If Trump is upsetting to delicate Jewish sensibilities, how come Israelis love him? Maybe Trump is only upsetting to wimpy spoiled Jews. Cucked Jews are upset by Trump. Real Jews, aka Israelis and Orthodox Jews, love Trump.
If Israel wants to kick out its Arabs, do you think Donald Trump would try to stop them? Do you think Israelis who chant “Death to the Arabs” fear Donald Trump?
Politico: This might be the most surprising poll from a wild, unpredictable 2016 campaign: One in four Israeli Jews would vote for Donald Trump.
The real estate mogul does not have a coherent position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, except to break with decades of Republican orthodoxy and announce that he would be “neutral.” His GOP rivals repeated that line endlessly, hoping it would blunt Trump’s rise in the polls. It didn’t.
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His campaign, run in the style of an authoritarian strongman, has earned him sharp criticism from American Jews, the largest Jewish community outside of Israel. And his backers include a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan who hopes Trump will “rehabilitate” Hitler’s image, a statement that ought to give pause to anyone in Israel. Indeed, the big question looming over this week’s American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention is just how many delegates will walk out during Trump’s speech.
Yet, a recent poll found Trump was by far Israel’s favorite GOP candidate, and the second-most popular overall. A plurality even thought he would be best at “representing Israel’s interests,” better than Hillary Clinton, with her decades of advocacy at the highest levels of government.
Those numbers could rise further still, after a spate of positive coverage in Israel’s most widely read newspaper, Israel HaYom, owned by billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. After months of scant coverage, the shift is a sign that Adelson—a major force in both Israeli and American politics—is reluctantly embracing Trump.
All of this presents a major dilemma for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has worked for years to align Israel with the GOP. The party’s presumptive nominee is now being spurned by the same establishment figures, men like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who make up Netanyahu’s “base” in Washington. Trump has no emotional attachment to Israel. And his success has upended the long-held belief that Republican voters care deeply about a candidate’s position on Israel.
In the United States, Trump has scrambled the political map, shattering the decades-old alliance between social conservatives and the Republican economic elite. In Israel, the confusion could become even more acute. Trump has already violated some of the tenets of the “special relationship.” And while his tough-guy persona and hostility toward Muslims have earned him surprising support from Israeli conservatives, his ascent is also a source of unease for policymakers: It creates a schism between an Israel that needs to work with Trump, and American Jews who despise him—and it could end up undermining the marriage between the GOP’s pro-Israel foreign policy elite and the broader Republican electorate.
“The government is in a bind,” says Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli diplomat and adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Barak. “Trump in this respect is so unpredictable. If I were advising Netanyahu, or indeed if I were Netanyahu himself, I would shut up for a few months.”
…His negative comments about Muslims don’t hurt him in Israel, either. “The Israeli public is getting everything through the Israeli media in Hebrew, so it’s not like they see everything,” says Tal Schneider, an Israeli political analyst. “They don’t grasp the entire candidate, they just see his anti-Muslim sentiment, and then they say to themselves, ‘ah, obviously we know that, because we live with the Muslims here.’”
Dr. Camil Fuchs, a well-known pollster who worked on the survey, says party affiliation also played a role in the findings. “Clinton is viewed as cooler to the Israel issue” because she’s a Democrat, he says. “Anything Republican is seen as better for Israel.”
…The umbrella organization for Reform Jewry, the largest community in the United States, accused him of “sowing seeds of hatred and division in our body politic.” Jewish commentators from across the political spectrum describe his rallies as “Nuremberg-esque” and accuse him of inciting violence. His views on Israel are barely a tertiary concern; the criticism is about how Trump’s campaign undermines social and political norms…
Trump did endorse Netanyahu before the 2013 election, calling him a “winner,” the highest praise in the mogul’s vocabulary. But Trump’s candidacy appears to have cooled their relationship. Trump announced with much fanfare in December that he would visit Israel after Christmas. Netanyahu, who has mostly kept silent on the election, quickly distanced himself from the candidate, denouncing Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Trump took the hint and cancelled his visit; Israelis suspect he harbors a grudge.
One Israeli journalist who covers Netanyahu half-jokingly imagines the dialogue at the first Trump-Netanyahu meeting: “Listen, you Jew, your slick ways aren’t going to work with this White House,” Trump might warn. “Stop those f**king settlements now.”
…Netanyahu might soon have little choice but to meet with Trump, so the mogul needs a new image amongst the Israeli public. Several observers pointed to the Chicago rally as a turning point: It offered a compelling narrative, a tough right-wing leader besieged by angry liberals, that would resonate with Israelis who resent their own left.
