Why Don’t Israelis Like the US? Why Don’t They Wish Us Well?

The more I read of Israeli support for Donald Trump in the Presidential election, the more I am forced to ask why Israelis don’t wish America well?

More than most countries, Israelis should know the peril of having a leader, who when given the choice between his own interest and national interest, will choose his own interest. While there may be some debate in Israel about its Prime Minister’s motivation, in the United States there can be no doubt that Donald Trump will always choose what is in his best interest uber alles.

More than most countries Israelis should know the danger of electing someone who does not tell the truth. In the case of Trump his lies are too numerous to count, they support his fragile ego, and his inability to admit even to the possibility of error. How does one grow if they can’t learn from experience or from others.

His lies are dangerous, injurious to life and limb. As President, he prescribed bleach as a treatment for COVID, he cast doubt on the COVID vaccine – the great achievement for which he should have taken full credit for Operation Warped Speed – which could have saved lives and which under his successor brought the epidemic under control.

As President, he rewrote a weather map to falsely depict an area in danger during a hurricane because he had misspoken earlier. Just this week, he has misled the American people about the response to hurricanes and the effectiveness of FEMA, even the aid that will help people rebuild their lives. He is endangering those who survived danger and endangering those who are facing danger at this moment.

And what can one say of his claim denied by all but his subservient running mate that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are eating their neighbor’s cats and dogs? If it weren’t so dangerous and venomous, one could laugh.

He endangers democracy, falsely misleading the public as the trustworthiness of our election and trying to sabotage the peaceful transition of power. We live in fear of what might happen if he loses the election and unleashed violence, we live in greater fear of what might happen if he prevails in the election and might unleash systematic, organized violence against enemies, perceived or real.

Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark A. Milley who served under Trump said that
“Trump is fascist to his core.” “He is the most dangerous man in the country. Ninety three former security officials have come out to warn the American people of the consequences of his ever getting getting near the Oval Office.

While Trump may not be an antisemite, we know that under his leadership the US Embassy moved to Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords occurred under his watch, and his has Jewish grandchildren. he is seen by elements of the American right as deeply supportive of antisemitism, repeating antisemitic tropes, presuming that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than their own country, telling Jews what many Israelis I know are embarrassed to say that Benjamin Netanyahu is your Prime Minister hosting Holocaust deniers and antisemites, calling Jews great negotiators and underscoring their association with money, refusing to condemn those in Charlottesville “who chanted Jews will not replace us,” and endangering Jews attending Shabbat services.

He is already blaming Jews if he loses the election and therefore subjecting us to violence and reenforcing the conspiracy theory prevalent in the Protocols that Jews control the world.

Trump is transactional not guided by values or commitments, not only responding to cheap flattery no matter its source but insisting on such flattery. Recall how he had his Cabinet genuflect in subservient praise for their great leader. Stability in international relations and trust worthiness are essential among both allies and adversaries and Trump’s leadership has been chaotic and destabilizing.

He is corrupt. A convicted felon in New York for financial crimes, he has also been found responsible for abusing and repeatedly defaming a woman whom the judge has described that he raped. He has manipulated the judicial process to avoid accountability for election interference and retaining national security documents. Israelis should have some sympathy for a leader who is fearful of the judicial consequences of his actions and for what it tells the younger generation about honesty, integrity, and the rule of law, all essential to democracy.

He is incoherent, rambling, conspiratorial, and vengeful. We have learned a new vocabulary in following press accounts of his rants, “sane washing,” trying to figure our what he means in the avalanche of vitriol. Trump is not what he used to be, certainly not in 2016 or 2020. He is worse, failing, consumed by vengeance and victimization.

His vision of America is dark. He is our prophet of doom. He tirades against immigrants as “poisoning the blood” of the nation echoes the racists of times not long past. His plan on mass deportation is not only unachievable, unconstitutional, but profoundly antithetical to American needs. In contrast to Israelis Americans are not having children as level to population replacement, without immigrants we will become an aging society without workers to handle the economy and we will not be the beneficiary to the talent, innovation, entrepreneurship that generations of immigrants have brought to America, including the vast majority of American Jews who did not come here on the Mayflower.

He can’t keep a staff, and we fear for the staff that remain with him. The turnover in the White House during his tenure was the highest it has ever been and worse who have worked for him most closely, most especially in national security, are nearly unanimous in their conviction that Trump should never be near the Oval Office again. Those who would serve in a new administration would have to take an oath of loyalty not to Constitution but to Trump personally.

Two out of three, perhaps three out of four, American Jews will not support Donald Trump in 2024. So Israelis who support him seemingly have disdain for the judgment of their American brethren who are closer to the scene and more implicated in its consequences.

We must ask: why do you not wish us well?