President Donald Trump’s triumphal address to the Israeli Knesset Monday had it all: solemn vows, idealistic visions, boasts of strength, rambling digressions, and sarcastic humor. Not to mention a surprise twist, when Trump called on Israeli president Isaac Herzog to end Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s criminal trial by pardoning him. Trump said the appeal wasn’t in his prepared text. “But I happen to like this gentleman over here,” Trump explained, “and it just seems to make so much sense.”
Spontaneity, common sense, and thumbing one’s nose at political establishments in America and beyond—these are hallmarks of Trump’s rhetoric. Yet the Knesset speech was unique. It was revealing. It will be remembered.
The circumstances were historic: an end to two years of war in Gaza and the release of the remaining Israeli hostages. The occasion was noteworthy: Trump became the first president to address the Israeli parliament since 2008. And the lesson was clear: Trump’s alignment with Netanyahu has remade the Middle East in ways that strengthen both the Jewish state and the United States of America. “The day breaks on a region transformed,” Trump said.
This was not inevitable. In many respects, Trump’s second term is unlike his first one. The tariffs are harsher. The immigration crackdown is for real. Political opponents face reprisals. The Western hemisphere takes priority over Russia and even China. Some MAGA-adjacent podcasters stoke antisemitic flames. They want to burn the connections between Christians and Jews.
Perhaps it was inevitable that Trump’s instinct for challenging conventional wisdom found its greatest expression in a region encrusted with liberal guilt, diplomatic pieties, and multilateral claptrap.
Yet there’s one place where Trump’s approach has been a straight line for more than a decade. That place is Israel. When dealing with the Middle East, Trump has never wavered. He’s committed to fighting terrorism and to peace through strength—core concepts in Netanyahu’s statecraft as well. And by siding with Israel and against the militant Islamists who despise the West, Trump has done more to advance peace than the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs could hope to achieve in a million years.
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