originally published in Arutz Sheva: Israel National News

Donald Trump’s return to power and the world stage should presumably benefit the United States, Israel, and the free world while vexing the world’s enemies of virtue and justice, even as we do not put our faith in either princes or human beings (Tehillim 146:3). That being said, President Trump is bound to do many things that please us in Israel and some things that infuriate us. It bears keeping in mind that Trump is President of the United States and not prime minister of Israel, and while the United States and Israel’s interests are often aligned, they are not identical. We are expected to define our national interests and objectives, we are expected to make prudent decisions about our lives and nation, and we should be capable of saying “no” (or “no thank you”) when pressure is applied to coerce us into doing things against those interests and objectives.

If you haven’t yet noticed, Trump can be blustery in his pronouncements and downright tempestuous in his threats. We should also notice that few are carried out, most are uttered for their effect or for purposes of negotiations, and even he isn’t always aware of the ultimate consequences of his fulminations. He threatened “Hell to Pay” if all our hostages were not released by the time he took office, which of course did not happen, and with little prospect of that happening anytime soon. Trump boasted loudly that he would end the Ukraine-Russia war on “Day One,” with “one phone call,” which, do note, did not happen. Perhaps amid all the inaugural festivities, he had no time to place the phone call or maybe Putin’s telephone was busy.

A normal, self-respecting country knows how to say no when its national interests or the lives of its citizens are endangered. We in Israel have not yet achieved that status, and so, notwithstanding our passionate desire to gain freedom for our illegally-and-in-violation-of-international-law-held hostages, our government (again) has committed to releasing into society thousands of terrorists and murderers, all to terrorize and murder again. Suzie Dym of Mattot Arim calculated, based on past ratios of innocents released in exchange for terrorists, that more than 380 Israelis can be expected to be murdered in the coming years by these freed terrorists. Israeli TV generally downplayed the gleeful celebrations occurring in Arab villages in Samaria at the first batch of discharged terrorists; having Israelis watch that would dampen the ecstasy at the release of our first freed hostages. The message our weakness sends to our enemies and the world is that crime pays.

This is not the first time PM Netanyahu caved under pressure and likely won’t be the last but there is no other politician alive today who can put the most positive spin on the most craven surrender. He could depict Custer’s last stand as just a momentary setback on the way to complete victory. Netanyahu has done many positive things as Israel’s longest-serving prime minister but his legacy will forever be marred by the Shalit deal and this, the Netanyahu deal. He could have said no or not yet or not this deal.

Bear in mind that Trump has openly expressed his desire to reclaim the Panama Canal and seize Greenland, to which the prime ministers of Panama and Denmark responded, in their respective languages, “take a hike.” The world did not come to an end, the sun rose the next day, Panama and Denmark are still functioning, and Trump’s threats will go nowhere. (Humble prediction: Greenland will remain Danish, the Panama Canal will not be renamed the Trump Canal, and the US will negotiate slightly reduced passage fees.) What I cannot figure out is what is the American interest in coercing this deal, which, even temporarily, strengthens Hamas and better enables it to remain in power over its quite supportive constituents.

Pundits have opined that Trump wanted a victory on his first day in office, akin to Reagan whose inauguration coincided to the minute with the release of American hostages held in Iran after 444 days of captivity. (The US exchanged or paid nothing for this release, unlike Israel in our current imbroglio.) That reason strikes me as too facile, and even if true, only three Israeli hostages were released – along with numerous Arab evildoers – which is not quite Reaganesque.

Some maintain that this was a good will gesture from Netanyahu to win assistance on the Iranian front or to deflect future pressure, and that could be. But it is even more likely that Trump was testing Netanyahu and his inclination to fold under pressure, which makes it even more dangerous in the future. Strength respects strength and bullies devour weaklings, and it is time that we define our vital interests and protect them at any price.

The good news about Trump is that he comes to most world issues with only one preconceived notion – that he can solve any problem – but no others. He is untethered to the shibboleths of modern diplomacy, especially including the creation of another Palestinian state. We would do well to establish our red lines and soon, or there will be unwanted responses to unexpected events. Yes, Mahmoud Abbas is unlikely to survive the Trump term (he thinks he will be 93 when the Trump administration ends) but Abbas will surely be succeeded by a more polished leader who will beseech the world for the welcoming gift of Palestinian statehood, including the division of Jerusalem, and recite all the clichés the international community wants to hear. We should prepare for that.

The other bit of good news is that Trump is surrounding himself with a foreign policy team that is strongly pro-Israel and a welcome relief from the condescension of the Obama-Biden staff. The dark cloud in this is that Trump sees himself as master of foreign policy and likely will sideline his formal advisors (think FDR ignoring Cordell Hull and Nixon snubbing William Rogers). If so, the real variable is Steve Witkoff, fresh off cramming this horrible deal down Israel’s throats.

He is an unknown. In truth, there is an advantage to an outsider bringing fresh ideas into the staid foreign policy establishment. We benefited greatly from that in Trump’s first term, especially the decoupling of the “Palestinian” issue from other regional relationships which then engendered the Abraham Accords. Sages such as John Kerry, frozen in their outlooks (especially their cold contempt towards Israel), deemed that impossible. It took new eyes to see the possibilities and act upon them.

Yet, it is striking that the three primary architects of the Abraham Accords – Jared Kushner, David Friedman, and Jason Greenblatt – were all Orthodox Jews who possess a particular world view grounded in both realism and a sense of Jewish destiny. By contrast, Witkoff, a successful real attorney and developer, is typical of the secular American Jew who possesses a (thus far) tenuous attachment to Jewish tradition and a paucity of Torah knowledge.

That is a world of difference, illustrated by the attribution to him soon after his appointment as Trump’s Middle East negotiator, that Witkoff sees the conflict in Israel as a “complicated property transaction,” in which, presumably, each side wants something – land or money – and you try to find the middle ground through negotiations. Witkoff has certainly been involved in numerous real estate projects involving complex and acrimonious negotiations. And as a native New Yorker, I too know that New York can be a tough environment in which to live and do business.

Nevertheless, it is highly doubtful that Witkoff has ever been involved in a “complicated property transaction” in which the prospective buyer tortures, mutilates, rapes, and murders the sellers or their tenants. It is most unlikely that Witkoff ever dealt with buyers who routinely blow up the buildings they seek to acquire or kidnap the children of the sellers and hold them in torturous captivity only because these “buyers” are cruel, evil, Nazi-like psychopaths coddled by much of the world. Has Witkoff ever negotiated with malicious ghouls who murder and then hide the bodies of their victims? I think not. Even the New York real estate field is not that tough. Instead, we are in a war of ideas, of conflicting visions about life, human purpose, and destiny, and not in a war over condominiums v. co-ops v. commercial development.

Perhaps Steve Witkoff can learn a little more about Jewish history and Jewish destiny. He would learn that the Bible prophesied our exile from Israel if we sinned, and then our return to the land of Israel at the end of days. He would learn that our struggles in the land of Israel have little to do with territory and much to do with Torah, faith, redemption, Moshiach, and the revelation of G-d’s kingdom on earth.

Witkoff would learn – many Israelis should learn this as well – that our rights to the land of Israel were given to us by the Creator. No nation and no international organization have the right to compromise that. Those nations that support us in the endeavor of the reborn Jewish state on this holy land will be blessed and those who try to frustrate our destiny will be cursed.

In the meantime, the Trump years will bring us moments of elation and others of deflation. We should not expect him to be everything we want. We should appreciate him as a relief from the nasty rebukes of the Biden years, Biden’s unbridled pursuit of policies that harmed us, and his sale of weapons to us just enough so that we should fight but not enough that we should prevail.

Most importantly, we should remind ourselves that decisions about the destiny of Israel must be made here, by us, by our government, and not by outsiders (or, for that matter, by our Supreme Court). We can listen to our friends and allies – and then decide what is in our interest. Above all, that means internalizing that, as King Shlomo put it (Proverbs 29:18), “when there is no vision, the people will lack restraint, but one who keeps the Torah is fortunate.”

We need to articulate a Jewish vision for the future. People with a strategy will always run circles around those without a strategy – and leaders without a strategy eventually wind up with Oslo Accords, expelling Jews from Gaza, repeated wars in Lebanon and Gaza, incentivizing hostage taking by rewarding the kidnappers, and conquering Gaza with no plan to reassert sovereignty and reestablish Jewish settlement there.

Our enemies have a vision; we could use one.

The purported suggestion that Gazans will relocate to another country and Israel retain security control over that tiny, doomed territory, is a good start, far more encouraging than the hostage deal. And Donald Trump will respond more favorably to a nation with a vision that can simultaneously further American interests in the world for peace and prosperity (or vice versa) than a nation that lurches from crisis to crisis, groping in the dark for a way forward because it eschews the light of Torah.

We need a clear vision because Trump is mercurial, temperamental, transactional, and unpredictable. He wants concrete accomplishments and not just diplomatic babble, deeds and not talk, but like many others, he considers an “agreement” and a “signing ceremony” to be an accomplishment, regardless of its enforceability or future hazards. Like many in politics, he can be a “stage one thinker” as well, never contemplating the longer-term effects of any action. As such, our vision, and our commitment to implement it, are indispensable.

If we ascertain and solidify our vision, the Trump years can be a boon for Israel, the region, and the world. If our leaders cannot figure that out, then we need new ones, faithful ones, and soon.

Photo Credit: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore with CC BY-SA 2.0 license, on Flickr.