(Book Chapter Highlights)
By Elizabeth Berney, Esq.
ZOA Director of Research & Special Projects
Note: This article is not an endorsement of any party or candidate for office.
In 2021, the University of Southern California Casden Institute asked Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton Klein and I to co-author a chapter for a book entitled “The Impact of President Trump’s Presidency on American Jews and Israel.” Our book chapter, “Trump: Friend Extraordinaire to Israel and the Jewish People,” is reprinted on the ZOA.org website.
Here are some highlights (and Biden’s efforts to undo Trump’s accomplishments):
• Trump’s “Executive Order on Combating Antisemitism” helped defend Jewish and pro-Israel students from harassment on college campuses. ZOA previously led a successful battle to reinterpret the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students. Trump’s order enshrined, strengthened and required vigorous enforcement of these rights.
• Trump combated antisemitism in numerous other ways: (i) He brokered a groundbreaking MOU with Bahrain to eradicate antisemitism (in addition to the Abraham Accords). (ii) Trump deported the last known Nazi war criminal from the United States. Multiple previous administrations failed to do so. (iii) Trump condemned Congressional squad members’ antisemitism. (iv) Trump’s State of the Union address and many speeches denounced “the vile poison of antisemitism, or those who spread its venomous creed . . . anywhere and everywhere it occurs.”
• Regarding Charlottesville, Trump initiated a priority civil rights investigation; brought Heyer’s murderer to justice; and supported the Congressional resolution against “white nationalists, white supremacists, the KKK, neo-Nazis and other hate groups.” He did not call neo-Nazis “fine people.” In the very same breath as “fine people”, Trump said: “I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”
Biden’s combating antisemitism strategy downgraded the widely-accepted helpful IRHA definition of antisemitism; welcomed alternate definitions which protect antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism; and ignored antisemitism from sources other than white supremacy.
• Trump relocated the U.S. Embassy to Israel’s eternal capital Jerusalem. Biden tried to undermine this by pressuring to open a US consulate for Palestinian Arabs in western Jerusalem.
• Trump recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. (The Golan was part of the original Mandate held in trust for the Jewish people and has a long Jewish history.). Biden’s Secretary of State refused to acknowledge Israeli soereignty.
• Trump correctly recognized that Jewish communities in Judea/Samaria are legal. The Biden administration maligns and pressures Israel to stop these lawful Jewish communities and refused to visit them.
• Trump resigned from the so-called United Nations Human Rights Council because the UNHRC focuses on falsely attacking Israel. Biden rejoined the UNHRC.
• Trump sanctioned International Criminal Court (ICC) personnel for their unlawful investigation of Israel, and closed the PLO Washington DC office for prompting the illegal ICC investigation. Biden lifted the ICC sanctions.
• Trump appointed great friends of Israel to important posts. Biden appointed numerous Israel-haters, boycott supporters and antisemites. See the Biden Appointments Watch page on ZOA’s website.
• Trump was the first U.S. president to pray at the holy Western Wall in Jerusalem. Biden removed the Israeli flag from his limo when traveling in the Jewish quarter where the Western Wall is located.
• Trump respected Israel’s sovereign rights, keeping his campaign promise: “When I become president, the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one.”
Biden undermined Israeli sovereignty. Biden calls for a Palestinian Arab state in Gaza and on the indefensible pre-1967 lines with imaginary mutually agreed swaps. This would reward Hamas’ and PA terrorism, divide Jerusalem, leave 800,000 Jews homeless, and be an Iranian-proxy terror state in Israel’s lawful heartland. Abba Eban called these indefensible lines “Auschwitz lines” because they would cause Israel’s destruction. Lyndon Johnson correctly stated that retreating to the pre-’67 lines “is not a prescription for peace, but for renewed hostilities.”
• Trump policies saved Israeli and American lives. Trump signed the Taylor Force Act; stopped sending U.S. tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority regime because the PA incites and pays Arab terrorists $400 million per year of “pay-to-slay” rewards to murder Jews; stopped funding the UN Relief and Works Agency because UNRWA stores Hamas rockets and teaches Arab children to hate and kill Jews; ended the dangerous Iran deal; killed IRGC terror leader Qasem Soleimani, and imposed maximum sanctions on Iran, which significantly reduced Iran’s funding of terror proxies Hezbollah and Hamas.
Unfortunately, upon taking office, Biden immediately restarted funding the Palestinian Arabs and UNRWA, and gave them more even after Hamas launched 4,500 rockets at Israel in May 2021 (a total of $1.5 billion of our U.S. tax dollars). This enabled more anti-Jewish terror. Biden also failed to enforce Iran sanctions, and even allowed $10-$16 Billion to be released to Iran – the funder and trainer of Hamas – after Hamas’ October 7thatrocities.
• Biden pressured Israel to enter into a terrible 2022 deal to give rightful Israeli maritime territory and gas fields to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon, enriching Iranian proxy Hezbollah with billions of dollars. Hezbollah is now launching rockets at Israel every day. Yet Biden is promoting another bad deal, for Israel to give Israel’s vital lookout lands to Lebanon, in exchange for Hezbollah’s empty promise to do some of what Hezbollah is already required to do under UN Resoluton 1701, passed in 2006 (disarm, stop launching rockets at Israel and withdraw to north of the Litani River).
• Trump negotiated the Abraham Accords, establishing peace between Israel and four Arab countries. Biden is undermining the accords by trying to use them to promote a Palestinian Arab state.
• Trump signed U.S.-Israeli scientific, industrial and agricultural research cooperation agreements, enabling joint projects in Judea/Samaria and the Golan Heights. Biden issued guidance ending this joint research. This is a boycott against Jewish researchers in Judea-Samaria.
• Trump reversed discriminatory labeling regulations that had facilitated antisemitic boycotts against Israeli products made in Judea-Samaria.
• Trump allowed Americans born in Jerusalem to list “Israel” on their passports.
• When Trump was President-elect, Trump tried to stop the lame duck Obama-Biden administration from orchestrating the passage of horrendously anti-Israel UN Security Council resolutions. Biden recently refused to veto, and thus allowed the UNSC to adopt two harmful-to-Israel resolutions regarding Gaza.
