If you support Israel, you need to vote for Trump - opinion

Disregarding the hyperbole and examining the records and statements of both US presidential candidates, there can be little doubt that President Donald J. Trump is the candidate of choice for those who support Israel and a reinvigorated American foreign policy. 

The Biden-Harris administration and the Democratic Party have largely abandoned Israel and created a toxic environment for Jews in general. 

“She hates Israel,” Trump declared in his recent debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “If she is president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years.” 

Immediately after taking office, the Biden-Harris administration restored American subsidies for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of the Palestinian Arabs, including Hamas. At the same time, the Democratic administration pursued a rapprochement with Iran, alleviating sanctions and releasing frozen bank accounts that benefited the radical Islamic regime to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, which the Ayatollahs promptly transferred to their proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.

Trump administration sanctions had effectively pushed Iran to the brink of bankruptcy. Thanks to Trump, Iran had no money to finance Hamas, Hezbollah, or any of the 28 different spheres of terror aimed against Israel, the United States, and the West. 

Incredibly, Biden-Harris removed the terrorist Houthi rebels in Yemen from the global terrorist list. The empowerment of the Houthis resulted directly in the interdiction of international shipping and commerce in the Red Sea for the first time in recent history at enormous cost to the United States, Europe, and Egypt.

Even more troubling is the Biden-Harris administration’s appointment of pro-Iranian, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israeli advisers to key positions in the White House, the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Pentagon. Biden’s special envoy to Iran Robert Malley was suspended and is now under investigation for mishandling critical classified information. 

Earlier on this issue, the Biden-Harris administration set another pernicious precedent by issuing Executive Order 14115, which grants the president authority to impose devastating financial and other sanctions on anyone who dares to challenge the administration’s obsolete and ill-conceived two-state solution. This order crushes and chills the free speech and religious rights of American citizens and constitutes an egregious affront to the sovereignty of the world’s only Jewish state without punishing Palestinian Arab terrorists. 

Trump’s accomplishments in the Middle East are legion: the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the relocation of the US Embassy there; the elimination of ISIS and the decapitation of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corp; the withdrawal from the problematic Iranian nuclear deal (JCPOA); the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; the enactment of the Taylor Force Act, putting an end to the Palestinian “pay-for-slay” policy (which the Biden-Harris administration has refused to enforce) and so much more.

For her part, Kamala Harris not only supports the current administration’s pro-Iranian and pro-Palestinian policies but has demonstrated an even more strident and toxic orientation toward Israel. President Trump noted how Kamala, as president of the Senate, brazenly snubbed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his historic address to Congress in July and then purportedly gave him a tongue-lashing when the two met privately later that same week. 

While Vice President Harris vehemently denied hating Israel and declared she supported Israel’s right to defend herself, she quickly conditioned American support for its most loyal ally in the Middle East on curtailing the Israeli campaign to obliterate Hamas in Gaza and accelerating the creation of a Palestinian state despite the unspeakable horrors of October 7 and broad support for those atrocities by Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and Judea & Samaria (West Bank).

Harris’s unswerving support for the “two-state solution” is tantamount to handing victory to the perpetrators of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. In her words, “Israel has a right to defend itself... And how it does so matters, because it is also true, far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed... children, mothers... What we know is that this war must end... it must end and immediately and the way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal and we need the hostages out.” This policy hamstrung the Israeli campaign against Hamas and, arguably, resulted in the prolonged captivity and murder of Israel’s hostages. 

Beyond equating Hamas’s terror campaign with Israel’s war to eliminate the terror regime and infrastructure in Gaza, Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, have also turned a blind eye to the rising wave of antisemitic, pro-Hamas protests that are sweeping college campuses and other venues in the United States, threatening the safety and well-being of Jewish students and Jewish communities. 

Harris made no effort to differentiate between actual innocent civilians – and Hamas members who were killed during the war. Nor has neither Harris nor Walz seen fit to push back against the protesters’ libelous claims of genocide and apartheid. 

Ask almost any Israeli what a Harris-Walz victory would mean for Israel and they will tell you that it portends catastrophe for the Jewish state. While Trump’s apocryphal prediction of the disappearance of Israel two years after a Democratic victory does not square with the lessons of Jewish history, the prospects are hair-raising. Combined with the specter of a nuclear Iran and the threat Hezbollah poses to Israel’s northern border, the prospects of a Harris-Walz administration are dismal. 

The fecklessness of the Biden-Harris administration has undermined international stability not only in the Middle East but also in Ukraine, the South China Sea, North Korea, and Latin America. 

Jewish Democrats say they have no concern with Harris’s support for Israel. The world is teetering on world war, a situation that simply did not exist during the Trump Administration. Continued weakness in Washington bodes ill for the entire planet, as America’s and Israel’s enemies seek to exploit the political vacuum. 

Two state solution

“We must have a two-state solution that provides security for the Jewish people and in equal measure for the Palestinians,” she declared, expressing moral equivalence for the two sides of the conflict, and assuming that this is a vision that Palestinians support (which, according to polls, they do not, nor do most Israelis).

President Trump has incontrovertibly demonstrated that with strong leadership in Washington, the Middle East and the world at large can be made both stable and safe for all. No better example is the achievement of the Abraham Accords, which reconfigured the geopolitical reality in the Middle East, uniting Israel with those of its Arab neighbors who share a common front against the combined threat of Iran and radical Islam. In a second Trump administration, that realignment will continue to expand and strengthen. 

Americans will be going to the polls in less than two months. They will be evaluating the candidates on many crucial issues including immigration, inflation, crime, and energy. But for the millions of voters in the US and overseas who yearn for peace and security in an increasingly treacherous world, there can be only one choice on November 5: President Donald J. Trump. The alternative is too horrible to imagine. 

The writer is an international lawyer practicing in Israel and the United States. He is chairman of Republicans Overseas Israel and vice president and general counsel of Republicans Overseas, Inc. (International).