Although it is hard to shock and surprise Israelis these days, it is safe to say the statements from both sides of the American political spectrum regarding the war Hamas initiated on 10\/7 did just that.<\/p>\n
Last week, President Biden delivered a strong, heartfelt speech that gave many Israelis a ray of hope in very dark days. Biden\u2019s speech, originally timed for 8:00 in the evening, the primetime hour of Israel newscasts, was forceful and compassionate. For a decade and a half, the Netanyahu government accused Democratic presidents \u2013 Obama and later Biden \u2013 as being anti-Israel; some have depicted Obama as an antisemite (See\u00a0UN Resolution 2334,\u00a0<\/a>ed.) and Biden as senescent.<\/p>\n However, Biden\u2019s strongly pro-Israeli speech \u2013 and the concrete steps accompanying it, including dispatching the USS Gerald R. Ford to the eastern Mediterranean and committing to re-supply the IDF \u2013 sparked an immediate positive reevaluation of the American president by many Israelis.<\/p>\n On the other side of the aisle, I don\u2019t think it would be an overstatement to say that Trump\u2019s remarks at his rally in Florida on Thursday came as a real shock to many Israelis. Israel was one of the only countries in the world where Trump enjoyed popularity. In a Jan 2022 Pew Research Center survey, for instance, of the 32 nations surveyed 71% of Israelis expressed confidence in Trump, second only to the Philippines, and the only Western nation where confidence in Trump was above water. Trump was so highly regarded by the Israeli government that it named a community in the Golan \u201cTrump Heights.\u201d<\/p>\n A lot has been said in recent years about a growing gap between Israelis and liberal American Jews, and perhaps no indication of this gap loomed larger than the diverging assessment of American politics, particularly Trump. As mentioned, most Israelis loved Trump. Most American liberal Jews, on the other hand, remained loyal Democrats \u2013 roughly 75% voted for Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020. Their distrust of Trump \u2013 especially after his response to events like the 2017 \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in Charlottesville, which many of them saw as a flirtation with antisemitism \u2013 was especially high.<\/p>\n It is possible that the reevaluation by many Israelis after the starkly contrasting statements of Biden and Trump might bridge some of the gap between Israeli and liberal American Jews. And any avenue in which this connection grows stronger is a source for hope.<\/p>\n