Simple logic says that Israelis should be hoping for a Trump victory in the US presidential election. Indeed, most of them are, unlike the leaders of Iran or the Palestinians. But a sizeable minority, the ones who see themselves as responsible for Israel's well-being, find themselves joining forces with Iran and the Palestinians and hoping he loses. They loathe him, apart from any rational political disagreement with his policies, and express themselves in near-religious terms.
How can we explain this? Let's leave aside for a moment one step by Trump that did not earn the attention it deserved: recognition of Israelis' right to settle disputed areas of the western part of the Land of Israel, because it does not pertain strictly to settlers, whom a minority of Israeli "doves" love to hate. But Trump cancelled the strategy of the Democratic administration that preceded him, including Joe Biden, which sowed the seeds of anarchy all around us, in Libya, in Yemen, in Iraq, and close by in Syria and Lebanon. This strategy forced Israel to carry out airstrikes against Iran, which poses a threat to it and to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states. Trump torpedoed the dangerous move of lifting Iran to the status of "responsible," that would have supposedly allowed it to participate in calming various regional tensions. Trump prevented enormous sums of money from flowing to Iran that would have fed its terror mechanism and imperialist expansion in the Muslim world at Israel's borders.
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Do the people hoping for Trump's defeat want to go back to that?
Trump ended the historic battle that Israel has been waging since 1948 for its status in Jerusalem. The battle was fought against immense forces in both the Christian and Muslim worlds. The status of Jerusalem was a hostage in the Palestinians' hands. We were supposed to give in to their demands, or our capital would never be recognized. Even the most pro-Israel presidents prior to Trump could never bring themselves to right that wrong. Even the ones who understood the Jews' links to their historic capital, where they were a majority from the 1860s. Trump's decision to relocate the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem exposed the fact that the threats of Armageddon that had frightened off all his predecessors were nothing but a paper tiger.
Trump went on to add a deep-seated strategic understanding about the need for Israel to establish sovereignty along its eastern backbone, in the Golan Heights, in the Jordan Valely, and on the slopes of eastern Samaria. His recognition of the northeastern border of Israel ended, at least for now, a decades-old diplomatic dispute. A few times, our own behavior brought us to the brink of defeat on the Golan Heights. Trump, to a large extent, blocked that. In his proposals to Israel and the Palestinians, he recognized the vital Israeli interest in sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and changed the opening positions for both sides. With the possibility of Israeli sovereignty he opened up prior to the Abraham Accords, Trump took away the Palestinians' veto, which had kept Israel at an impasse for decades. By cancelling American support for UNRWA, he started to break apart a multi-faceted mine that had been planted in Israel's path.
So how can we explain the position of that same Israeli minority, doves in their outlook toward the Palestinians, who hope that Obama's VP will become president of the US? The answer lies with the non-democratic perceptions that have taken over their thinking. After their diplomatic approach failed utterly, they cannot examine themselves, lest they discover that their underlying assumptions were mistaken. They are clinging to blaming Israel for the failure, even when dovish governments were in power. Since Israeli voters cannot be persuaded to agree with this absurdity, the patriotic doves in Israel are venting their spleens at the "world," led by the US, the superpower that Israel would have difficulty confronting. Under the shadow of a confrontation like they, they can scare Israeli voters.
But Trump took away that last trick. So the US election is a political event for Israel, too. Israelis who cannot convince their own people about their diplomatic proposals want to force the country's hand with help from an external arbitrator, basically taking away their sovereignty. We can see here how the self-professed "democrats" have forgotten what it means to be democratic.
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