Whose Dome Is It? Trump Takes Credit for Israel’s Iron Dome (Judean Rose) ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Whose Dome Is It? Trump Takes Credit for Israel’s Iron Dome (Judean Rose)

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

President Trump chose an odd venue as the platform for his bout of historical revisionism.
Standing at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he told the assembled global elite that Israel’s Iron Dome was not really Israel’s achievement at all.

“That’s our technology, that’s our stuff,” he said, recounting a conversation in which he claimed to have told Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop taking credit for it.

Trump on the Iron Dome:

“What we did for Israel was amazing…We did it for Israel. And by the way, I told Bibi, ‘Bibi, stop taking credit for the dome. That's our technology, that's our stuff.’ But they had a lot of courage, and they were good fighters, and they did a good job.” pic.twitter.com/tm9G9uHdK5
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) January 21, 2026

It was a striking claim—and it was untrue. The Iron Dome was conceived, designed, and engineered by Israeli companies—Rafael, Israel Aerospace Industries, and mPrest—and first deployed at Israeli air bases in southern Israel in response to Israeli civilians being shelled by Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist entities in Gaza and Lebanon. No American president invented it. No American laboratory designed it. No American general figured out how to intercept rockets fired at Jewish homes, schools, and kindergartens.

But here is the part Trump was almost certainly leaning on in making his boastful claim: while the United States did not invent Iron Dome, it did provide a great deal of the funding for it, beginning under President Obama.

That funding was critical. It expanded the number of Iron Dome batteries, ensured a steady supply of interceptors, and later tied production to American contractors. American funding was framed as an act of alliance. The expectations attached to that funding constrained Israel’s ability to respond to attacks.

I was angry at the time—more specifically, angry at President Obama. His administration would fund the Iron Dome, but it would not allow Israel to stop the missiles at their source. Israel could intercept, absorb, and endure—but no more than that.

We were given the umbrella and told to crouch beneath it, intercepting rockets while Arab terrorists were allowed to continue firing at Jews. Terrorists were permitted to keep shooting at Jewish civilians, while Israel was denied the right, as a sovereign nation, to put an end to it. We did not create a Jewish state so Jews could cower under American protection.

Israel was founded to be a sovereign nation, capable of determining its own responses to threats. It was meant to be a safe haven for Jews in a world that has never needed much encouragement to hate them.

Iron Dome saved lives. That is beyond dispute. But it was never a clean or consequence-free solution. Interceptions send debris and shrapnel raining down, often over populated areas.

A friend’s son learned this the hard way. He was driving on a highway when the missile alert sounded. He did exactly what Israelis are instructed to do: pulled over, got out of the car, lay flat on the road with his hands over his head. An interception occurred overhead. Shrapnel came down. He was hit badly enough to require hospitalization.

This risk is well known, but people don’t much talk about it. Iron Dome has taken on an almost sacred status, making it easier to celebrate the miracle than to confront the cost—especially when that cost is borne quietly by civilians already living under fire.

Which brings us back to Trump.

Trump’s claim in Davos echoed an assumption long embedded in Washington: that Israel exists with American permission, and that its power is something to be supervised. Obama and Trump both like to assume the role of savior. They put on different performances, driven by the same vanity—the belief that Israel lives or dies because they say so, and that they deserve all the credit for Israel’s survival and success.

Israel may be protected. Israel may intercept. But Israel does not fully control the terms under which it ends threats to its citizens.

When Jewish self-defense is treated as something granted rather than owned, it becomes conditional. And once it is conditional, it can be reclaimed, rebranded, or spoken of—as Trump did in Davos—as someone else’s “stuff.”

That should trouble anyone who understands why a Jewish state exists in the first place.