Since his relocation of the United States Embassy to Jerusalem, President Donald Trump has repeatedly been hailed as our generation’s Cyrus by Evangelical Christians, Republican Jews, westernized conservative Israelis, and even (cynically) in an Al-Jazeera op-ed.
This allusion to the Persian emperor who permitted Jewish exiles to return home from Babylon and granted permission for the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem casts Trump as a divinely inspired harbinger of Messianic redemption and a true supporter of Israel.
Cyrus’s lofty status in the writings of our prophets is due as much to his destruction and conquest of Babylon, which had destroyed the first Temple and exiled the surviving Judeans, as it is to his magnanimous proclamations that heralded the return from Babylonian exile. Similarly, the Trump analogy heralds the positions he’s taken against the international consensus regarding the status of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and his hawkish posture towards Iran in equal measure.
However, beyond the metaphorical misattributions, confusing the roles of Babylon and Persia-Iran in the story, and in the same breath decrying the Islamic Republic as a reincarnation of the evil Persian Empire of the Bible, the content of this attempt at Jewish cyclical historiography belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the US-Israel relationship and Israel’s mission in the world.
Since attaining political independence in 1948 following an urban guerrilla struggle to free thee country from British rule, Israel has walked the line between autonomy and subservience to great powers. In particular, since the 1967 Six Day War, Israeli foreign policy has been heavily influenced by Washington and US-led NATO interests in the region. From a French-sponsored nuclear program to US military support, there exists an exilic perception of Israel’s survival being dependent on the approval of foreign powers.
In recent decades, US military aid to Israel has been a pillar of the military and diplomatic relationship between the two nations. US Presidents from both major parties have maintained this commitment, weathering storms of disagreement, and periods of open distrust, even while United Nations Security Council vetoes, sanctions against Iran, and countless other features of the relationship were up in the air.
Donald Trump’s relocation of the embassy to Jerusalem and recognition of Israeli sovereignty in the Golan are only significant because it took Israel’s “greatest ally” over half a century to recognize basic political realities.
On a deeper level, however, no matter how friendly or cooperative a sitting US president might seem, any foreign attempts to influence Israeli domestic politics or our relations with the Palestinians in our land should be seen as an extension of Western colonial interests in the Middle East, by which local populations are subdivided along arbitrary borders and turned against one another to prevent the attainment of a decolonized, unified, and fully liberated Semitic region.
The United States, as the leading power of the Christian West today, represents Edom on our modern political stage. Edom is the fourth great empire that Daniel prophesied, and remains fundamentally opposed to Israel’s pursuit of true liberation.
Just as Esav kissed Yaakov publicly while his spiritual avatar attacked him upon his return to Eretz Yisrael, so too the modern Edom will put on airs of camaraderie and friendship, while undermining our independence and hindering our ability to create a just solution to a century of brutal conflict in our land.
And Donal Trump, as current leader of the fourth empire, is only the most recent in a long chain of the political embodiments of Edom to play this role. Almost two millennia prior, the Roman Emperor Nero played a similar role. While litigating between the Herodian dynasty, its Jewish subjects, and their Hellenistic neighbors, Nero worked to maintain a favorable attitude toward the empire, especially by appearing less antagonistic than his predecessors Caligula and Claudius.
But as tensions rose over high taxation and violence spread between the Judeans and their Greco-Syrian neighbors, Nero’s patience wore thin and he sent General Vespasian to quell a Jewish uprising, beginning a series of direct campaigns against Judean insurgents that would lead to the destruction of Jerusalem and the eradication of Jewish civilization.
While the violence at the end of Nero’s reign remains in Israel’s collective memory as the precursor to two thousand years of exile, it also holds an important lesson.
Like with Nero, the policies set by Trump appear to be primarily driven by his own narcissistic insanity. His ego compels him to pursue actions that might even betray US imperial interests at times. But whether due to US interests in the Middle East or his own out of control narcissism, as leader of the fourth empire, Trump can’t avoid being led into conflict with the Children of Israel.
No matter how amiably or supportively a foreign ruler might behave, we should never delude ourselves into thinking his interests extend beyond the advancement of his own agenda. As soon as our interests diverge, we must be prepared for underhanded bullying or outright hostility in an attempt to force Israel’s conformity to US imperial interests. And only by standing strong in the face of the Trump plan, by not backing down to foreign pressure, can we reassert ourselves and work towards finally regaining the independence we lost to Rome so long ago.
