Is Donald Trump Israel’s Worst Nightmare?

"I think Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty."     Donald Trump, August 20^th.

If Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu’s connections to Donald Trump are stronger than ever, you’d think US-Israeli relations are at their peak. After all, look at how Trump’s unflagging support may have tipped the scales in favor of Bibi’s hanging on to political power by the slimmest of margins in the last election (ooops, not enough that another election is on the horizon). Without much of a benefit to anyone, since the border region is fairly settled anyway, wasn’t Trump’s acknowledgment that the former Syrian Golan Heights were Israeli territory forever a coup for Bibi? OK, it was a gesture that everyone knew would be a slap in the face to the Arab world, but face slapping is a Trump trademark.

That Donald Trump officially moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – one of the very few nations accepting the legitimacy of that move – pretty much negating international opinion that this accumulation of deeply significant holy sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike required that Jerusalem remain an open city, free from divisive political labels suggesting otherwise. Trump’s cutting off aid to seriously impoverished moderate Palestinians was a nice touch too, even reinforcing Netanyahu’s unequivocal statement that Israel was a state built around Jewish supremacy, where Arabs were and always would be second-class citizens. The Trump affirmation that the long-held global and U.S. support of a two-state solution was off the table decimated what little remaining credibility the United States retained to function as a regional mediator, a function Trump has effectively ceded to Russia.

Then Jared Kushner’s unfunded Peace through Prosperity plan was leaked. It would keep Palestinians within Israeli jurisdiction while slowly raising and investing somewhere between $50 billion and $68 billion into Palestine over a decade. The entire “sell your soul and your freedom” notion of the profoundly ill-conceived peace plan was laughed into oblivion, dead on arrival. It quietly disappeared, evidence of another failed “ignore the experienced professionals and shoot from the hip” Trump foray into the vagaries of foreign policy he simply cannot understand.

Trump’s blistering attacks on the “Squad” – four recently-elected liberal freshmen congress-people, women of ethnicity including two Muslims (Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib) – escalated as Trump suggested that Bibi deny them the ability to travel to Israel (one of the congresswomen – Tlaib – was intending to visit her Palestinian grandmother). Netanyahu instantly complied, backing off slightly when he conditioned Tlaib’s travel on a binding commitment not to support policies that were against Israeli interests. The trip was cancelled.

Israel is already one of the most isolated countries in the world, constantly losing votes before the United Nations General Assembly by massively lopsided numbers and evading Security Council censure only by reason of exercise of America’s veto power. In today’s world, Israel is wrongly viewed as rogue state, a pariah, where even North Korea’s brutal regime has more global acceptance.  To hardliners in the Middle East, who claim that Israel is simply America’s puppet and blame the US for every Israeli misstep, that Trump spoke and Netanyahu jumped is affirmation of their belief.

Let’s face facts. Israel has been one of America’s most consistent allies, a trustworthy Middle Eastern power with deep and long-standing ties to the United States, both by reason of the resonance of America’s Jewish population and the fact that many Israelis have personal ties to the United States. They are a source of information and stability, an engineering powerhouse with a litany of amazing patents that have become mainstays of daily existence. Democrats and Republicans have sequentially reinforced that special relationship, which, while strained on occasion, has endured since the founding of that nation in 1948.

The evangelical community has embraced a strong Jewish state for other reasons: the biblical promise of the Second Coming of Christ is predicated on a war of total destruction, Armageddon, is based on Israel’s being strong enough to fight that final battle. Dead Jews. Enraptured Christians. End of days.

Scholar-journalist Thomas Friedman, explains that Trump may have poisonously politicized U.S. relations with Israel, intertwining direct American interference (by Trump personally) in Israeli elections and slanted by Trump’s naked catering to his evangelical base’s mantra of “make Israel strong so that Armageddon is inevitable.” Writing an Op-Ed for the August 17^th New York Times, Friedman writes: “I am going to say this as simply and clearly as I can: If you’re an American Jew and you’re planning on voting for Donald Trump because you think he is pro-Israel, you’re a damn fool.

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. Trump has said and done many things that are in the interests of the current Israeli government — and have been widely appreciated by the Israeli public. To deny that would be to deny the obvious. But here’s what’s also obvious. Trump’s way of — and motivation for — expressing his affection for Israel is guided by his political desire to improve his re-election chances by depicting the entire Republican Party as pro-Israel and the entire Democratic Party as anti-Israel.

“As a result, Trump — with the knowing help of Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu — is doing something no American president and Israeli prime minister have done before: They’re making support for Israel a wedge issue in American politics… Few things are more dangerous to Israel’s long-term interests than its becoming a partisan matter in America, which is Israel’s vital political, military and economic backer in the world.

“As Dore Gold, the right-wing former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and once a very close adviser to Netanyahu, warned in a dialogue at the Hudson Institute on Nov. 27, 2018: ‘You reach out to Democrats, and you reach out to Republicans. And you don’t get caught playing partisan politics in the United States.’

“Trump’s campaign to tar the entire Democratic Party with some of the hostile views toward Israel of a few of its newly elected congresswomen — and Netanyahu’s careless willingness to concede to Trump’s demand and bar two of them, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, from visiting Israel and the West Bank — is part of a process that will do huge, long-term damage to Israel’s interests and support in America.”

We have lost boatloads of credibility as a global influencer under Trump’s helm, are viewed as a supporter of brutal autocrats like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin and seem blind to the plight of Palestinians, second class “citizens” in lands where generation after generation of their forebears lived. Trump has made Israel a “Republican” issue… telling Israelis and his evangelical base that Democrats are an unforgivable enemy. If Israel views Democrats as their foe, exactly what happens when Democrats win in future elections. Who wins with that policy?

            I’m Peter Dekom, and in a raw desire to maintain a chokehold on his evangelical constituency, Donald Trump is willing to place our nation’s long-standing friendship with Israel in dire jeopardy.