Photos: YouTube Screenshots
TEL AVIV—A few hours before the release of Israel Defense Forces soldier Edan Alexander—who is a dual Israeli-U.S. citizen—from Hamas captivity Tuesday, hundreds of protesters demanding the release of the remaining hostages made their way from Museum Square to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv holding a large banner in English that read: “In Trump We Trust.”
Anyone who has ever held a dollar bill knows the motto “In God We Trust,” which was added to U.S. currency in 1956 at the height of McCarthyite hysteria. Congress enacted a law establishing the phrase as the official national motto in order, supposedly, to distinguish the United States from atheist communism.
Maybe someone could understand why the families of the kidnapped adapted the slogan for their demonstration: to thank Trump, who they felt had worked to return the captured U.S.-Israeli soldier following direct negotiations with Hamas, and to express distrust in another sometime dual U.S.-Israeli citizen—Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
But even if one can perhaps comprehend the feelings of desperate families and activists for those held captive, should we really trust in Trump? Is there anything in his history to suggest he keeps his promises when it comes to peace…or anything else?
Halakha—Jewish law—explicitly states that one should not sleep in a bed oriented east and west but should aim with the head facing north and the feet facing south. In the case of Trump and the prisoners in Gaza, there is no certainty about which side of the bed the American president will wake up tomorrow morning. Will he care now that there are no more Americans in captivity?
One thing is clear, however: Trump actively supports the massacre that Israel is carrying out against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and their dispossession from their land in the West Bank, and he has presented a plan for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—to the delight of the racist right in Israel….
