Something is wrong with us Israelis. Yes he is crass and yes he is rude, but let us not forget that nearly 50% of all Americans supported President Donald Trump in last week's U.S. elections - and an even larger percentage of Israelis favor him over President-elect Joe Biden.
And there is no doubt we Israelis owe Trump at least a word of gratitude.
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U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and White House aide Jared Kushner applaud President Donald Trump after the announcement of the Israel-UAE deal in August
(Photo: Reuters)
The current trend is vexing, because from the moment it became clear that Biden had won, most of the Israeli media seemed to create the impression that the enemy of the Jewish people was finally being ousted from the White House.
For a few hours, one could barely detect even a hint of the media showing Trump in a different light.
Let us not forget that without him Israel would not have made peace with the UAE, Bahrain and Sudan. Without him the U.S. wouldn’t have recognized Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel. Without him there would be no recognition of Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
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Settlers gather in the West Bank to show their support for Donald Trump ahead of the U.S. election
(Photo: Reuters)
And of course, without the Trump administration, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government would have led us into the disaster that is annexation of the West Bank.
The Trump initiative is also what led the Israeli right to understand that the Palestinians deserve at least 70% of West Bank territory and small pieces of land from Israel to make up their state and make the two-state solution a reality.
Despite all of the above, we have become ungrateful.
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Benjamin Netanyahu joins Trump administration officials at a signing ceremony to recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights
(Photo: AP)
The nuclear deal authored by former U.S. secretary of state John Kerry and then-EU foreign policy czar Federica Mogherini - the one Trump pulled out of in 2018 - is what allowed Iran to keep trying to dominate the region, arming Hezbollah, developing ballistic missiles and threatening Israel's very existence.
One can argue the best way to deal with the Iranian threat, yet one thing remains clear: The conciliation shown by the West, on both sides of the Atlantic, was bad for the Arab world, bad for Israel and bad for world peace.
It's true that Biden won 76 million votes so far, but let us not forget that Trump won 71 million.
Until the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump led an economic policy that actually helped reduce disparities between the populations - and while he did lie non-stop, he did not do anything his predecessors didn't do before him.
Yet it is precisely these progressive circles who have become a bitter enemy of Trump, who invented this culture of constant lies.
Thanks to the efforts of the liberal sector, most of Trump’s tenure in the White House was accompanied by constant investigations: Starting with the attempts of former FBI director James Comey to link Trump to Russia’s alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections and the subsequent probe led by former FBI director Robert Mueller into the affair.
Trump can and should be criticized for his attitude towards women, and admittedly, it is quite hard to praise a president who vehemently refuses to acknowledge the results of a democratic election.
But still, the Israeli media has chosen to almost completely ignore the good things Trump has done over the last four years.
He was not only a close personal friend of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but a friend to the entirety of Israel.
That is why despite his many faults, we should at least say “thank you.”