ISRAEL HAYOM (by agreement with JNS)
The real reason for Netanyahu’s trip to Washington
Amit Segal
July 31, 2026

The contradictory accounts of the Trump–Netanyahu meeting (a public cold shoulder, or “the best meeting ever”) and the focus on technical but important details (there was no one-on-one meeting; no journalists were invited) ignore a more basic question: what was its purpose? Why, in fact, did Netanyahu travel to Washington? In January the goal was advancing what would later become known as Operation “Roaring Lion.” A year earlier—blocking bad hostage deals and the strike on Fordow by American bombers. But what now? Is the goal to renew the war? It is not clear that Israel is interested in such a renewal at any price. Minister Smotrich went all the way to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes with the claim that the current situation is, in fact, the best one for Israel.Ravid Makovsky, a commentator and scholar who knows both sides of the Atlantic well, offered a plausible explanation, one that also accounts for why there were no cameras at the summit but there was a row of senior American officials. READ MORE

MEDIA LINE Pickaxe Mountain Exposes Divide Between President Trump and Netanyahu on Iran, Expert Says Hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered the Oval Office on Tuesday, President Donald Trump publicly questioned why the Israeli leader had announced that he was bringing new intelligence about an Iranian site known as Pickaxe Mountain. “I don’t need Bibi to tell me that. Bibi is telling me that because he wants me to stay involved,” President Trump told Fox News. He then sharpened the rebuke: “Why don’t you just tell it to me? Why do you have to announce it to the world?”

ISRAEL HAYOM Nearly half of Americans support arresting Netanyahu Nearly half of Americans believe the United States should arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu under the warrant issued against him by the International Criminal Court, according to an Economist/YouGov poll published Tuesday night as he visited the White House. Forty-nine percent of respondents said Netanyahu should be arrested upon arriving in the United States, compared with 27% who said he should not. The partisan divide was clear: 68% of Democrats supported his arrest, compared with just 24% of Republicans. The poll also found that 47% of Americans believed Netanyahu’s actions had damaged relations between the United States and Israel. That view was shared by 61% of Democrats and 30% of Republicans.