It’s not America that objects, it’s the joker living in the White House.

(JPost) — Saying publicly in the Knesset what he had only said privately to congressional leaders in Washington last week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu stressed on Wednesday that Israel would act to defend itself even if the US objected.

“Israel has never left its fate in the hands of others, not even in the hands of our best friends,” he said in a speech that focused on the Iranian threat and drew a direct line from Tehran to the events earlier this week in Gaza. He also blamed the 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip for leading to Iran’s establishment of a “forward” terrorist base there.

Netanyahu cited legendary US secretary of state George Marshall as telling David Ben-Gurion in 1948 not to declare a state, and reminded the Knesset that US president Lyndon Johnson not only advised Israel against preemptive military action in 1967, but warned that “if you act alone, you will be alone.”

Likewise, he said, former prime minister Menachem Begin knew when he decided to attack the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 that he was going against US wishes and would come under sharp international criticism.

“But he fulfilled his obligation and acted,” said Netanyahu, possibly preparing the public for the prospect of Israeli military action even over US objections.

The prime minister said that a nuclear Iran would pose an “existential threat” to Israel, and that while he would prefer it if Iran voluntarily abandoned its nuclear ambitions, he had an “obligation” to retain Israel’s “independent ability” to defend itself.