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| Steve Witkoff and the President (Arutz Sheva) |
I’m not going to delve into all the negatives he has reintroduced to the Oval Office. There are too many to count. One of them is so horrible - so outrageous that even his closest supporters and advisors were shocked. I’m going to talk about the one area where I believe Trump is very positive. His support for Israel.
That is a consolation for me, A big one. He brings to the White House a return to a more positive attitude toward Israel and its struggle for survival.
Those who believe that he has no real positive feelings for the Jewish State and motivated only by ‘what’s in it for him’ are blinded by prejudice. Prejudice that is contradicted by a lifetime of strong support, as well as a first term that, by most objective measures, showed the strongest support of any prior administration. Especially if judged by his popularity in Israel at the time. Polls showed he would have won if he had run for prime minister.
That should not be lost on anyone and demonstrate just how misguided some people are about his motives with respect to the Jewish state. Besides, does it not occur to anyone that Trump might be getting the best of both worlds—serving Israel and serving himself at the same time?
I guess not. They keep saying that his self-serving values do not necessarily serve Israel’s best interests and could, in the end, be quite harmful. Melanie Phillips outlines some of her concerns in an Arutz Sheva oped:
(The deal with Hamas) traps Israel in a potentially exploitative, nightmarish, and agonizing prevarication over the release of all the hostages, while Hamas empowers itself in Gaza.
She also condemns Trump’s Middle East negotiator, Steve Witkoff, saying the following:
Witkoff’s admiration for Qatar appears to know no bounds...
Qatar has been instrumental in bringing mass slaughter. Qatar is behind Hamas. It created it, funds it, and protects its leaders. Qatar promotes the Muslim Brotherhood—the jihadi parent of Hamas… It’s an enemy of the West because it is governed by an Islamist regime that allies itself with other Islamist enemies of the West.
There are also other problematic appointees, like Michael DiMino, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. DiMino is an isolationist, which is not necessarily good for Israel either.
Another supposed indicator of a changed policy towards Israel is Trump’s almost symbiotic relationship with Elon Musk. Who seems to be a favorite target of antisemitic accusations. The most recent such accusation stemmed from what appeared to be a Nazi salute at one of his rallies.
It wasn’t. Both Benjamin Netanyahu and Jonathan Greenblatt acknowledged that. What it was is the hand wave of a man on the autism spectrum. Musk has Asperger’s syndrome, which sometimes leads to awkward comments or jerky movements. He was apparently waving or saluting someone in the audience, and it came off like a Heil Hitler. To the best of my knowledge Hitler was not in the audience. Musk is no more an antisemite than I am.
(As an aside, this should put to rest the notion that people with autism are at a disadvantage when it comes to achievements or making a living. Musk is the founder and CEO of both Tesla and SpaceX, making him the richest man in the world.)
So Aside from Musk, why am I not as worried Philips? Shouldn’t I be concerned about a ceasefire deal that doesn’t accomplish a total victory over Hamas? A deal that frees so many Palestinians with blood on their hands? A deal with a terrorist group that has a track record of violating ceasefires as soon as they think they have the advantage? Only this time with an additional 1,500 terrorists released at their disposal? Has Trump betrayed us?
As I often say, there’s no way of knowing what the future holds. But the one thing I am fairly certain of is that whatever Trump does, he will not let Israel down. Let us examine the problems the worrywarts see.
To point to an appointee who has not said one negative word about Israel - and label him as a danger because he praised an intermediary in a hostage deal is hardly a signal that Trump will change his strongly pro-Israel position. All one has to do to realize just how pro-Israel Trump is - is look at his primary foreign policy appointees. They are as pro-Israel as anyone can get. Not the least of whom is the new ambassador to Israel, who doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of a Palestinian people, never refers to Judea and Samaria as “The West Bank,” and believes Israel’s right to the land is entirely biblical. If that's being anti Israel, I’ll take it.
My message to all the worrywarts out there is to cool it. Don’t listen to all the harbingers of doom and gloom. Instead, give the Trump administration a chance to pursue their own Middle East policy, which does not focus on a Palestinian state as much as it does on expanding the Abraham Accords to more Arab nations.
One of which, Saudi Arabia, had even made noises about Palestinian leadership looking at Trump’s peace plan put forward in his first term as a realistic option for self determination. Netanyahu had even agreed to it. If that gets done, it will do more than anything else to assure a better future for Palestinians, Israel, and all of its neighbors.
