Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidant and key architect of Israel’s U.S. policy, is widely credited with steering the country’s alignment toward the American right and evangelical Christians, even at the expense of relations with Democrats.
According to a report published Sunday in The Wall Street Journal, Dermer, dubbed "Netanyahu’s top Trump whisperer," reportedly "speaks Trump’s language,” as the paper put it, and was instrumental in convincing Netanyahu to accept the U.S.-brokered framework to end the war in Gaza, led by President Donald Trump. The report called Dermer “key to maintaining U.S. support for the war and cutting a deal to end it largely on Israel’s terms.”
Netanyahu, in his 2022 memoir, recalled how Dermer used golf terminology when talking to Trump, the president’s favorite sport. Dermer maintained close contact with him both during Trump’s previous term and since his return to office. During the White House announcement of the Gaza ceasefire plan last month, Trump twice interrupted his remarks to address someone in the front row: “Right, Ron?” he said, seeking confirmation.
The Journal also examined what it described as Israel’s “bet” on the American right. “That bet has won Netanyahu’s government strong support from the Trump administration during the war, when it was facing increasing international isolation over the growing humanitarian toll in Gaza,” the report said. “ It also hemmed in Israeli leaders when Trump demanded that they back his peace plan.”
In 2021, Dermer said publicly that “the backbone of Israel’s support in the United States is the evangelical Christians,” adding that Israel should devote far more outreach efforts to them than to American Jews.
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Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
(Photo: The Knesset)
In the months leading up to the deal with Hamas, Dermer reportedly visited Washington at least once a month. In the week before Trump announced the agreement, Dermer spent several hours with U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, finalizing details of the ceasefire plan. He played “the leading role in getting last-minute changes that favored Israel and angered Arab officials who had committed to backing it,” according to the report.
Dermer’s strategy, the paper said, “came to a head while he served as Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021.” He did things that, it noted, “Democrats and some American Jews worried reflected more loyalty to Netanyahu and his right-wing agenda than to the overall U.S.-Israel relationship.”
The report also revisited Dermer’s earlier involvement in Republican politics. In 2012, while serving as a senior adviser to Netanyahu, he helped organize a visit to Israel for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney during his campaign against then-President Barack Obama. A year later, he spoke at a Republican Jewish Coalition event organized by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, a prominent Netanyahu supporter, to assess potential Republican presidential candidates.
In 2015, Dermer and then-House Speaker John Boehner coordinated Netanyahu’s controversial speech to Congress opposing the Iran nuclear deal, a move that defied the Obama administration. Dermer, who wrote the speech, was later deemed unwelcome among many Democrats on Capitol Hill, the Journal reported.
The report concluded that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has further alienated Democrats from Israel and suggested that Dermer’s long-standing political strategy may have forced Netanyahu’s hand. “Israel couldn’t afford to risk losing Trump’s support,” the Journal wrote, “Without it, there was no one left on the other side to take up Israel’s cause.”