Amid great uncertainty, the Trump administration is devoting critical time and resources to strengthening America’s strategic position in relation to the spearhead of the global jihadist movement, Iran, by trying to strengthen Iran’s biggest rival and America’s biggest friend in the Middle East, Israel.
By doing so, she is putting the finishing touches on the most philo-Semitic concept in American history – for the benefit of our national interest.
The evidence of this lies in the pudding of an Iran that has been slowed in its pursuit of regional hegemony and has reduced jihadist violence against America and its interests by Iran and its Islamist partners and proxies alike-all while America has been able to avoid new military entanglements and reduce the scope and range of existing ones.
What the presidents do at the end of their terms speaks volumes about their true nature. And when it comes to foreign policy issues, the action against Israel – the frontline of the West in a region dominated by Islamist tyranny – is a crucial litmus test for war and peace, for our civilization and its enemies.
In this respect, the contrast between the policies and proclamations of President Trump in the waning days of his first term and those of President Obama at the end of his second term – both of which concerned Israel – could not be stronger. Even if the latter’s vice president – with alumni in tow – were to take up much of his boss’s agenda again and soon take over the Oval Office, it could not be more pronounced.
Consider some of the steps the Trump administration has taken in recent weeks.
On November 19, the State Department announced new guidelines requiring that goods produced in areas of Judea and Samaria – the heart of the biblical homeland of the Jews, often referred to as the “West Bank” – under Israeli control be labeled “Israel,” “Product of Israel” or “Made in Israel” for export to the United States. This repealed the policy issued by the Obama-Biden Administration in 2016 that explicitly prohibited such labeling. As several senators who supported the Trump administration’s policy noted, revised guidance was essential because “a future government [such as the Biden administration]could choose to enforce these [Obama-era] rules and thereby distinguish Israeli goods produced in Judea and Samaria, making them major targets for boycotts of BDS [boycott, segregation and sanction movements]. It should be noted that President Obama had signed the anti-BDS legislation but refused to apply it to the Israeli “settlements” in Judea and Samaria.
The State Department issued a statement to this effect, in which it stated the U.S. policy to “combat anti-Semitism anywhere in the world and in every form in which it occurs, including all forms of discrimination and hatred rooted in anti-Semitism. The Obama-Biden administration clearly did not share this conviction given its view of Judea and Samaria. Foggy Boggy Bottom decided to review all organizations associated with or supporting the BDS movement to ensure that no State Department funds were directed to such an institution, as she believed that the global BDS campaign was anti-Semitic because “anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
These proclamations coincided with Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo’s recent trip to Israel, during which he visited a winery in Judea and Samaria, marking the first high-level visit of this kind by the U.S. Pompeo also visited the strategically important Golan Heights, where he reaffirmed the government’s position in support of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
A few weeks earlier, the Trump administration had for the first time allowed U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to list their birthplace as “Israel”. The Obama administration had taken the case to the Supreme Court.
The Trump administration thus cemented its positions on Israeli sovereignty, especially with regard to Israel’s most cherished territorial possessions – those most threatened by its opponents, a potential Biden administration, and a world that seeks to marginalize and alienate them through cowardice or complicity with the aforementioned opponents.
While the Trump administration reaffirmed its respect for the realities on the ground in Israel, which are rooted in the belief that lasting peace requires recognition of the truth, the Trump administration also apparently sought to continue to support the growing American-Israeli-Arab anti-Iranian partnership. Sec. Pompeo left Israel for Saudi Arabia, where he allegedly attended a meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or at least helped mediate, to talk about Iran and the normalization of relations. Allegedly, the meeting did not bear fruit in terms of normalization, as the Saudis were hedging in view of the prospect of a possible Biden administration. Nevertheless, the U.S.-led efforts to build on the Abraham Agreement, the normalization of Sudan-Israel relations and various sub-Rosa deals between Israel and the Islamic world as part of a broader bulwark against Iran have shown a desire to further consolidate Israel’s position. The benefits of such a bulwark will benefit an America that can shoulder a lesser burden when Iran is controlled.
These events take place amidst intrigues that affect the mullocracy. In recent days, the leading Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been assassinated. Days before, it had been leaked that the number two of al-Qaeda, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, was also killed on the streets of Tehran – proof that Iran is the linchpin of the global Sunni Shiite Jihad movement. News reports also claim that President Trump recently called for options for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.
We do not know what role, if any, the U.S., Israel or any of their Arab partners have played in the actions so far, whether the rumors about possible future actions are true or what the motives behind the leaks are. What is clear, however, is that the Trump administration is doing what it can and where it can to protect America and its interests from a wounded Iran – which is gnawing its teeth at a possible Biden presidency that could save it – by supporting Israel.
Consider, on the other hand, that the Obama-Biden administration spent its dwindling days trying to land a knockout blow against Israel. It abstained from UN Security Council Resolution 2334 (UNSCR), which is contrary to the long-standing US policy of vetoing such measures. According to the accompanying United Nations (UN) press release, UNSCR 2334 claimed that “Israel’s settlements have no legal validity” and “constitute a flagrant violation of international law”. It classifies Israel as an “occupying power”. It considered Israel’s construction on its own land unlawful and treated land abandoned by those who wanted to destroy Israel, including East Jerusalem, as “Palestinian territory”. It threatened Israel’s right to its most sacred sites in Jerusalem. It opened the door for the Jewish state to the rule of law in international courts and paved the way for increased BDS activities. It repealed the UN resolution that stated that in a future peace negotiation Israel would cede only part of the lands claimed in response to the 1967 invasion, in accordance with its security needs.
As Washington Newsday columnist Caroline Glick summed it up: “Resolution 2334 serves[d]to criminalize Israel and its people and undermine Israel’s right to exist while embracing Palestinian terrorists and empowering them to destroy Israel in their war.
The Obama-Biden administration is said to have done more than abstain without the knowledge of the observers at the time. In March 2019, the New York Times reported that, according to an anonymous former government official, the White House had cynically urged that the resolution not be brought before the UN Security Council before the 2016 presidential election to protect Hillary Clinton. Others claimed that the Obama-Biden administration had played a much greater role in drafting, lobbying and introducing the resolution. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu insisted that the Obama-Biden team led efforts to get the resolution passed.
This was the keystone for an Obama-Biden administration that had punished Israel while supporting its archenemies with a litany of words and deeds, from the infamous Islamist-exposing Cairo speech in 2009 to the climax of the nuclear deal with Iran.
President Trump himself challenged UN Security Council Resolution 2334 before he was inducted into office; he moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, fulfilling a formerly non-partisan commitment by the U.S. that had not been implemented by any previous government; he abandoned the nuclear deal with Iran; he launched a campaign of “maximum pressure” against the mullocracy and had the architect of its monstrous and rampant terrorist apparatus executed.
To name but a few other actions: President Trump stubbornly defended Israel in front of the notoriously hostile UN by cutting funding to and even withdrawing from its most hostile agencies and voting against its most heinous resolutions, on which its predecessors had merely abstained; he closed the PLO’s Washington, D. office. C. for their unwillingness to negotiate with Israel; he cut hundreds of millions of dollars of aid money that would have ended up in the hands of Palestinian Arab terrorists; and he protected pro-Israeli Jews from discrimination on the college campus.
The Trump administration brought about a total change towards Israel, its opponents and the opponents of America. In this way, President Trump implemented a “peace through strength” agenda, an integral part of which was the defense of Jews and the Jewish state and an attack on its worst enemies.
He would be at risk under a President Joe Biden who, based on past policies and indicated personnel, would not have carried out any of these Trump agenda items and would probably undo all he could.
Although the left, and among them the Jews who overwhelmingly vote Democrat, will never give him credit for this, President Trump has proven himself to be the ultimate defender of Judeo-Christian Western civilization.
Ben Weingarten is a Senior Fellow at the London Centre for Policy Research, a Fellow at the Claremont Institute and a senior fellow at The Federalist. He is the author of American Ingrate: Ilhan Omar and the Democratic Party’s progressive Islamist takeover (Bombardier, 2020). Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media LLC, a media consulting and production company. Subscribe to his newsletter at bit.ly/bhwnews and follow him on Twitter @bhweingarten.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
