Over the past two years, clarity has been rare. Support for Jews and Israel usually comes wrapped in conditions. Sympathy with an expiration date. Statements engineered to avoid offending the loudest critics in the room.
That’s why the White House Chanukah celebration mattered.
This was Hanukkah hosted by the most pro-Israel president in American history, and it wasn’t softened to make anyone more comfortable. Donald Trump didn’t dilute it. He didn’t universalize it. He didn’t translate it into something safer.
He opened by speaking about Jews murdered in an antisemitic attack in Australia. He said the word. Antisemitism. No qualifiers. No framing. No balance.
Most leaders would not have done that. Especially not first.
Trump has never treated Jewish identity or religion as something that needs to be managed carefully. He treats faith as real. As public. As something people are allowed to take seriously without apology. Jewish, Christian, or otherwise.
That matters. Especially now.
Hanukkah is not a cultural holiday. It’s not folklore. It’s a religious line in the sand. Jews refused to abandon their faith even when the price was isolation or worse. The story doesn’t end with comfort. It ends with survival.
That framing was intact that night.
Sid Rosenberg spoke at the event. Sid is a close friend of mine, and over the past two years he’s been one of the few voices who didn’t recalibrate when standing with Israel stopped being convenient.
He told me he was especially struck by being one of only four people the president called up that night. Not because of the honor itself, but because it showed who the moment was really meant for.
As Sid put it:
“The president didn’t open with politics. He opened with Jewish lives that were lost. No other president would have done that.”
That choice wasn’t accidental. It reflected a worldview that doesn’t treat Jewish suffering as something that needs to be contextualized before it’s acknowledged.
From Israel, that distinction is obvious.
Here, nothing is theoretical. When Jews are attacked abroad, Israelis feel it immediately. When leaders hesitate, that hesitation shows up here as pressure, isolation, and demands to justify things that should not require justification.
Hanukkah is about lighting a flame while the darkness is still there. Not after it clears. Not once it’s safe.
That’s what this was.
Not a performance.
Not a gesture.
A statement without the fine print.
And from Israel, that kind of clarity is unmistakable.