RUTHFULLY YOURS

But after reading this account of Mr. Trump’s views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I think I owe those ladies an apology.

It turns out, after all, that Mr. Trump’s views on the Middle East conflict are a carbon copy of Mr. Obama’s.  For one, Mr. Trump believes that it is up to Israel to make peace happen.  He is apparently unaware of Palestinians’ outright rejection of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.  Secondly, Mr. Trump believes that solving the conflict is a central challenge, and so he promises to jump on it right at the onset of his presidency – as did Mr. Obama, having thought it was the key sore point that ruins the world’s universal happiness.

There may be different motivations for their ardor, and for their compulsive desire to get actively involved – Mr. Obama believed in the transcendent power of his personality and was eager to put it to good use; Mr. Trump is clearly eager to put to test his much-vaunted deal-making ability, of which he is clearly so proud.

But the method will be exactly the same: since both Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama believe that it is up to Israel to deliver a solution, Israel has to be pressured into surrender to please the ego, and the megalomania, of the U.S. president.

I think that one president who combines a messianic complex with total ignorance of the Middle East realities is far more than enough.  We do not need another four years of Obama policies, even if advanced by a somewhat Republican Mr. Trump.  We have a goodly number of candidates who have excellent understanding of the conflict, rooted in reality – Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, to name just a few.  They have my support.  Mr. Trump just lost it.