Originally posted November 4, 2020
https://www.queensjewishlink.com/index.php/opinion/3421-israelis-finally-agree-on-an-election-it-s-trump
Israelis are not known to give any elected leader a strong majoritarian mandate after an election. In the last few years, the Israeli people took to the polls three times, and never gave any party the ability for a meaningful coalition to be formed. However, when it comes to the US election, the choice is clear. Israelis want President Donald J. Trump to be re-elected.
A recent poll conducted by the Direct Falls Research Institute showed that Israelis prefer Trump over challenger Joe Biden a whopping 63.3% to 18.8%. It’s not surprising that Biden polls so low. His most recent and infamous addition to his resume is being the Vice President to Barack Obama, who consistently undermined Israel. Between the Iran Deal, throwing Israel under the bus at the United Nations, and sending taxpayer funds to oust Prime Minister Netanyahu, there is no love lost between the Obama administration and Israel’s longest tenured Prime Minister.
Biden, though, has his own history with Israel. It was to then-Senator Joe Biden, who threatened to cut aid to Israel in 1982, to whom Prime Minister Menachem Begin gave an extraordinary reply: “Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work,” Begin said. “I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.” Israelis have long memories, far longer than Americans.
After Obama-Biden came Trump-Pence, and the differences between the two administrations regarding Israel could not be starker. Trump, a political outsider, was not beholden to the Washington policy “experts” who for years proclaimed that the only way for there to be peace in the Middle East was for Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians. As Jared Kushner recently stated on the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special, “[Trump] wasn’t bullied into not doing what he felt was right.” This is why Trump has done far more for Israel, and the Jewish people, than any other President.
In a video put out by the Chovevei Zion Policy Fund, Ezri Tubi lays out the case for why Trump is so popular among Israelis. The first action that Tubi mentions is the first policy that comes to mind whenever “Trump” and “Israel” are uttered in the same sentence, the move of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem. “Jerusalem has been the heart of the Jewish people for millennia,” says Tubi. This is undeniable. Jews all around the planet pray towards Jerusalem. Every Jewish holiday includes a pledge to celebrate “next year in Jerusalem.” Jewish songs proclaim, “If I forget Jerusalem, let me lose my right hand.” Jerusalem is, without a doubt, the capital of Israel and the Jewish people. Moving the American embassy there recognizes that fact.
Trump’s accomplishments do not end there. In March 2019, Trump signed an executive order recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which was captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War. While the European Union and the United Nations condemned the order, with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres claiming that the status of the Golan Heights “has not changed.” That status, set in 1981 by the UN Security Council, declared that Israel’s “decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction, and administration in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights is null and void and without international legal effect.” Trump, like Israel itself, stands in defiance of that declaration. In appreciation, an Israeli town in the region was named “Trump Heights.”
Trump, through his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, issued the “Pompeo Doctrine,” which proclaimed that America did not recognize the international law that Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria are illegal. Trump, through his UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, provided a robust and consistent defense of Israel to the most anti-Israel body in the world, the United Nations. Trump, through his Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, extended Civil Rights protections to Jews on College Campuses, because Trump recognizes the historical fact that Jews are not merely part of a religion; they are part of a Jewish Nation.
Trump stopped giving aid to the Palestinian Authority because the PA pays terrorists to kill Israelis. Trump pulled out of UNESCO when they pushed revisionist history claiming that Jewish Holy Sites were really Muslim sites. Trump defunded the UNRWA because they turn a blind eye to the hatred that the PA teaches to Palestinian children.
Most importantly, Trump pulled out of the Iran Deal, which benefits not only Israel, but the world. “Iran is the leading patron of terrorism in the world,” Tubi explains, “harboring an illegal nuclear weapons program that is aimed for the destruction of the Jewish people.” While Obama-Biden gave billions of dollars in pallets of cash to Iran, Trump imposed crippling sanctions. While Obama-Biden cozied up to a dictator who leads his people in chants of “Death to America, Death to Israel,” Trump was authorizing drone strikes on Iran’s second-in-command and leading terrorist in the world, Qasem Soleimani. While Obama-Biden lied to the American people about a more “moderate” Iran, Trump reached out to the surrounding Arab nations to work out a solution to the problem Obama created.
Trump focused on Iran’s newfound capability when trying to shift Arab states’ opinions of the only sane country in the region, Israel, and it worked. So far, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Sudan have agreed to peace with Israel, the former two having already signed peace agreements with the Jewish State. Saudi Arabia is allowing Israeli planes to fly over their airspace. Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, is playing in Dubai. A phenomenal shift occurred, and continued to occur, in the region, and that is because of President Trump.
Trump’s record on Israel is part of a very successful foreign policy initiative coming from the White House. Israelis know what they are getting with Trump, and what they would get under Biden. They choose, by overwhelming majority, to continue with Trump for four more years.
