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Trump and the Jews: 'It's Good for America to Be Connected with Israel'

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JERUSALEM, Israel – President Donald Trump has arguably been one of the most pro-Israel US presidents in a long time; yet much of the American Jewish community opposes Trump. Why is that?

Author David Rubin tackles that question in his new book, Trump and the Jews.

Rubin is an Orthodox Jew and an American-Israeli. The former mayor of the Israeli community of Shiloh, Rubin and his son were also victims of a terror attack years ago.

"Trump is the best president in American history for Israel. We've had some good ones," Rubin told CBN News.  

"Before the State of Israel was re-established, George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman, these were people who were believing Christians who recognized that Israel is important, that Israel is God's country and that they have to stand with Israel – and that it's good for America to stand with Israel. Trump has surpassed them all."

Among Trump's accomplishments, Rubin said, are taking a pragmatic approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by canceling the Iran deal; moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and announcing the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) office in Washington.

According to a recent report, published by the Israeli think-tank, The Jewish People Policy Institute, the Trump administration is frustrated by the fact that American Jews are not rallying around the president, given his sweeping support for Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported.

Rubin said he wrote the book to explain why such a large segment of American Jews vote for Democrats, with the exception of the American Orthodox Jewish community, while so many Israelis favor President Trump.  

"You have to look at the history of American Jewry," Rubin said.

"The American Jewish community came to America mostly in the early part of the 20th century. They were very poor. They lived in slums, mostly in New York. It took a long time until they started to develop and to prosper. They worked long hours. They abandoned the observance of the Jewish Sabbath so that they could work," he explained.

Rubin said his own grandfather was an immigrant from Russia who had abandoned the Sabbath observance to support his family.

There are thousands of cases like this, he said.

Rubin said they were connected with the labor unions and therefore leaned more toward the Democratic Party.

"In this, we had the secularization of the Jewish community," he continued. "Today, the Jewish community is the most secular of all the Jewish communities in the country and because of that, they've lost their biblical roots. They're not biblically connected anymore."

"Unfortunately, what has happened to the Democrats in recent years is they've adopted the far-left extremism, which is anti-Israel," he said. "If Israel isn't top on your list of priorities, then you're going to go against Israel. In addition to that, there's the immigration issue."

In stark contrast, polls show that Israeli Jews are very favorable toward the president. So why the difference?

According to Rubin it's all about Jewish identification.

"In Israel, we have wall-to-wall, across-the-political-spectrum support for President Trump. Israelis love President Trump. They think he's doing a great job. It includes secular Israelis. Those who lean a little bit to the left of the political spectrum, they love President Trump also. They think he's doing a great job. And why is that? Because they're Jewishly identified," he explained.

Orthodox American Jews also have that identification and that's why they are supportive of President Trump, he added.

"President Trump is on the right side of history, and the right side of history is standing with the Jewish people," Rubin said.

"It's good for America to be connected with Israel. If that American-Israel connection ceases to exist and that bond ceases to exist, then it's going to be bad for America also," he said.

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About The Author

Julie Stahl
Julie
Stahl

Julie Stahl is a correspondent for CBN News in the Middle East. A Hebrew speaker, she has been covering news in Israel full-time for more than 20 years. Julie’s life as a journalist has been intertwined with CBN – first as a graduate student in Journalism, then as a journalist with Middle East Television (METV) when it was owned by CBN from 1989-91, and now with the Middle East Bureau of CBN News in Jerusalem since 2009. As a correspondent for CBN News, Julie has covered Israel’s wars with Gaza, rocket attacks on Israeli communities, stories on the Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, and the