Israel & Trinidad and Tobago: Mirrors & Parallels – Part 2

PART 2 of 3: Israel-Trinidad and Tobago Mirrors and Parallels.

Read PART 1 here.

America and Israel; America and Trinidad and Tobago; America-Israel-Trinidad and Tobago.

Trump… is a more reliable security partner than multilateral institutions such as the UN… which… largely failed to address the specific concerns of Israel and Trinidad and Tobago.  This sentiment of prioritizing a powerful bilateral ally over a dysfunctional multilateral body is one that Israeli policymakers would recognize immediately. It is the same calculation Jerusalem has made regarding the UN for decades. In that sense, both countries are not so much dependent on Trump’s America as they are choosing it with eyes open, costs understood, benefits deemed worth the price.

Grounded in shared democratic values, intelligence cooperation and aligned security interests, Israel’s relationship with the United States represents one of the most durable strategic partnerships in modern history. Under the Trump administration, that partnership has deepened significantly. Since taking office, the Trump administration has approved nearly $12 billion in major arms sales to Israel, reversing a Biden-era hold on weapons deliveries and using emergency authority to expedite approximately $4 billion in military assistance. The alliance is now being recalibrated for the future on terms that benefit both sides. Israel is seeking a new 20-year security agreement with the US with “America First” provisions, doubling the usual term and emphasizing joint research and development in defense technology and AI, rather than purely one-directional defensive aid.  The format is designed to appeal to the Trump administration’s “America First” instincts because it would directly benefit the US military rather than just being sent to Israel. “This is out-of-the-box thinking. We want to change the way we handled past agreements and put more emphasis on US-Israel cooperation. The Americans like this idea,” one Israeli official told Axios. The strategic logic runs both ways. Israeli military prowess empowers American diplomacy. When US presidents warn of consequences for aggression, Iran and its proxies must worry that Israeli forces, not just the US military, are prepared to back up Washington’s words with decisive action. Israel’s military capabilities therefore make pronouncements from Washington even more powerful.

Trinidad and Tobago’s relationship with President Trump’s America represents a significant and deliberate pivot. It is a small nation choosing to align with the hemisphere’s dominant power on issues of genuine shared concern: narco-trafficking, gang violence, arms smuggling, and the destabilizing influence of Venezuela’s Maduro regime. When the US struck an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September 2025, the Trinidadian Prime Minister, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, came out strongly on Washington’s side, stating “the pain and suffering the cartels have inflicted on our nation is immense.”  This was not purely opportunistic. Trinidad and Tobago had recorded its deadliest year of homicides in 2024, with organized crime networks directly tied to the same trafficking routes the US was targeting. The Trump administration formally reaffirmed the strength of its partnership with Trinidad and Tobago, with the Deputy Secretary of State specifically commending Persad-Bissessar’s public support for US military operations in the South Caribbean Sea and both governments’ commitment to curbing illegal narcotics and arms trafficking.

The US-Israel relationship, like all major alliances, involves negotiation and tension alongside solidarity. President Trump has leverage over Prime Minister Netanyahu, and unlike some predecessors, he is not reluctant to use it, thus making clear that it is the US President, not the Israeli Prime Minister, who is determining significant aspects of the bilateral relationship.  But this is precisely what powerful alliances involve: a larger partner setting parameters, and a smaller partner maximizing its position within them. Israel’s strategic challenge, therefore, is calibrating how much it relies on US military financing versus building genuine defense independence. Rather than seeking more aid, Israel is seeking to change the relationship’s dynamic toward genuine partnership, where both sides benefit from shared defense technology rather than Israel depending on American funding.  Prime Minister Netanyahu himself has signaled this direction, stating publicly that his goal is “to ensure that Israel is independent”, invoking the ancient example of Sparta as a model of self-sufficient military strength. The stakes of continued US support remain high regardless. The ongoing military campaign, alongside security challenges from Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and Houthi threats from Yemen, necessitates a continuous flow of US military support. The Trump administration is expected to maintain a supportive position.

Trinidad and Tobago’s alignment with Washington has come with genuine regional trade-offs. By prioritizing bilateral cooperation with the United States over regional solidarity, Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar has positioned herself as an outlier among CARICOM (the Caribbean Community) leaders, and the relationship with Venezuela (including previously planned joint development of maritime oil fields) is significantly strained. The consequences of strained regional ties and the collapse of certain arrangements with Venezuela illustrate the real costs of this alignment.  For a country facing long-term energy revenue decline and needing new hydrocarbon partnerships, this is a significant strategic consideration that Trinidad and Tobago’s government will need to manage carefully. The rewards, however, are also tangible. Trinidad and Tobago retained visa access for its citizens when the US suspended processing for dozens of countries including most of CARICOM; a concrete benefit with real economic and social value for Trinidadian families and professionals.

The Trump-Netanyahu relationship reflects genuine ideological alignment as both leaders share commitments to national sovereignty, strong security postures, skepticism of multilateral institutions, and resistance to what they view as politically motivated legal proceedings. President Trump has publicly supported Prime Minister Netanyahu on multiple occasions, including calling on Israel President Isaac Herzog to pardon the corruption charges Prime Minister Netanyahu faces, mirroring President Trump’s own experience with what both leaders characterize as politically weaponized legal systems. The Trump-Netanyahu alignment is therefore between two democratically elected leaders who share a similar populist-nationalist orientation.

The UNC won a landslide in the April 2025 elections, with analysts noting that Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s favorable disposition toward Trump, compared to the PNM’s closeness with Maduro’s Venezuela, was part of her appeal to voters.  The alignment with Trump’s America therefore carries democratic legitimacy: T&T’s electorate chose a leader who signaled pro-Washington orientation before taking office. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar’s domestic challenge is managing the minority of citizens who disapprove of US military operations in the region, while delivering on her core promise to reduce the gang violence and drug trafficking that has made T&T one of the most dangerous countries in the Caribbean.

The most significant similarity between Israel and Trinidad and Tobago in their relationship with Trump’s America is the underlying strategic calculation both have made: in a world of great power competition, where China, Iran, and destabilizing non-state actors are expanding their reach, aligning with the United States remains the most rational choice for a small nation facing genuine security threats.

Israel faces Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its network of armed proxies. Trinidad and Tobago faces the narco-state spillover from Venezuela and the cartel networks that have made it the per-capita ISIS recruitment leader in the Americas. Both have concluded that the US, under Trump, is a more reliable security partner than multilateral institutions such as the UN, CARICOM, or Arab League, all of which have largely failed to address the specific concerns of Israel and Trinidad and Tobago. Prime Minister Persad-Bissessar articulated this directly: “An organization that chooses to disparage our greatest ally the United States but lends support to the Maduro narco-government headed by a dictator who has imprisoned and killed thousands of civilians is one that has clearly lost its way.” This sentiment of prioritizing a powerful bilateral ally over a dysfunctional multilateral body is one that Israeli policymakers would recognize immediately. It is the same calculation Jerusalem has made regarding the UN for decades. In that sense, both countries are not so much dependent on Trump’s America as they are choosing it with eyes open, costs understood, benefits deemed worth the price.

Cultural Mirrors

The calypsonian and the Knesset backbencher operate on the same cultural logic of truth-telling through performance, with the crowd as judge… No Israeli politician is safe from satire, and no Trinidadian figure of authority escapes the calypsonian’s pen.

Israel has produced Nobel laureates, world-class literature, globally influential music, and a film industry that consistently reaches international festivals. Trinidad and Tobago has blessed the world with calypso, soca, limbo, steelpan (the only acoustic musical instrument invented in the 20th century) and a Carnival tradition that has been replicated across the globe from Notting Hill to Toronto.

Scarcity and pressure produce creativity is the tough lesson that both Israelis and Trinidadians have internalized. The existential intensity of Israeli life with its military service, security threats, immigrant absorption generates an urgency in artistic expression. The heat, the pluralism, and the postcolonial energy of Trinidad produce the same frenetic pulse in a different key. In both places, culture is not ornamental, rather, it is how each society processes its own complexity.

The Trinidadian  phrase “where your family from?” and its Israeli equivalent “from where you are?” carries the same freight in Port of Spain and Tel Aviv.

The power of their respective diasporas may be the deepest cultural parallel between Israel and Trinidad and Tobago. Both Israelis and Trinidadians carry a profound diasporic consciousness with the realization that a relationship between here and elsewhere that shapes identity at every level.

Israel was literally built by diaspora. The entire Zionist project is a diasporic return of Jews from Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Ethiopia, and the Americas converging on a small piece of land and negotiating what it means to be Israeli together. The question “where are you from originally?” carries enormous weight in Israeli social life, because everyone’s family story involves somewhere else.

Trinidad is similarly constituted by diaspora and transplantation. Africans brought forcibly under slavery, Indians, Portuguese and Chinese brought as indentured laborers, Syrian-Lebanese merchants, Europeans: all arriving over centuries and building a society that is entirely a product of that convergence. The Trinidadian  phrase “where your family from?” and its Israeli equivalent “from where you are?” carries the same freight in Port of Spain and Tel Aviv.

In both countries, the nation itself is the project of making meaning out of displacement. And in both the  Jewish worldwide diaspora and the  Trinidadian worldwide diaspora, the relationship to the homeland is intense and emotionally charged. The New York Trinidadian and the Miami Israeli both maintain fierce loyalty to a small country they may not even live in, sending remittances, recreating the food, arguing passionately about home from abroad. While Israel has more effectively capitalized on harnessing the power and engagement of its Jewish diaspora with such efforts as Birthright and other programs to connect Jews to the Jewish state, Trinidadian diaspora are proudly flying the red, white and black of their homeland in their cities for Caribana, Labor Day and Notting Hill Carnival.

No discussion on culture in either Israel or Trinidad and Tobago could ever ignore the food. For Israelis and Trinidadians alike, food is identity, argument, memory, and pride compressed into a meal.

Israeli food culture is a direct product of its multiethnicity: Ashkenazi brisket sits alongside Yemeni jachnun, Moroccan harira, Iraqi kubba, and Arab hummus, all now claimed as “Israeli.” The question of what counts as Israeli food is itself a political and cultural battleground. Hummus particularly has become a site of contested ownership with Palestinians, but also a symbol of Israeli cultural synthesis. Trinidadian food culture is identical in structure. Doubles (a Trinidadian Indian street food), pelau (an African-influenced rice dish), bake and shark, roti, pastelles (Venezuelan-derived), black cake reflect the multi-tradition melting pot that is Trinidad and Tobago. What constitutes “Trini food” is a creolized archive of every people who ever arrived on those islands. And just as in Israel, the question of who owns which dish, which tradition is “authentically” Trinidadian, carries cultural and political weight. Both cuisines are also characterized by extraordinary spice tolerance, street food culture, and the social significance of eating together across ethnic lines. The shared meal is, in both societies, one of the few spaces where communal boundaries soften, where people come together and where being Israeli and Trinidadian is most felt.

In secular liberal democracies, religion is typically private. In both Israel and Trinidad, religion is woven visibly and loudly into public life; not through theocracy, but through the sheer plurality of sincere belief operating simultaneously in public space.

In Israel, the Shabbat rhythm shapes the entire country as buses stop, businesses close, the air genuinely changes. The Jewish calendar governs national life: Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, Passover, Sukkot are not just holidays, they are the architecture of the year. Alongside this, Muslim Friday prayers, Christian churches, Druze traditions, and Bahá’í presence all operate visibly. In Trinidad, religion is equally public and equally plural. Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, Catholic churches, evangelical congregations, Spiritual Baptist “mourning grounds,” Orisha shrines all coexist and often bleed into one another. Divali is a national holiday. Eid is observed publicly. Phagwa colors the streets. The Catholic carnival precedes Ash Wednesday. No one finds this remarkable, because it is simply how Trinidad is. Religion in Trinidad and Tobago, as in Israel, is not something you keep at home, it is something you carry into the street.

Both societies have a powerful oral tradition and a cultural love of argument that foreigners sometimes find confusing, overwhelming or entirely captivating. Israeli culture valorizes chutzpah; that directness, irreverence toward authority, comfort with confrontation. Israeli social interactions can appear rude to outsiders who expect the soft indirectness of northern European norms. But it is not rudeness, instead what it actually is is a cultural premium placed on authenticity and the willingness to say what you think. The Talmudic tradition of argument as a form of intellectual respect runs deep. Trinidadian culture has its own version in picong, which is the art of witty, pointed verbal sparring that is simultaneously affectionate and devastating. Calypso music is essentially formalized picong: social commentary sharpened into art, using humor to say what would be impolite or politically incorrect to say plainly. The calypsonian and the Knesset backbencher operate on the same cultural logic of truth-telling through performance, with the crowd as judge. Israelis and Trinidadians also share a deep suspicion of pomposity and a tendency to deflate the self-important with humor. No Israeli politician is safe from satire, and no Trinidadian figure of authority escapes the calypsonian’s pen.

Israel’s festival culture of the communal Passover seder, the public dancing of Simchat Torah, the revelry of Purim, the outdoor concerts and mass gatherings of Yom haAtzmaut functions as collective emotional release for a society under permanent stress. The festival is more than just celebration; it is psychological maintenance for a people who cannot afford to break down. Trinidad’s Carnival performs exactly the same function. It is not coincidence that Carnival explodes in February before the austere Lenten season; it is the society giving itself permission to release everything: grief, anger, sexuality, political frustration, joy, and absurdity, all at once, in wild abandon in the street. Sociologists of Carnival have long noted that it manages social tensions that would otherwise require more destructive outlets. Israelis and Trinidadians have learned, through hard historical experience, that collective joy is a survival strategy, not a luxury. The Israeli hora danced at a wedding in the shadow of war, and the Trinidadian dance of wining through the economic despair of downtown Port of Spain are both the same acts of defiant resilience dressed as pleasure.

The roughly 40% of Trinidad and Tobago’s Indo-Trinidadian community shares strikingly similar historical experiences with world Jewry: diaspora, indentured displacement, preservation of ancient religious tradition in a foreign land, maintenance of endogamy and communal cohesion under pressure, and gradual social ascent through education and commerce. Indian indentured laborers brought to Trinidad from 1845 onward maintained Hinduism, Hindi language fragments, and inherent Indian values across the ocean, just as Jewish communities in diaspora maintained Hebrew, halakha, and communal institutions across centuries of displacement. Both communities built tight internal networks, and the mandir mirrors the synagogue as a community center, not just house of worship. Both faced majority suspicion and periodic discrimination. Both responded by excelling in education and the professions. The same internal solidarity, religious continuity, educational investment, commercial networking which characterize the Jewish diaspora are similar with the Indo-Trinidadian community. Although the historical circumstances that produced them differ enormously, the same cultural strategies of survival emerged.

Israel and Trinidad and Tobago are societies which were forged by the meeting of multiple worlds under conditions of pressure, displacement, and survival, and both responded by producing cultures of extraordinary vitality, humor, religiosity, and creativity. Neither culture fits neatly into Western European liberal secular norms. They are louder, more emotionally direct, more spiritually alive, and more politically passionate than the societies that colonized or dominated them. And as small as they are, Israel and Trinidad and Tobago have convinced the world that what happens there matters far beyond their size.

PART 3 will be published soon.