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Commentary By Judith Miller

Netanyahu's Fears and Wise Judgment

Public Safety National Security & Terrorism

If Benjamin Netanyahu were voting in America’s presidential election on Tuesday, he might very well write in himself as candidate. For aides to the Israeli prime minister say that although he has said complןmentary things about both Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump, he mistrusts both candidates.

While Mr. Netanyahu is said to fear that neither party’s nominee can be counted upon to protect Israel’s vital interests, he suspects that Trump might be the more dependable ally. After all, Trump, unlike Mrs. Clinton, has vowed to move America’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Although few political analysts take that pledge seriously, Donald Trump’s strongly pro-Israeli statements, the GOP’s slavishly pro-Israeli platform, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and the huge financial support that Trump has received from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of Mr. Netanyahu’s biggest financial backers, have led Mr. Netanyahu, if not a majority of Israelis, to conclude that a President Trump might not be such a disaster for the Jewish state.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, is the opposite. His policies are all over the ideological map. Espousing ever shifting, contradictory views, his ignorance of basic tenets of foreign affairs have proven even more shocking than his unorthodox positions– such as his praise for Russia’s Vladimir Putin as a strong leader.

Although Trump has vowed to be “great for Israel,” skeptics remember his earlier pledge to be “neutral” on the Israel-Palestine issue. Several Jews who attended his speech last December to the Republican Jewish Coalition saw his claim that many members wouldn’t support him because he was rich and didn’t need their support as reinforcing Jewish stereotypes. And many American and Israeli Jews are exceedingly wary of, and deeply alarmed by the strong support that Trump has received from the anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan and other right-wing fanatics, his racist remarks about Mexicans, and his assault on female critics as “pigs” and “dogs.”

On Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said that Israel-US ties would remain strong no matter who won Tuesday’s election, and that despite tension with the Obama’s administration over the past eight years, relations with Washington were “solid” and would remain so. But he has also drawn the same conclusion that others have drawn about Mr. Obama’s effort to withdraw from America’s intense involvement in the Arab Middle East and focus more on issues at home. While tradition, aid, and democracy assure that Washington is likely to remain Israel’s closest ally, Netanyahu has reached out to Russia, China and other states to enhance Israeli ties and profile there. That, too, reflects a wise judgment about America’s isolationist mood.

This piece originally appeared on YNet News

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Judith Miller is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal; a best-selling author, and a Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative reporter formerly with the New York Times.

This piece originally appeared in YNet News