Trump Touts Jerusalem Embassy Move as Israel Takes Center Stage in 2024 Campaign

Former US President Donald Trump points to the media while speaking at the North Carolina GOP convention dinner in Greenville, North Carolina, U.S. June 5, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis may not have officially declared his candidacy for the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary, but that did not stop former President Trump from going after him at a campaign stop in Davenport, Iowa, as both prospective candidates’ support for Israel takes center stage in the GOP contest for the White House.

At the event Trump touted his record in moving the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.

“I promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem and to get it built and I did,” Trump said. “We got the building built, it was built very quickly and I heard things will happen if you do it, it will be terrible, there will be bloodshed all over the Middle East. Nothing. It was just a way of stopping something that people didn’t want.”

Trump added that DeSantis was “disciple” of former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) who he called “a RINO loser,” using an acronym for “Republican in name only.”

While a DeSantis discussion in Iowa with Governor Kim Reynolds on Friday focused on education, he also repeated a story about how he has used water from the Sea of Galilee to baptize all of his children. And as governor, his support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism has been a focus of his administration. He held a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem five months after taking office, and he told the Republican Jewish Coalition in November that the West Bank was not occupied territory.

“I don’t care what the State Department says, they are not occupied territory, it is disputed territory,” DeSantis said of the West Bank, which he referred to as Judea and Samaria. “Because we understand history, we know those are thousands of years of connection to the Jewish people.”

DeSantis in 2018 campaigned on the promise that he would be “the most pro-Israel governor in the country.” In December, he hosted a meeting with the UAE and Israeli ambassadors to the US in support of the Abraham Accords, the agreement shepherded by President Trump that normalized relations between the two countries. Israeli Ambassador Mike Herzog thanked DeSantis “for his strong support of Israel & for the significant steps he has taken to combat antisemitism.”

Trump’s former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the first Republican to challenge Trump in the primary race, also made the embassy move and recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital a centerpiece of her remarks at CPAC on March 3rd.

“Remember what happened when we moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? 128 countries condemned us, so I took names,” she said at the annual conservative conference. “We give billions of dollars every year to countries that undermine America every day. They stab us in the back and then they turn around and have their hand out wanting money. Some of them even support terrorists that try and kill our troops. To this day, we are giving foreign aid to Pakistan, Iraq, the Palestinians, and even communist Cuba and China. We need to stop trying to buy friends and all we are doing is paying off our enemies.”

The Republican support for Israel stands in contrast to cooling signals towards the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the Biden Administration over controversial Israeli cabinet ministers and Netanyahu’s legislative agenda.

Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich faced a cold reception in Washington, DC, on Sunday over remarks calling for the erasure of a Palestinian village that the State Department called “repugnant.” And US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides has faced criticism within Israel after he said that the government should “pump the brakes” over its judicial reform proposals.

“We’re telling the prime minister—as I tell my kids—‘pump the brakes, slow down, try to get a consensus, bring the parties together,’” said Nides. While the United States was not going to “dictate” to Israel how to conduct its internal affairs, Nides qualified that “the one thing that binds our countries together is a sense of democracy.”

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