06-22