United States President Donald Trump has announced his official endorsement of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s election campaign after previously refusing to endorse anyone. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on Sunday that Netanyahu had been a “great warrior prime minister and an even greater partner for peace”, adding that Iran had been “systematically destroyed both militarily and financially, and unless they change their ways, rapidly, we will soon finish the job.” “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” Trump wrote. Despite all of that, he has endured and, in fact, he has thrived!”.
The president added that normal men and women would have “wilted” under the pressure that Netanyahu was under, but the Israeli prime minister “got stronger”. Please let this Letter serve to represent my Complete and Total Endorsement of Bibi Netanyahu in his upcoming Race for Re-Election as Prime Minister of Israel. BIBI NETANYAHU WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!”, he added.
The Israeli election will be on October 27 . According to Israeli news outlet Haaretz’s tracker, as of Sunday, the opposition alliance led by the Yashar party of Gadi Eisenkot is expected to win the most seats, at 52, with Netanyahu’s Likud party-led coalition taking 51 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. So far, no party is projected to secure an outright majority.
But Trump’s endorsement comes after he had previously shied away from fully backing Netanyahu’s election campaign. Earlier this month, when asked twice by TIME magazine if Netanyahu should be given another term, Trump pivoted to his own popularity in Israel and Washington’s actions supporting Israel. When asked on Thursday by the right-wing US news outlet, Newsmax, if he was planning to get involved in the Israeli elections, Trump said: “They’d like me to be.
Yeah, they’d like me to be”. When asked whether he trusted Netanyahu, Trump replied, “I don’t trust anybody, honestly”. Still, Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East North Africa programme at the British think tank Chatham House, explained that Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu was “politically significant” because it comes after months of tension between the two leaders.
Israeli voters remain divided over Netanyahu’s leadership and the outcome of the Iran war. The endorsement may help consolidate his existing support, but it does not resolve the wider questions surrounding his record,” she added. Andreas Krieg, senior lecturer at the school of security studies at King’s College London, said that Trump’s endorsement was a “political gift” to Netanyahu, whose electoral campaign is struggling.
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