Good News: There never has been in the American White House a better friend of Israel and Jews than Donald Trump.
Bad News: There probably never will be again. Ever.
And yet, even this “Best of Them All” has made several deals and taken several steps that seriously ignore Israel’s needs and priorities or even undercut them. And that is a blessing.
Consider and balance:
Trump recognized United Jerusalem as the eternal capital of Israel. Moved America’s Israel embassy there from Tel Aviv. Recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Declared that all Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are legal unless Israel’s own courts say they aren't. (It cannot be expected of him to be more supportive than that.)
He has called for evacuating all Arabs from Gaza. Enforces the most severe demands against colleges and universities that harbor or tolerate anti-Jewish behavior. Lifts other presidents’ arms embargoes against Israel and even increases previously agreed upon arms shipments. Appoints amazing ambassadors to Israel, the sort who publicly call for Israel to annex Judea and Samaria and extend full sovereignty there because (i) G-d gave all of Judea and Samaria to the Jews, and (ii) there is no such thing as “Palestine” anyway.
Trump is and has been great.
Threw the P.L.O. out of Washington, D.C. Cut off funding to UNRWA. Pulled America out of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Appoints better ambassadors to the United Nations than Israel does. Commuted a cruel and unjust sentence imposed in an anti-Semitic state with a record of imposing cruel prison sentences against Orthodox Jews. Brought about the inconceivable Abraham Accords and kept expanding them until Biden, Kamala Harris, Blinken, and the Democrats arrived to screw the whole thing up and kill the momentuim.
Trump has been so great for Israel and for Jews. The whole tenor in America toward Israel changed overnight when Trump and his Administration came in, and the haulers gently carried Biden out. Likewise, the atmosphere on college campuses has changed; compare last April-May to this year.
Even if the haters still hate just as much, or even more, now it is they who are scared. One false move, and their visas get revoked. A second false move, and G-d knows where he will send them: to an El Salvador dungeon with hundreds of shaved mongrels with so many tattoos over the faces, heads, and throughout their bodies that you don’t look at them; you read them. Or maybe to Alcatraz? Or maybe to lifelong slavery in Libya?
Because Trump is so fantastically fabulous for Israel and Jews with Jewish grandchildren and great-grandchildren, most Jews forget that the world and our destiny are not directed by a man but by our Creator, the G-d of Israel, and by no other force. There are MAGA Jews who begin to place their faith in Trump the way the Jews of 1930’s Europe placed their faith in their new democracy, the Weimar Republic, and its big, beautiful democratic Constitution.
Remember? The Germans were the most civil, law-abiding, rule-respecting, educated, sophisticated, scientific, and cultured of all. The blight of Reform Judaism was created there — in Germany — because Berlin had become the blessed successor to Jerusalem for such Jews. They even called their synagogues “Temples” to convey (truly, this is why) that they have no interest in a Temple in Jerusalem reappearing. The only temple they wanted was the local German temple. Jews were influential in Weimar’s arts, the newspapers, and the academies. Like the J Street sorts, they no longer even needed to call themselves “Jews.” They were “Germans of the Mosaic Persuasion.”
How did that work out?
We are clay in the hands of G-d, the Potter. We are fabric in the hands of G-d, the Tailor and Seamstress. He rules all. In His hands are all the world’s fate, with specific focus on the destiny of the Jewish People. He chooses how much leverage George Soros, Bernie Sanders, Alex Soros, and Ben & Jerry will have. How long they will live, what they will accomplish, when they will fail, and when they will die. He extends that same sovereignty over us all, even guiding the paths of the greatest of our Torah Giants: who will live, who will die, who will succeed, who will fail.
Too many Jews on the Left hate Trump, no matter how kind he is to them. He protects them from Hitlers, and yet they hate him so much that they promote new Hitlers on the Left to protect them. They try preventing Trump from going after the Hitlers of the Left. Such Jews and their toxic, hating leaders condemn Trump for protecting them from the Nazis at American universities who come from Arab Muslim countries to destroy America and Zionism. They and their hundreds of Godless rabbis sign public letters criticizing Trump for defending them from antisemites. Each of these groups is devoted not to Jews, to Israel, or to Judaism but to the Democrat Party.
Although Bernie Madoff single-handedly brought down the vile American Jewish Congress (and, along the way, almost brought down Elie Wiesel, Sandy Koufax, Yeshiva University, and so many more), there still remain others. HIAS cares about protecting and advancing Jew-hating Illegal Aliens, regardless of the peril to Jews. The ADL cares primarily about promoting Left Wing woke politics; at least, when Left Wing politics directly conflicts with Jewish survival in the face, ADL does take a moment’s pause before siding with the Left Wing Jew haters again. The American Jewish Committee, once a reputable defender of Jewish interests, ended their role by replacing the excellent David Harris with a leftwing Democrat hack politician, a hack whose entire career has been immersed in left wing Democrat politics, and he now navigates that AJC away from its historic mission.
It is a miracle every day that Trump does not decide “If these Jews and their hundreds of rabbis all still hate me even after all I have done for them and continue doing, OK. I am through with them. Let them fend for themselves and turn to Kamala Harris and Biden to protect them. No vengeance; just let them fend for themselves. I am done with them.” It is a miracle that he remains so deep a friend of a people whose vile leaders hate and attack him with such ingratitude and suicidal obsessions. I am not one to blame G-d for the suicidal failures of man. I react the same when a Godless Jew suggests blaming G-d for October 7.
It is a miracle that, because Trump and his Inner Circle come from Queens and Brooklyn instead of Iowa and Mississippi, he knows first-hand that Left Wing Godless Jews are balanced by other Jews, the real ones, the true Zionists, the children of Jewish mothers who marry the children of Jewish mothers or convert according to Judaism and end up with Jewish grandchildren who observe Shabbat (just like Trump’s einiklekh). He knows to blow off 550 rabbis who attack him because he and his advisors know that those 550 rabbis are Godless, as are their flocks whom they lead to the spiritual slaughter.
And yet. And yet. And yet.
It is imperative to understand that King Cyrus had his own agenda. He could allow Jews to rebuild the Holy Temple — and he could later put a stop on it to mollify Samaritans. He could even order that it be built with flammable wood, so that it could be burned down again if Jews ever got on his wrong side. It is important to remember. Even the Best of the Best have their own agendas — just like you.
There are those now is shock that Trump has:
- Made a deal with the Yemen Houthis by which America will stop bombing them, and they will stop shooting at American shipping in the Red Sea, but no protection in the deal for Israel (although Huckabee has said otherwise).
- Begun making deals with Saudi Arabia that no longer require movement by Saudi Arabia toward Israel (better that than expecting Israel to end the Gaza War and accept a Palestinian State to find favor in Saudi eyes.)
- Forced Israel to release hundreds, even thousands, of Arab cutthroats so that Trump could claim credit for making peace and freeing hostages from the moment he entered the White House.
- Imposed heavy tariffs on Israel, too (postponed)
- Opened the door to maybe cutting a deal with Iran that allows them to keep their nuclear products, a deal not all that different from Obama’s.
They are shocked. How could Trump “let us down”?
How? He never promised Jews a rose garden. He promised to Make America Great Again. Anything different would be dishonorable and suspect in an American president.
And, more importantly, it is a blessing for Jews and Israel that Trump has “let us down” by focusing on America and himself first and second, and then Israel third.
Trump promised to Make America Great Again. He is a good man and is perhaps the first president in our lifetimes to honor his campaign promises. His obligation and loyalty are toward America. He will be judged based on what he does for America. We are fortunate that so many — though not all — of his priorities overlap Israel’s and those held by Jews who are real Jews at heart. That is good fortune, but that is all it is.
No American President owes Israel more than courtesy and basic friendship. It is his job to get the Houthi mosquitoes off America’s back. That is all. It is his job to make Saudi Arabia helpful to America. That is all. If he got some Israeli hostages free, in contrast to Biden and Harris, that is for his legacy, not ours. If he tariffs everyone else, it is absurd to think he would skip Israel.
But this is all a blessing. Too many Israelis and their foolish ex-general leaders believe that when an American president makes a promise to them, then they are protected. So they are willing to endanger Israel’s security in return for American guarantees, Fools. They are not. King Cyrus had his limits. The American system even more so.
Every four or eight years, there arises a new President who did not know Joseph. Reagan’s promises end with the first Bush and James Baker. That Bush ends with Clinton. Clinton’s promises to Netanyahu in Hevron and Ehud Barak in Camp David end with the next Bush. That Bush’s promises to Ariel Sharon, the father of the current Gaza War, ended with Obama. Trump reversed much of Obama, but Biden reversed him. Now Trump reverses Biden again, and soon someone else will reverse Trump. Read the Book of Ecclesisastes, Kohelet.
When Israel acts relying on American guarantees rather than on the Divine Guardian of Israel (no, not Schumer the Good-for-Nothing vagabond, but the True Guardian of Israel), she always has no one to blame but herself when reality sets in, typically much sooner than imagined.
-When Ehud Barak downsized IDF military production and put faith that America reliably would produce and ship all of Israel’s future military needs as needed, he practically killed the country, his true expertise. Israel must manufacture her own.
-When Shimon Peres and Yitzchak Rabin killed Moshe Arens’s dream of the Lavie when it was at the brink, Israel’s own fighter aircraft that could have changed the course of Israeli history (and the economy), they left Israel at the mercy of the Obamas, Bidens, and the British and French.
It is a great blessing when Trump acts properly in America’s interest, even at the expense of Israel. It reminds Israelis not to put their faith even in the best American president whom Israel ever has known and probably ever will. Israel will have to understand that she may need to wipe out the Houthis on her own, wipe out the Iran threat on her own, wipe out Hamas and flatten all of Gaza on her own, say “no” to Saudi Arabia forever, and deal with tariffs on her own.
If Israel were South Vietnam or Ceylon or Burma, that would be tough. But Israel is none of those. With faith in G-d and with wisdom, Israel has all the cards. And that is why, when even America’s foreign affairs Deep State opposes Israel as it usually has done from the days of John Foster Dulles to James A. Baker to Antony Blinken, the American Defense establishment almost always has been Israel’s strongest ally in Washington.
Because they know, from the inside, what would become of America’s interests if Israel were not there.
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