Donald Trump
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Former Israeli ambassador Yoram Ettinger praised US President Donald Trump's threat to cut off aid to any country which voted to condemn the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel at the United Nations General Assembly today, arguing that under Trump, the US had regained its position as leader of the free world.

Speaking at the last Cabinet meeting of 2017, Trump said that the US would take note of the countries which receive hundreds of millions, and even billions, of dollars in US aid, yet still vote against the US at the UN over his acknowledgement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

“They take hundreds of millions of dollars and even billions of dollars, and then they vote against us. Well, we’re watching those votes. Let them vote against us. We’ll save a lot. We don’t care,” he told reporters before the Cabinet meeting according to Reuters

Speaking with Arutz Sheva, Ettinger said that while it was too early to see whether the president would back up his threat with action, it remained a welcome change to US policy.

"We need to see whether these threats will indeed be implemented, but there is no doubt that there is a consistent policy here by the president of the United States that has ended the era of appeasement and apology as it was during Obama's time."

"The era of concessions to opponents and enemies such as the Ayatollahs, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and other terrorist organizations is over. Now the American policy under Trump will be determined by America's interests. That means, among other things, that [the US will] not accept that a body such as the UN, a large percentage of which is funded by the American taxpayer and which sits on American soil, will act systematically against America."

Ettinger hopes that Western European countries will also internalize the message: "Europe relies on 70,000 American soldiers, and their are tens of thousands of American troops stationed in Japan and South Korea. These nations receive security aid from the US every year, and this is the reward the US receives. Now Trump says that this era is over."

The American president understands that in order to lead the free world [the US] must not base its policies on the threats of others. This is a move that serves American interests. The message is that the US is not deterred by the threats of an Arab boycott or Islamic terror. That's not the way one pretends to be the leader of the free world, so Trump's decision is important.

"The same thing about the Palestinian issue. If Trump will act in accordance with his words will be the first president to make it clear to the world that he does not buy the myth that the Palestinian issue is the heart of the crises in the Middle East. Until Trump, all the US presidents bought into the myth that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the center of the Middle East, and then Trump came and refuted this assumption. Will his refreshing declarations be turned into action?"