Trump’s First Month With Israel and Gaza Echoes Biblical Kings Cyrus and Darius – The American Spectator | USA News and PoliticsThe American Spectator

As I write, President Donald J. Trump is wrapping up his first month as 47. He already has fixed so much that we may wonder whether, if he maintains his first month’s tempo, he will have anything left to fix by year four.

Amid so much of the president’s activity on the domestic front aimed at truly making America great again, it is easy to overlook the degree to which Trump also has jumped into the hardest, messiest conflagrations that Biden–Harris left him overseas: Ukraine-Russia and the 23-country Arab-Muslim World against the only Jewish-majority country on earth. Both those international messes are the fruits of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris asleep at the wheel. Vladimir Putin seized Crimea in 2014 on Obama’s watch, behaved subdued through four years of Trump 45, and then invaded Ukraine as soon as the doddering fool and his cackling clod assumed office. Any fair-minded, objective observer can see how the fatal Afghanistan disaster emboldened Putin. Biden said, “Don’t.” Putin paused for a moment to ask himself, “Why not?” And then … did.

Likewise, President Trump inherited the Biden–Harris October 7, 2023, massacre. Know for a certainty that Biden and Harris — not Hamas nor Iran — primarily facilitated October 7. If a prospective assassin lies on a city sidewalk, a day or two from death, gasping for air, emaciated for lack of food, parched for lack of water, he is not much concerned when he says, “I am going to assassinate my intended target.” The enabler who then gives him food, water, guns, and bullets is the primary, if not only, cause of the murder spree that follows. That was Biden-Harris. Trump 45 had starved and emaciated the ayatollahs of Iran. Trump’s severe sanctions strangled them. Their citizens lacked food. No country dared buy their oil, their economic lifeline. They were shattered and collapsing.

Then came Biden–Harris. They fed them, clothed them, and gave them the billions upon billions that not only resuscitated their bankrupt economy and government but even loaded them with the excess to build Hamas in Gaza, raise up Hezbollah in Lebanon, inject Hezbollah into Syria, and even convolute international shipping at the Red Sea by pumping up the Yemenite Houthis as a maniacal new terror group.

Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our latest print edition.

With replenished Iranian backing via Biden–Harris, the supply of armaments and military training to Gaza resumed, and Hamas revived to perpetrate what Israelis simply call “October Seventh.” On that day, Hamas invaded southern Israel, targeting the all-night dance and drugs Nova Festival, freely slaughtering — of all people — innocent Israeli “peaceniks.” These were the young people most opposed to the conservative Israeli government led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These were primarily, though not exclusively, Israel’s anti-war kids who were among those boycotting serving in the military reserves. And Hamas’ other primary targets were Israelis living in kibbutzim (kibbutzes) bordering Gaza. Again, Israel’s most left-wing citizens, the ones who most passionately advocated the nonsensical “two-state solution” pushed by the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Squad, and the Biden-Harris administration, and who chose to set their roots living alongside Gazan Arabs to show how peaceful such coexistence inevitably would be. That’s whom the Arabs primarily slaughtered on October 7, as they chopped off heads, raped even dead women, smashed children’s skulls, and stuffed live screaming babies into ovens, baking them alive.

Throughout the next year, Israel has fought for her life and existence — truly an “existential war” — to finally destroy Hamas, after this fifth consecutive Hamas murderous violation of an internationally guaranteed ceasefire (2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023), each supposedly ending a previous Hamas-initiated war. That had been the pattern for eighteen years, ever since Israel left Gaza in August 2005 and handed all of it to its “innocent Gaza civilians” on a silver platter. But Hamas, instead of creating a gorgeous country, taking advantage of their Mediterranean views and wonderful climate, chose to create an Arab Sparta, a war-footing country constructed around a single purpose: massacring and murdering the Jews of Israel and exterminating that country so that, “from the (Jordan) River to the (Mediterranean) Sea,” only one country — an Arab-Muslim country — would be. 

Bill Wilson/The American Spectator

As Israel fought back, Biden-Harris-Blinken tied their hands. They embargoed weapon shipments for which Israel had paid. They jawboned Israel into feeding their enemies, sending “humanitarian” supplies to their murderous foes. America never sent such to our enemies — even at home — during wartime. For example, General Grant starved Union enemies with brutal sieges at Vicksburg, Petersburg, and Richmond. Yet Biden and Blinken coerced Israel to send “humanitarian” supply trucks that Hamas regularly commandeered to feed and supply their own murderers and to recruit new ones. Then Biden wasted $230 million building a “Pier to Nowhere” that was expected to foster supplying more food; instead, the weather at sea devastated the pier so often that Pierless Biden soon tore it down. The war raged on, with no end in sight. He would not let Israel win. Hamas knew that Biden and Harris, despite condemning October 7, had Hamas’ back, warning Israel not to enter Rafah, threatening embargos.

And then came Trump — the cavalry just in time. Amid his tornado of domestic activity as he flooded the zone upon entering office, he similarly replaced Blinken with Marco Rubio at State, Austen with Pete Hegseth in the Pentagon, inserted Elise Stefanik at the U.N., and made Mike Huckabee ambassador to Israel. Trump was not just a new sheriff in town. Rather, there now was a real president of the United States of America in town. He released to Israel the 2,000-pound bombs that Biden and Harris embargoed. When the media asked why, he responded: “Because they paid for it.” And he turned the endless Groundhog Day Gaza paradigm on its head.

All the doddering fools in Washington and the United Cowards of Europe — tough talkers, yet effete, who cower fearing what the world would be like if Washington did not perpetually sustain their derrières at peace and at war — were advocating the same exact response to the Gaza destruction this time as every other time: “Let’s impose a ceasefire on Israel, then ‘rebuild Gaza’ by flying them trillions of dollars in pallets of cash and shipping them iron and steel to rebuild their homes.” And then they, instead, will use the money and building materials to restore their tunnels and launchers, rockets, missiles, mines, and RPGs. Then Hamas will attack Israel again, murder more Jews, Israel will hit back and flatten Gaza again, and we then will force a ceasefire on Israel and rebuild Gaza. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

Trump stepped up with a genius alternative, asking: “How many times can people keep repeating the same failed strategy?” Only one thing makes sense: evacuate all of Gaza, as sometimes happens in regions during a Florida or North Carolina hurricane or a California wildfire. Get them out of the way. Then raze what’s left. And then truly rebuild it. In the meantime, don’t send the evacuees to Germany, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, France, England, and Holland. That never has made sense. They are theologically Muslims, ethnically Arabs, and speak Arabic. So send them this time to Jordan, Egypt, and other such countries among the twenty-three Arab and Muslim countries in the world. A solution so obvious that all the woke of the European Union cannot digest it. And through it all, this president has made clear that America’s military will not get embroiled in a new war nor pay for its cost. Let the Arabs and Europeans pay. Our brave service heroes will not be called upon for Bush-style “regime change.”

Bill Wilson/The American Spectator

In the eyes of Israelis, Trump has become a figure of biblical proportions. Like King Cyrus the Great of Persia, who allowed the Jews to return to Israel from their Babylonian Exile, and Darius I of Persia, who allowed the Jews to finish rebuilding their Holy Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, Trump 45 recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel (moving America’s Israel embassy there), Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. He pulled the U.S. out of the antisemitic U.N. Human Rights Council, closed the office of the General Delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in Washington, brought American Jews under the protections of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and so much more. After Biden and Harris reversed many of Trump’s most successful efforts, Trump 47 promptly reversed Biden’s disruptions with his own executive orders, even extending additional defenses against antisemitism, sanctioning the antisemitic International Criminal Court, preparing to cut federal funding from colleges and universities that fail to protect Jewish students, and even symbolically inviting Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu as the first foreign leader to visit Trump’s Oval Office.

The books of the Bible have been canonized, so Cyrus and Darius made it in. But there now are cities and communities in Israel being named for Trump, including Trump Heights in the Golan and Trump Square in Petach Tikva. More to come.

Subscribe to The American Spectator to receive our spring 2025 print magazine.