Clockwise from top left: Fox News host Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, Rep. Mike Waltz, Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Elise Stefanik. Photo by Getty
Senior Columnist
Rob Eshman
November 13, 2024
I’m not a perfect human being, and so I admit that for every cup of bitter concern I feel over President-elect Donald Trump’s initial picks to handle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a teaspoon of pure, sweet schadenfreude.
To those pro-Palestinian purists who threw away their vote on third party candidate Dr. Jill Stein in order to punish Vice President Kamala Harris for the Biden administration’s Gaza war policy, let me introduce you to the future United States Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who in 2008 said, “There really is no such thing as a Palestinian.”
“I think Israel has title deed to Judea and Samaria,” Huckabee said in 2017, on what he says is more than 100 trips to Israel since his first visit in 1973. “There are certain words I refuse to use. There is no such thing as a West Bank. It’s Judea and Samaria. There’s no such thing as a settlement. They’re communities, they’re neighborhoods, they’re cities. There’s no such thing as an occupation.”
To those Arab-Americans in Dearborn, Mich., whose desire to stick it to Biden and Harris made Trump the first Republican presidential candidate to win in America’s largest Arab city since 2000, I give you the likely next secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio.
Rubio accused the Biden administration of not being sufficiently supportive of Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. In a video that made the rounds on social media, Rubio said he does not support a ceasefire until Israel destroys “every element” of Hamas.
“I feel terrible,” he said about the estimated 15,000 Palestinian children killed in the war. “But I blame Hamas.”
To those Arab-Americans in Michigan who believed, even for a second, the cynical Trump television ads saying Harris was a puppet of Israel and that only Trump could bring peace to the Middle East, meet your next national security advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz.
On Fox News earlier this year, Waltz said the Biden administration took an “appeasement first” approach to Iran. He said members of Congress who supported a Gaza ceasefire were “antisemitic,” and promised to give Israel a free hand to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.
To the pro-Palestinian groups that disrupted and sowed chaos at Harris’s campaign stops, I think you’ll enjoy the new CIA director, John Ratcliffe. The former director of national intelligence accused the Biden administration of being insufficiently supportive of Israel, signed a commemorative statement declaring Jerusalem “the eternal capital of the Jewish people,” and as a Texas representative voted for the ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
To the 74% of Muslim-Americans who, according to a Council on American-Islamic Relations exit poll, voted for Stein or Trump, say hello to the incoming United States Ambassador to the U.N., Rep. Elise Stefanik.
Stefanik took a bold stand against genocide — that is, she pressed three presidents of elite universities on whether it’s appropriate for college protesters to call for the genocide of Jews. She recently called to cut off aid for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), the main supplier of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.
“The United States must stand with Israel’s decision to ban Hamas-infiltrated UNRWA from operating in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza,” she said in a Nov. 4 press release.
And to that one leader of the Arab-American group Uncommitted, who withheld his support from Harris until about a minute before the election, I give you the next secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth.
You are really going to love him.
Hegseth, a combat veteran, Princeton and Harvard graduate, and, like Huckabee, a Fox News regular, said a trip to Israel as a journalist cemented his love and appreciation for the Jewish state.
The visit, he told the Jewish Press in 2016, “reaffirmed the ties the Jewish people have to this land that have historical and real geopolitical resonance today. This is not some mystical land that can be dismissed. It’s the story of God’s chosen people.”
That’s a lot of crow to eat in two days. Arab-Americans and anti-Israel activists who wanted to believe that Trump was going to be tougher on Israel and more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause can now stand in line behind his Taj Mahal casino creditors, Trump University enrollees, and the 13 former high-ranking Trump administration officials who warned, in writing, that he cannot be trusted.
At the same time Trump was telling Jewish supporters he would stand strongly with the current government of Israel, he was telling Arab-American leaders he would make peace and security for Palestinians a reality.
Of all the promises Trump may yet break, he broke that one the fastest.
The men and women he appointed, among the first selections he made to his new administration, share Trump’s unwavering support for the government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
Not incidentally, so does Miriam Adelson, who gave Trump $100 million — his campaign’s single largest donation.
How deep is their commitment to Israel? Huckabee and Hegseth are both evangelical Christians who see in Israel the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.
In a 2018 speech at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, Hegseth himself prophesied that one day Israel would see the rebuilding of King Solomon’s Temple on the Temple Mount, where Al-Aqsa, one of Islam’s holiest shrines, now stands.
“1917 was a miracle,” Hegseth told a 2018 gathering at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. “1948 was a miracle. 1967 was a miracle. 2017, the declaration of Jerusalem at the capital was a miracle. And there’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.”
Many people predicted that taking out their anger on Biden by voting against Harris would backfire on supporters of Palestinian rights, and, well, Trump has quickly proven them correct. It is a self-own of biblical proportions.
But schadenfreude cuts both ways. Many Israelis and supporters of Israel are elated by Trump’s picks, who check off every item on their wish list, including the possibility, floated this week by members of Netanyahu’s cabinet, of quickly annexing the West Bank.
The statements and track records of Trump’s latest picks suggest they’ll cheer on annexation, which numerous Israeli military, security and political experts have long warned could spell the end of Israel as a Jewish democratic state.
Moral of the story: No matter which side you’re on, be careful what you wish for.
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