The chief rabbi of Tzfat, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, responded this morning (Monday) to remarks by United States President Donald Trump, who said that the State of Israel would not have held out for two hours without him.
In his remarks, Rabbi Eliyahu recalled the long history of the Jewish people and said that the existence of the people of Israel does not depend on any particular world leader.
Rabbi Eliyahu said, "We just wanted to remind Trump that the people of Israel held out for 2,000 years without Trump and will continue after him. The people of Israel survived under much harsher conditions. When we were scattered among the nations and attempts were made in every generation to destroy us, we did not have our own state, and yet we survived, even without Trump."
Rabbi Eliyahu also referred to Israel's wars and noted that in the War of Independence Israel did not receive American military assistance. "They did not even send a single bullet, and yet we defeated all the Arab states."
He said that even on the eve of the Six-Day War Israel faced severe restrictions, "France and the U.S. imposed an embargo on us banning the sale of weapons. And yet we defeated Egypt, Jordan and Syria, all in six days."
Later the rabbi criticized past political moves that he said ended in failure. "So it was with the Oslo Accords, which were signed under pressure from the U.S. president at the time and brought great bloodshed of thousands of dead. So it was with the disengagement from Gaza. Another foolish agreement that brought only disasters and damage. We thank the U.S. for what you helped us with, but we are not blindly grateful. In our war we also brought salvation to the Western world that stood idly by in the face of the Iranian cancer that threatened to conquer and impose radical Islam on the world."
"We tell Trump, do not sign the Munich Agreement of our generation. In those agreements Chamberlain conceded to Hitler and brought about World War II. Do not repeat the same mistake. Trump has little time left to decide how history will remember him - as a leader who stood with the people of Israel and brought light to the world - or as someone who mistakenly thought he ran the world, and left destruction in his wake."