Staunchly pro-Israel Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the co-author of a bill that directly targets the BDS movement, said banning the lawmakers, Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.), was a “mistake” because “Being blocked is what they really hoped for all along in order to bolster their attacks against the Jewish state.” Rep. Eliot L. Engel (D-N.Y.), another leading proponent of anti-BDS legislation, also condemned Israel’s decision, without mentioning Trump. Even the American Israel Public Affairs Committee made its disagreement with the Israeli decision known, in an exceptionally rare public statement.

It appeared bipartisan in U.S. politics: Israel is committing a major affront to the United States. (On Friday morning, Israel agreed to let Tlaib visit her grandmother in the occupied West Bank after she appealed on humanitarian grounds and promised not to engage in boycotts while there, but then Tlaib announced that visiting her grandmother “under these oppressive conditions stands against everything I believe in” and declined the offer.) But the real culprit for the decision somehow escaped most of the criticism, and he sits not in Jerusalem but in Washington. “It would show great weakness if Israel allowed Rep. Omar and Rep. Tlaib to visit,” President Trump declared on Twitter Thursday morning. “They hate Israel & all Jewish people, & there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds.” Up to then, Netanyahu’s government had been all set to let Tlaib and Omar visit; Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer made clear last month that out of respect for Congress and for the U.S.-Israel relationship, the government would not deny entry to any lawmaker. As Israeli journalist Barak Ravid argued, “There is only one reason for Netanyahu’s backtracking today — the pressure from Donald Trump.”

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Trump is happy to pose as the great defender of Israel and the Jewish people — and Netanyahu, fighting to remain in power, is happy to oblige. But the outcome the White House engineered won’t work out well for either. Banning Omar and Tlaib is about demonizing the Democratic Party and has nothing to do with the interests of either Israel or Jews. But the way the U.S. political establishment reacted to it shows that this time, the president has somehow managed to make people blame Israel for his own cynical strategy of weaponizing charges of anti-Semitism.

Netanyahu and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman both claimed later Thursday that the reason for the backtrack was that once they saw Omar and Tlaib’s itinerary, it was clear that the trip was purely an effort to promote BDS and delegitimize Israel. Netanyahu’s official English account on Twitter specified that there were no meetings with Israeli officials planned, “either from the government or the opposition.” However, Omar’s office confirmed to me that she had planned meetings, separate from the formal itinerary, with members of Israel’s Joint List, the political slate of four parties representing Israel’s Palestinian citizens and the third-largest party in Israel’s Knesset — a point Knesset Member Aida Touma Suleiman also made public Thursday. Omar also had a meeting in the works with former U.S. ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, a vigorous opponent of her politics, according to a spokesman.

Obviously, the only way the leader of Israel — the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid — could get away with the unprecedented move of denying entry to American members of Congress would be at the direct behest of the U.S. president.

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Still, only a few Democrats argued that Trump should be held accountable at least as much as Netanyahu. In her statement responding to the decision, Omar said that “Trump’s Muslim ban is what Israel is implementing.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also blamed Trump for “exporting his bigotry.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is Jewish, went further, specifically calling out Trump’s weaponization of Israel and anti-Semitism for political purposes: “Anti-Semitism is not some abstract idea to me. It is very personal. It destroyed a good part of my family. I absolutely reject Trump’s disgusting efforts to exploit fear of anti-Semitism to attack my colleagues.”

But the same Democratic leaders who spent Thursday blasting Israel — like Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Engel — bear responsibility for Trump’s latest maneuver, too. They have empowered Trump’s incitement against Omar and Tlaib by advancing the argument that the BDS movement the lawmakers support is anti-Semitic, by appearing skittish about their criticism of Israel, and by failing to formulate a resolute policy that unabashedly holds Israel accountable for its destructive policies.