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Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
“Trump’s the Most pro-Israel President in History”
“Trump’s the Most pro-Israel President in History”
The article below from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is about the strong pro-Israel, anti-Muslim stance of the Republican Party. In contrast, the diversity-multicultural Democrats cannot easily align against the Muslims as the Democrats have brought so many Muslims into the country and into the Democrat Party with their open borders policy. Religion also plays a role. Many Republicans are evangelicals who worship Israel more than God. Democrats with their emphasis on legitimizing sexual perversion tend not to be evangelicals. These differences explain why Biden, despite his Jewish neoconservative regime, is making some effort to restrain Israel in the current conflict, while the Republicans are egging it on.
Haaretz is a large Israeli newspaper that holds the Israeli government accountable. It is a more reliable source of information than the New York Times, CNN, or any of the US print and TV media. Haaretz has a free service that provides some articles and a paid service that provides complete access.
‘Trump’s the Most pro-Israel President in History. Him Being an Asshole Won’t Change That’
For Republican Jewish megadonors at the annual Republican Jewish Coalition confab this weekend, Donald Trump’s record is all that matters. The rest – the antisemitism, the praising of Israel’s enemies – is just talk, and for them he remains the only game in town
GOP U.S. presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump arriving to speak during the Republican Jewish Coalition annual summit in Las Vegas on Saturday.Credit: Steve Marcus/Reuters
Ben Samuels
Las Vegas
LAS VEGAS – “He’s inevitable.” That’s how one GOP power player at the Republican Jewish Coalition this weekend described Donald Trump’s eventual nomination as the party’s pick to run against Joe Biden in 2024.
Whether that sentiment sounds clear-eyed or fullhearted is almost beside the point. There are undoubtedly several influential Republican Jews for whom the former president’s comments over the years about American Jews and Israel are deeply offensive. But if Trump’s rapturous reception at the Venetian on Saturday proved anything, it’s that there’s no comment too offensive, too vulgar, too close to antisemitism that will offset the reason he is so beloved by this crowd in the first place.
In Trump’s rambling 34-minute speech (nine minutes over the allotted time given to each candidate, but good luck to the poor soul trying to keep him to that limit), he played all the hits: moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, combating Iran.
They’re all familiar to everyone by this point – whether you heard them on his stump speeches or read them on a meme shared on his Truth Social account that was meant to be wishing U.S. Jews a happy new year but could instead generously be described as “menacing.”
For the Republican Jewish megadonors and influencers present at the annual confab – which is quickly becoming an essential annual gathering for Republican politicians attempting to shore up their pro-Israel bona fides – Trump’s record is all that matters. The rest is just window dressing.
“He’s a piece of work, but he’s the most pro-Israel president in history. Him being an asshole won’t change that,” one megadonor present told Haaretz.
Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary for George W. Bush and an RJC board member, perfectly captured the general thinking on Trump’s popularity, despite recent comments that earned widespread criticism when he called Hezbollah “very smart” and asking whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could be impeached.
“He shouldn’t have said it. But his record is so strong and so good,” said Fleischer. “It doesn’t change all that he has said previously and all that he has done. His record is unblemished on this. This is a poor attempt by Democrats to try to change the conversation away from an incredible pro-Israel record.”
Trump was the final presidential contender to address the 1,000-plus crowd in Nevada, following the seven challengers who are trailing in his wake – now six after former Vice President Mike Pence’s shock announcement at the confab that he was suspending his campaign. Despite the order of the speeches, selected by random draw, Trump’s specter clearly loomed over everything preceding him.
Each candidate offered their own spin: why they were the most pro-Israel candidate; why they were the one to best combat antisemitism on college campuses; why they were the one to restore America’s strength and deterrence on the world stage; why they were the one to teach the “Hamas caucus” a lesson; why they were the one who would give Israel the most blanket cover to deal with the Palestinians once and for all.
The majority of candidates had support, no doubt. Nikki Haley continues to be a rock star with the RJC crowd, as demonstrated by how donors are speaking with their dollars (as previously revealed by Haaretz). She was also the only candidate to challenge Trump by name.
Ron DeSantis’ reception, meanwhile, may have been more muted than last year – when he was feted as Trump-but-smarter – but he still managed to tell the crowd what it wanted to hear about woke culture and border control. And Tim Scott’s oration and invocation of biblical language had the crowd on its feet several times.
But the two least well-received candidates say more about the state of Republican Jews and the GOP today than any of the others.
One candidate facing an uphill battle with the crowd, Vivek Ramaswamy, best embodies the party’s isolationist wing and used his address to explicitly tackle what he described as “the elephant in the room”: his skepticism of U.S. involvement in Israel’s war with Hamas.
Ramaswamy attempted to clarify – forcefully, passionately and in great detail – the reasons why his policies should not be considered “anti-Israel.” His views, essentially, can be reduced to the idea that Israel should do whatever it wants, however it wants and with U.S. moral backing – but it’s Israel’s task to go it alone.
He earned the occasional boo and heckle, but he was still more warmly received than another candidate: ardent Trump critic Chris Christie. For the RJC crowd, however, doubts remain over the entrepreneur.
“People came with an idea in their head as to what they were going to hear. [Ramaswamy] delivered a message that had people thinking, but the jury’s still out as to how it plays out ultimately,” said RJC CEO Matt Brooks.
Now is the moment for Israel to return to its founding premise: the Jewish State has an absolute right to exist. A Divine gift, gifted to a Divine nation, charged with a Divine purpose. Israel has an absolute and unequivocal right and responsibility to defend itself to the… Show more
Christie was mercilessly booed upon taking the stage. He earned passive-at-best applause when talking about the need to combat the isolationism prescribed by Ramaswamy, and extra boos when describing this moment as “too serious for unserious people.”
The RJC crowd agreed with Christie – they just place different emphasis on the “unserious people” who pose the biggest threat.
The biggest collective enemy of the weekend, without fail, was “college campuses.” Republicans, already wont to decry any criticism of Israel as antisemitism, have only had their resolve steeled by the unprecedented pro-Palestinian protests that have become prevalent at universities across the country since the start of Israel’s military response following the October 7 Hamas assault.
While many of these protests undoubtedly veer into antisemitic territory, Republican presidential candidates are using events of recent weeks as proof of concept. For them, these demonstrations reveal the true antisemitic nature of the progressive movement, empowered by a Democratic Party that has lost its way, with an out-of-touch, feckless president bearing the responsibility.
Pro-Palestinians gathering at Harvard University to show their support for Gaza, at a rally in Massachusetts earlier this month.Credit: Joseph Prezioso / AFP
Where they varied, however, was how far they could take this idea. Ban student activist groups for “providing material support to terrorism”? Applause. Revoke student visas for those marching against the war? Applause. Expel members of Congress for introducing legislation demanding a cease-fire? Applause – but only after booing the very mention of Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
The events of October 7 provide Republicans with a canvas on which to paint the most hard-line, punitive policies aimed at Palestinians. Candidates elicited cheers when talking about putting terrorists’ heads on spikes, putting the two-state solution to bed for good, withholding aid despite an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Gaza and issuing blanket bans on refugees.
One of the landmark pieces of journalism to emerge from Trump’s presidency was Adam Serwer’s 2018 essay in The Atlantic, “The cruelty is the point,” detailing how Trump and his supporters “find community by rejoicing in the suffering of those they hate and fear.”
Quoting New York Mayor Eric Adams, several of the placards at the event stated: “We are NOT alright,” juxtaposed with an Israeli flag. Within the backdrop of this pain, this suffering, this sense of hopelessness, are policies of cruelty – all forged in the image of Trump the inevitable.