Well, they won’t have Ron Dermer to kick around anymore.
It’s not often that Richard Nixon’s famous lament fits Israeli politics, but in Dermer’s case, it does.
For months, the strategic affairs minister has been a convenient punching bag – the favorite target of hostage families, opposition figures, and sections of the media that never forgave him for being too American, too detached, and too loyal to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Protesters regularly gathered outside his home, columnists dismissed him as tone-deaf, and native-born commentators bewailed that he is “not one of us.”
But that is now behind him. With his resignation from the cabinet this week, the noise will subside, and the government will lose not merely a minister, but arguably the most consequential US immigrant on the political scene since Golda Meir.
Dermer’s departure letter – written in both Hebrew and English – was vintage Dermer. He thanked Netanyahu for the trust placed in him “to handle the most significant issues facing Israel at this critical time,” cast his tenure through the prism of October 7 and the two-year war that followed, and closed by putting everything in the broader perspective of Jewish history.
“One hundred generations of Jews dreamed of living at a time when there would be a sovereign Jewish state,” he wrote. “Four generations have had the privilege of realizing that dream. With that privilege comes a sacred responsibility: to secure that dream for future generations.”
Admirers read that as conviction; detractors, as self-importance.
In a 2011 interview with Tablet, Dermer – at the time Netanyahu’s senior adviser – said he “wanted to do something where every day I could have an impact in some way on a country that was making these great historic decisions.” By that measure, he undoubtedly succeeded – few nonpoliticians have had as significant an impact on Israel’s policies over the last 15 years.
US pollster Frank Luntz, who taught Dermer at the University of Pennsylvania and for whom Dermer briefly worked after college, described him as someone for whom “it wasn’t politics, it was policy that he was interested in.” That distinction explains both Dermer’s impact and the irritation in some that he triggered.
Dermer was never a backslapper or a schmoozer, not an Israeli hevre-man, not someone for whom the constant glad-handing and bar-mitzvah-going performative side of Israeli politics came naturally. Nevertheless, gifted with an astonishing memory and an ability to draw on historical precedent, his intellect and conviction allowed him to argue Israel’s case abroad with unusual clarity. His problem – and perhaps the reason parts of the Israeli public never really took a shine to him – was that he rarely did the same inside Israel for a domestic audience.
Dermer's rise from Miami Beach to Israel's political echelon
BORN AND RAISED in Miami Beach, the son and brother of Democratic mayors, Dermer made aliyah in the late 1990s and went to work as a pollster for Natan Sharansky’s fledgling Yisrael B’Aliya Party. It was Sharansky who introduced him to Netanyahu.
Dermer, like many veteran US immigrants, never shed his Americanness – in either accent or demeanor. And that grated on parts of Israel’s secular old guard, who saw him as yet another kippah-clad American interloper Netanyahu liked to surround himself with – someone they felt was robbing them of their natural birthright to determine the country’s direction.
Channel 12 commentator Amnon Abramovich once questioned whether Dermer was “deeply Israeli,” mocking him for not knowing his Arik Einstein from his Zohar Argov. It was an arrogant insult – as if one’s right to help shape Israeli policy depends on pop-culture fluency.
Dermer did little to combat that perception, largely keeping the Hebrew-speaking media at a distance. He rarely granted Hebrew interviews, convinced that the local press would never give him –as Netanyahu’s right-hand man – a fair hearing.
Top-tier journalists were also unaccustomed to a person in his position neither courting them nor caring overmuch about what they thought or wrote.
The antagonism was mutual and self-reinforcing: Dermer dismissed the media as biased; the media portrayed him as inaccessible and distant. As a result, one of Israel’s most influential figures over the last 15 years remained – inside Israel – one of its least understood.
IF DERMER’S public image was remote, his private reach was anything but. Inside Netanyahu’s small inner circle, Dermer’s influence was unmatched. He had no political base, no independent constituency, no personal ambition for office. As a result, he earned Netanyahu’s complete trust.
During his time as ambassador in Washington, from 2013 to 2021, Dermer’s interlocutors knew that when they spoke to him, they were talking to Netanyahu – and that when Dermer spoke, he did so with the prime minister’s full authority.
During this period, he helped negotiate the $38 billion US military aid memorandum in 2016, and in 2014 his back-channel diplomacy with the Obama administration during Operation Protective Edge secured critical resupply for Iron Dome.
But his ambassadorial tenure was also divisive. The 2015 Netanyahu address to Congress opposing the Iran nuclear deal – orchestrated largely by Dermer – earned him the admiration of Republicans and the resentment of Democrats, who accused him of undermining bipartisan consensus. Critics say this was the moment that tethered Israel’s US policy too tightly to one party and cemented Israel as a partisan issue.
Dermer has consistently rejected that criticism, retorting that support for Israel in the polls went up after that speech and noting that it helped pave the way for the Abraham Accords, as the Gulf states saw that Israel was dead serious about combating Iran – so serious that the prime minister would publicly take on the US president.
The controversy over that speech also reshaped Israel’s standing in Washington. It frayed one set of relationships but strengthened another, laying the groundwork for the deep bonds Dermer would later forge with the inner circle of US President Donald Trump. Those bonds paid off when Trump returned to office in 2025.
Dermer’s centrality in Israeli diplomacy only recently peaked
Dermer’s centrality in Israeli diplomacy reached its peak over the past two years. His hand was in nearly every major diplomatic development, and he was instrumental in two of the most critical undertakings: convincing Trump of the need for strikes on Iran’s nuclear and missile infrastructure last summer, and advancing the near-final normalization deal with Saudi Arabia that was days from completion before October 7.
Dermer is widely credited with bridging the final gaps between Jerusalem and Washington regarding the strikes against Iran, framing them as a preemptive necessity that served the interests of both countries. Those strikes, which significantly set back Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs and exposed the Islamic Republic as a paper tiger, will likely stand as one of Dermer’s lasting legacies.
Dermer’s ability to speak Trump’s language – and to align Israel’s strategic needs with Trump’s political instincts – strengthened Netanyahu’s hand in Washington.
During his speech in the Knesset last month, Trump twice broke from his Gaza ceasefire remarks to acknowledge Dermer. “You did a great job, by the way, Ron,” he said at one point. This was more than familiarity; it was recognition. Dermer was Israel’s “Trump whisperer,” whose understanding of the interests of both countries kept them moving in tandem.
The Saudi track told a similar story. By September 2023, negotiations appeared within reach of a public breakthrough. Dermer was a key player in this saga, in regular contact with senior Saudi and American intermediaries. Then came October 7. The deal froze, the war began, and Dermer’s focus shifted.
AS THE war unfolded, Netanyahu tasked him with the most fraught job in government: leading the hostage-deal negotiations. The appointment elevated him but also exposed him. Hostage families and opposition leaders accused him of obstruction and secrecy; demonstrators regularly protested outside his home, hurling epithets and callously portraying him as indifferent to the hostages’ fate.
Dermer rarely responded publicly, believing the negotiations required discretion. His supporters say he was trying to manage impossible pressures – rescuing hostages while preserving military leverage. His critics counter that he misread the country’s emotional climate, applying the logic of discreet back-channel diplomacy to a context that demanded more openness and empathy.
The sheer multiplicity of his roles has created a situation where it will take more than one person to fill Dermer’s shoes. The strategic affairs minister was not just another minister or adviser; he was the bridge between Israel and Washington – fluent in both American politics and Israeli security. He grasped how Americans, especially in Washington, think and make decisions, and how Israelis operate.
He could take Trump’s instincts – the need for visible wins, the impatience with drawn-out diplomacy – and recast Israeli positions in ways that appealed to the White House. Likewise, he could take Israeli security priorities and frame them in American political terms. He knew which words and arguments would resonate on each side.
With Dermer’s departure, Ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter is expected to take on a larger role in managing the complexities of this critical relationship. Other diplomatic roles Dermer performed are likely to be picked up by Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar.
Even with his resignation, Dermer is expected to continue serving as an unofficial envoy for the prime minister on specific issues, similar to the role once held by the prime minister’s close adviser Yitzhak Molcho.
The strain and pressure of the job bled out in Dermer’s resignation letter, when he thanked his wife, Rhoda, for “sacrificing so much during the past three years.” This was more than just the conventional nod to one’s spouse; it was an acknowledgment that his family had endured enough during this period, and a sign that the constant vilification and intrusion into his family life had taken a toll.
Netanyahu – who once told reporters that Dermer was one of two people he thought worthy of replacing him, the other being former Mossad head Yossi Cohen – reportedly tried to dissuade him from leaving, offering him a guaranteed slot on the next Likud list. Dermer declined.
It was a revealing choice. After two decades at Netanyahu’s side, Dermer had no interest in joining the rough-and-tumble of Israeli politics he had so long avoided. Power was never his pursuit – which is precisely why Netanyahu trusted him so completely. Impact was.
And that he delivered – in abundance.