MELANIE PHILLIPS (JNS.org 7-11-24)
With the stunning re-election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, Israel has dodged a virtual bullet just as Trump himself was saved this summer from a projectile that came within an inch of assassinating him.
Israelis had been bracing themselves in dread for a Kamala Harris victory. This would have been the fourth administration in which former President Barack Obama, many of whose officials subsequently served the Biden administration and whose worldview has remained dominant within it, was pulling the strings of an anti-Israel, anti-West and anti-white agenda.
There were grave fears that Harris would have thrown Israel to the wolves at the United Nations, cut off arms supplies during the desperate war the Jewish state is fighting for its survival and activated more vindictive sanctions against Israelis, of whose attitudes to sovereignty over the land the Democrats disapprove.
Instead, America will have a president who in his first term was the greatest supporter of Israel ever to have occupied the White House. He will take a far tougher stance towards Iran; he won’t try to prevent Israel from achieving total victory over Hamas and Hezbollah; he will take a very dim view of the United Nations over its support for Hamas; he may sanction the International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice in The Hague over their persecution of Israel; and he is likely to defund the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, whose very existence delegitimizes Israel and that works hand in glove with Hamas.
Not surprisingly, liberals who loathe Israel and who have been having a meltdown over Trump’s victory flew to their keyboards to issue dark warnings that he was a danger to the world through his reckless disdain for international law and human rights.
The immediate danger for Israel, however, is far from over. Trump won’t become president until January, and over the next two months the lame-duck Biden-Harris administration can do it harm. Israel hasn’t forgotten that in 2016, outgoing president Obama vindictively threw the Jewish state under the bus at the United Nations by refusing to veto a Security Council resolution declaring Israeli presence in the disputed territories illegal.
There are also fears that Iran will choose to launch its long-threatened “retaliatory” missile attack on Israel during this interregnum since it won’t be able much longer to rely on the Biden administration to constrain Israel’s response in turn.
For Israel, neutralizing the Iranian threat remains an urgent and absolute imperative. Even if the regime stays its hand and doesn’t mount another
