Trump’s Cold Shoulder to Israel: Real or Rumor (Judean Rose)

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

Donald Trump, during his previous administration, brought us the Abraham Accords and established a U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem. This time around, Israeli Americans voted for him in droves, there being a general feeling among us that Biden was bad for Israel and Trump the opposite of that. We were frightened for our hostages, needed weapons, and more importantly a strong voice in support of our war on Hamas. Trump appeared to tick all the boxes. We had high hopes.

It began so well. The president gave Israel carte blanche to do as it pleased in Gaza and helped us fight the Houthis. And though there was a feeling that the president was being wildly misled by Qatari puppet Witkoff, he was a good friend to Israel. We appreciated it and were glad we voted for him.

Then rumors of a rift began to flow, a narrative built from a sequence of events. The US would no longer help Israel fight the Houthis. Israel was excluded from the itinerary of Donald Trump’s Middle East tour. Trump accepted a very expensive private plane from Qatar. There was a secret US deal to free Edan Alexander that was in the works for months without Israel’s knowledge. The murmurs that Trump has turned against Israel have been gathering steam. Nobody I know wants to talk about it much, but there is thick nervous tension in the air.

That’s my sense, at least, though I keep looking for articles that prove me wrong. I don’t want to believe there’s a rift. But I don’t like the way Trump kept us out of negotiations for Edan Alexander and made us look weak, made Bibi look ineffectual, not in Trump’s good graces. I do understand that America and Americans come first, but in my view, the way this deal was done was really not cool.

It didn’t help that Edan Alexander’s mother Yael, pointedly thanked everyone but Netanyahu for freeing her son from captivity. Her failure to acknowledge him spoke volumes, especially since the deal was negotiated behind Israel’s back, making Bibi look sidelined.

Witkoff, of course, couldn’t help but rub it in, telling the hostage families that if only Israelis weren’t so divided, we’d be strong, the war would end, and the hostages come home. That was the sense of what he said anyway, if not his actual words.

But not everyone is worried. Ruthie Blum, senior contributing editor at JNS, for example, believes the buzz is baseless. In a recent op-ed, Is Trump Really Turning His Back on Bibi and Israel?, Blum says the gossip comes from two agenda-driven sources, isolationists and anti-Netanyahu Israelis. She also notes “conflicting versions of what is essentially gossip in disguise.”

Blum’s does an able job dissecting all the scuttlebutt. She paints a reassuring picture of how things stand between Israel and President Trump, and points to a recent meeting between Israel's Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer with several important members of the Trump team. "Another clue that Washington hasn’t turned its back on Jerusalem is that U.S. Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (doubling as interim national security advisor) and special Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff were present at the powwow [with Dermer]."

The meeting does suggest that the relationship remains strong. At the same time, JD Vance is a known isolationist, who in October said of the US-Israel relationship, “Sometimes we’re going to have overlapping interests, and sometimes we’re going to have distinct interests. And our interest very much is in not going to war with Iran. It would be a huge distraction of resources. It would be massively expensive to our country.”

I asked Blum if, as she contends, isolationists are responsible for the rumors of a rift, how do we know that JD Vance isn’t leading the charge and what does this portend for the future? Vance may very well be the next president of the United States.

“Had those leaning in an isolationist direction reprimanded Dermer, it would have been a bad sign. We know this didn't happen, however, since it would have been front page ‘news,’ given all the media mudslinging about Dermer's supposedly being "arrogant" and a source of irritation,”

“Nothing so far suggests that there's a rift between Washington and Jerusalem,” said Blum. “And the fact that Trump didn't make Israel part of his Mideast trip this week is actually a good thing. The last thing he needs is for it to appear that America is doing Israel's bidding in the region.”

Ruthie Blum, it seems, is betting on Trump playing a long game, not cutting ties. That makes a lot of sense. That does seem to be the way Trump operates.  

But there are other voices. An Arab political analyst, speaking on condition of anonymity, had a completely different take. “Trump is being played by the Islamists. Sadly, he has chosen to align himself with the bad guys. Many Arabs are convinced that he has thrown Israel under the bus and that he could be easily bought with their charm, hospitality and money. This does not bode well for the future of the region, especially because his actions and rhetoric embolden the radical Muslims.”

Wait.
Is Witkoff in Qatar's pocket?https://t.co/Lc80AIjpDx
andhttps://t.co/szajrm4H9S

— Yisrael Medad (@ymedad) January 16, 2025

I think it is true to a degree that Trump is being played by the Islamists. For me, the proof of that is Witkoff’s admission in March that he had been duped by Hamas into thinking they had accepted his proposal to extend the ceasefire when they had no intention of doing so. “I thought we had an acceptable deal. I even thought we had an approval from Hamas. Maybe that’s just me getting duped. I thought we were there, and evidently we weren’t."

Well, duh. Of course you were getting duped. Did you expect fairness and honesty from Hamas?

Witkoff is Trump’s guy on this. Trump trusts Witkoff knows what he’s doing. Ergo, when Witkoff is duped by Hamas, by default so is Donald J. Trump.

Has Trump turned cold toward Israel and its prime minister? Ruthie Blum says no. It’s only a mirage, stirred up by political vultures. Others say Trump is falling for Qatar’s charm and risking a regional firestorm by expressing a willingness to negotiate with Iran. It is unfortunate, but Donald Trump’s weakness for flattery could very well make him ripe for Qatar’s game. Let’s hope the president sees through all the ceremonial fawning and glitz, and understands that it is Israel, and Israel alone, who stands as America’s always faithful ally in the Middle East.

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Buy EoZ's books  on Amazon! "He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

 

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Yemen wins the Jew-hating sweepstakes

The most antisemitic media in the world comes from the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.

Here is an excerpt from a (now) Houthi newspaper, Al Thawra about Jewish influence in the world. 

The autotranslation of the top is pretty representative.

The licentious life of the Italian clergy was prostitution, filth, and indulgence, natural or unnatural. Macchio described the monks and the Brotherhood as "servants of the devil." They indulge in debauchery, homosexuality, gluttony, selling religious functions, and deviating from religion, and they say that the men of the army are of better morals than the clerics.

As the monasteries of men and women were close enough to allow those in it to share from time to time in one bed. The monasteries' records contain twenty volumes of trials due to sexual intercourse between monks and nuns... and others.

It is clear from this section of the Christian legacy that the Jews controlled the clergy with lust and moral corruption and made them, under these scandals, their slaves.. Hence the collapse began.

They were able to control the popes, and thus society lost its confidence in them, and the process of moral and ethical collapse began.

The Jewish movement sought to create an alternative lifestyle for the wealthy in order to challenge social norms. Its main focus was the pursuit of pleasure, especially sexual pleasure. This pursuit often involved non-traditional relationships between men and women as well as same-sex relationships or same-sex relationships between women. It started with the Industrial Revolution and has grown ever since. The Decadent Movement is characterized by an emphasis on luxury and excess, with an emphasis on extravagance, decadence, and hedonism, and women were given greater rights over their own bodies.

With the emergence of this degenerate movement made by the Jews, the beginning of Western civilization (barbaric civilization) can be calculated.

This mimics Nazi antisemitic literature. 

Yet there are close to no academic studies that look at Houthi antisemitism.

If Jew-hatred doesn't come from the Right, no one is interested - even when the hatred is clearly influenced by Nazi sources.

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Houthi websites don't even pretend not to be Jew-haters

 Arab media didn't have a problem with antisemitism before MEMRI and Palestinian Media Watch started translating their articles into English. One of the earliest translations from MEMRI came from the official Palestinian Authority newspaper Al Hayat al Jadida, in 1998, during the Oslo process(!):

Corruption is a Jewish trait worldwide. So much so that one can seldom find corruption that was not masterminded by Jews or that Jews are not responsible for. They are well known for their intense love of money and its accumulation. The way in which they get hold of that money does not interest them in the least. On the contrary - they would use the most basic despicable ways, to realize their aim, so long as those who might be affected were non-Jews. A Jew would cross any line if it were in his interest.

...Since such is their behavior, they have exerted all their efforts into developing evil schemes. They believed that the secret to their survival lay in controlling the economies of the countries that had let them in and sheltered them from being refugees. [They further believed] that the secret lay in conspiracy and abatement of feuds [between non-Jews], so that the non-Jews would be engaged in internal conflict – paving the way for [a Jewish attack]. They concoct scandals that would haunt leaders, letting the Jews take a firm grip and tilting leaders in favor of their interests.

A survey conducted by [Jewish] scholars, on the legacy and customs of non-Jewish nations, taught them that the latter were afraid of money and sex. These are exactly the two instruments Zionists use. First, they have propagated Freemasonry and Rotary clubs all over the world, in order to hunt for influential people, or such whom they can take advantage of. Zionists trap these [influential people] due to their circumstances, shortsightedness or greed. [Shortcomings] have pushed them to the lap [of Jews], so they can [still] reach the aims they had envisioned.

While one may find similarly antisemitic articles in Algerian or Iraqi or Islamic fundamentalist media, since the translations started getting media attention the more mainstream sites in Egypt and the PA have been trying to avoid explicit antisemitism and call it all "anti-Zionism."

Little has changed, except in Abraham Accords countries. But the explicit antisemitism is a bit more embarrassing so it is not as publicized in the media of most Arab states.

But not in Yemen.

It isn't surprising to see that Yemeni news sites associated with the Houthis remain explicitly antisemitic. After all, the Houthi motto includes "Curse the Jews." 

So they can feel free to say all the things that most Jordanians, Palestinians and Egyptians think - out loud.

This is from the Houthi Laa Media site called "The Cancer of the Jews" published yesterday:

Today we call the name “Jew” in general on every person who converted to the Jewish religion, while the reality is that many of these are not Semitic in terms of ethnic origin, as a large number of them are descendants of the Herodians or the Edomites of Turkish-Mongolian blood.

The Jews of Khazaria were famous for their malice, extreme stinginess, decadent methods in financial matters, and their vile morals, so they spread economic and social corruption in Europe. .

In 1306 AD, France expelled the Jews, followed by Saxony in 1348 AD, Hungary in 1360 AD, Belgium in 1370 AD, Slovakia in 1380 AD, Austria in 1430 AD, the Netherlands in 1444 AD, Spain in 1492 AD, Lithuania in 1495 AD, Portugal in 1498 AD, and Italy in 1540 AD, and Bavaria in general 1551 AD.

Therefore, most historians say that Europe was not able to start the era of renaissance and prosperity until after it was able to expel the Jews from its lands and liberate itself from the clutches of Jewish economic control.

Will we, the Arabs, succeed in expelling this malignant cancer from our region, so that we can enjoy the renaissance and prosperity as Europe did in the past?!

Or is the axis of resistance the only one fighting this cancer in order to expel it from the region, while the rest of the Arabs do not care about the evil of this malignant disease?

It is a direct call for genocide. 

If the larger Arab world was as repulsed by antisemitism as they claim, they would attack the Houthis as being bigots, and defend the remaining Jews in Muslim lands. But they never do, not when Yemenis say these things and not when other Arabs manage to publish similar articles. 

Shaming is a terrific weapon, and one that the West needs to use more. Even if antisemitic Arabs are forced to hide their hate, that still is an accomplishment - hiding it makes it harder to spread to newer generations. MEMRI and PMW has managed to shame large swaths of the Arab world to eschew explicit antisemitism, knowing that they will look bad when exposed to the West. 

The Houthis cannot be shamed by Westerners - but if their fellow Muslim Arabs would call out their hate, they would be put on the defensive. And if we are going to successfully fight Arab antisemitism, then we need the Arabs who claim to distinguish between Jews and Zionists to prove it by openly defending Jews from attacks like these. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Is Iran preparing for a proxy war with Israel as soon as JCPOA is signed?

Haaretz is perplexed:

In addition to dealing with the progress toward a new nuclear agreement with Iran and the talks aimed at preventing a teachers’ strike September 1, Israeli decision makers had another matter to ponder this week. Much time and other resources were devoted to trying to figure out what Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is up to. The answers, so far, have been very partial.

There seems to be no logic to Nasrallah’s frequent threats to strike Israeli drilling platforms in the Mediterranean, risking war, if a final agreement is not reached on the Israel-Lebanon maritime border. Lebanon is in the midst of a severe economic and political crisis, and if war were to break out Hezbollah would likely be widely blamed for embroiling the country in an unnecessary and very costly military adventure.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer Nasrallah has spoken out the dispute over natural-gas drilling rights, growing increasingly extreme in his statements. What’s worrisome, especially to Military Intelligence, is the difficulty of analyzing his views and intentions. Despite the high likelihood of an eventual agreement, with U.S. mediation, there is still genuine apprehension about possible surprises from Hezbollah.

It still amazes me that serious analysts think that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah makes any real decisions on his own. His loyalty is to Iranian leaders, and no one else. The well-being of Lebanon is not one of his goals, it is an impediment to his goals.

Even UNIFIL, which is reluctant to publicly criticize Hezbollah, has called out its increased militarization and violations of the buffer zone in southern Lebanon.

Nasrallah's increasing bellicosity must be seen in context of what is happening with other Iranian proxies. For example, this story today says that Syria asked Iran and its proxies not to conduct attacks against Israel from its territory - which means that Syria is aware of such plans.

Not to mention the Islamic Jihad mini-war earlier in August, which was prompted by an attempt for a major terror attack against Israel. That was all orchestrated by Iran, seemingly against Hamas wishes for stability in Gaza. 

See a pattern?

There was also an intriguing story of a possible Israeli strike at a Houthi camp in Yemen on August 7, during the Gaza fighting, where six Iranian and Lebanese advisers were killed. The Houthis, using Iranian technology, have been increasing their ballistic missile and cruise missile ranges to reach Israel and have directly threatened Israel as well. 

From all indications, Iran is gearing up for a major escalation of fighting against Israel, but it is not ready to directly attack. It wants its proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and seemingly Yemen (maybe even Iraq) to overwhelm Israeli missile defenses with thousands of rockets from all directions. (One must also assume that Iran is working with some Israeli Arabs to create a fifth column of terror attacks within Israel itself in the case of any war.) 

The escalation of threats by Iran and its proxies is almost certainly linked with the nuclear negotiations. The billions of dollars that Iran would gain from an agreement would help fund these proxies, a basic fact that the West is consciously overlooking in its zeal to close out a bad deal with Iran. Iran understands the West much better than the West understands Iran, and the mullahs have already proven that they can gain far more leverage with militancy than with confidence building measures.  

And they know quite well that the West, after finally sighing with relief at an agreement, will not have the will or desire to threaten new sanctions in response to an Iranian-directed proxy war against Israel. 

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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Uh-oh - a Houthi defense minister says Zionism is too shaky to survive. Israel must be quaking.

From the International Quran News Agency (Iran):

Yemen’s Defense Minister Nasser al-Atefi said the Zionist regime of Israel is in its worst condition and in a precarious situation.

He made the remark in a visit to a war zone in Ma’rib province, adding that given its shaky condition, Tel Aviv  is seeking to get the support of certain Arab regimes, Al-Mayadeen reported.

He added that the Arab regimes that are part of the Saudi-led coalition launching aggression on Yemen want to get support via normalization of ties with the Israeli regime.

Al-Atefi warned the coalition that if the scope of the aggression, siege and attacks on Yemen intensifies, the Yemeni people will rub their nose in the dirt.

Hey, he's an "expert!"

This is a typical article in Iranian media. Officials predict Israel's demise, just as they have been for decades. And if Israel is allying with Arab countries - it is just proof of how weak it is. (And before that happened, it was proof of how isolated Israel was.)

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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