Today’s GOP is Endangering the U.S.-Israel Relationship
By Hon. Ron Klein and Steve Sheffey
For decades, the U.S.-Israel relationship has been based on shared values and shared strategic interests. In his recently published book, Barak Ravid, one of Israel’s most respected journalists, described the contempt with which Donald Trump and his administration held Israel’s leaders. Ravid’s book makes clear that for Trump, not only was the relationship transactional, but Trump expected the most important beneficiary of this transactional relationship to be Donald Trump, not the United States or Israel. After he lost the presidency in November 2020, Trump viewed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to congratulate Joe Biden on his victory as “disloyalty” and “the ultimate betrayal.” Trump said of Israel’s former Prime Minister, “F**k him.”
But the real story is that despite these revelations, Republicans who claim to support Israel have remained silent and continue to support Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
We now know that the illusion of no daylight between Trump and Netanyahu was a charade designed to benefit both men politically and that, as Alon Pinkus wrote, Trump expected Netanyahu not to congratulate the president-elect of the United States because Trump “had ‘given him’ Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, Netanyahu owed him. It’s a New York real estate deal.”
The U.S-Israel relationship is not a real estate deal, nor is it a reality game show. Yet that is how Trump treated it, and his degrading of the special relationship into a personal transaction is an insult to anyone who cares about the deep and historic partnership between the U.S. and Israel.
Trump’s Iran policies were similarly misguided, just as they were damaging for the U.S. and Israel. Israeli security and military experts have recently gone public with their concerns about Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran Deal in 2018. Major General Isaac Ben Israel said that “Netanyahu’s efforts to persuade the Trump administration to quit the nuclear agreement have turned out to be the worst strategic mistake in Israel’s history.”
Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, the most decorated soldier in Israel’s history, said that Trump’s decision to recklessly pull out of the original Iran deal “was a delusional decision that allowed the Iranians to move forward quickly in the direction of becoming a nuclear threshold state.”
Neri Zilber documents that today “Iran’s nuclear program is by all estimates at its most advanced stage ever, and a growing chorus of former Israeli officials have decried Netanyahu’s (and Trump’s) strategy as nothing short of calamitous: jettisoning a nonproliferation agreement that, however flawed, was working, in favor of a coercive strategy against Iran that on every parameter has failed to achieve the results confidently predicted by those who cheered on Trump.”
Thanks to Trump’s malfeasance, a return to even an updated version of the Iran Deal might not be possible. Trump’s withdrawal from the deal while Iran was still in compliance caused other countries, including Iran, to question American credibility, and Iran has moved perilously close to becoming a nuclear weapons threshold state. China and Russia, unconstrained by the U.S. unilateral withdrawal, have cut their own deals with Iran, which do not include the U.S. or our other “P5+1” JCPOA allies. Congress should be wary of passing legislation that could impede Biden’s efforts to reach a diplomatic solution to a crisis of Trump’s making. Unless we can reenter an updated Iran Deal, we will learn the hard way that there was never a realistic alternative.
Unfortunately, just as Trump put his political interests ahead of the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel, so too Republican leaders have remained silent, putting their political allegiance to Trump over the U.S.-Israel relationship. No Republican member of the House or Senate has spoken out against Trump’s debasement of the U.S.-Israel relationship as recounted in Ravid’s book. None have acknowledged the chorus of criticism of Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran Deal coming from Israeli military and security experts. They fear Trump’s wrath more than the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran.
For that matter, 82 days and counting after the House passed $1 billion in emergency funds for Iron Dome pursuant to President Biden’s request, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) continues to prevent the Senate from passing the bill and fulfilling our commitment to Israel, and Republicans continue their silence. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who is highly skilled at the art of Senate procedure, has chosen to let Paul continue to block Iron Dome funding, while Trump and other Republicans have done nothing to ensure its passage.
Finally, for all their professed concern about antisemitism, Republicans have remained completely silent on Trump’s long record of antisemitic rhetoric, not even after reports that Trump said Hitler “did a lot of good things.” It’s not surprising that Senate Republicans are blocking the nomination of the preeminent scholar on antisemitism and the Holocaust, Dr. Deborah Lipstadt, to serve as Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism.
Donald Trump is a threat to Israel and to Jewish Americans, and because of their blind fealty to Trump, the same is true of today’s Republican Party. No one should celebrate the Republican Party’s subservience to Trump, but we don’t do ourselves any favors by ignoring reality. The policies of Donald Trump and the Republican Party are dangerous for the U.S., Israel, and American Jewry, and it’s time to stop pretending otherwise.
When support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism was genuinely bipartisan, some Republicans sought Jewish votes by making false allegations about the Democratic Party, including suggestions that a few outliers among Democrats were typical of the entire party. In reality, the Democratic Party continues to strongly support the U.S.-Israel relationship, consistently and overwhelmingly voting for military assistance to Israel — including Iron Dome — and speaking out forcefully against antisemitism. Bipartisanship on these key issues remains possible, but we need Republicans to join Democrats in taking principled stances on key issues. Lifting their hold on Iron Dome and Dr. Lipstadt’s nomination would be good places for the GOP to start.
Former Congressman Ron Klein is the Chair of the Jewish Democratic Council of America’s (JDCA) Board of Directors.
Steve Sheffey serves as JDCA’s Senior Strategy and Policy Advisor.
