The Significance of Netanyahu as the First Foreign Leader to be Invited to the Trump 2.0 Whitehouse

Since his second inauguration on January 20th, 2025, Donald Trump has signed hundreds of executive actions, sent his military to the US-Mexico border (and less publicly fortified the Northern border), begun deporting hundreds of illegals and signed the anti-illegal immigration, pro-citizen Laken-Riley Act as the first piece of legislation.[1]  He wasted no time in withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord, jettisoning the Green New Deal (American can now ‘choose the car they like’[2]), promoting energy self-sufficiency with ‘Drill, Baby Drill’ directive, and demanding that the money train for the WHO and the various NGOs that suckled on the teat of the US Federal government (as well as the last minute payoffs for the previous administration’s donors), should be stopped at the next station until the tax payers have checked the tickets.  Accountability and the democratic republican model of government is back as the ‘new normal.’  From the Pentagon, to HHS, to DNI, the CIA and the FBI, it is time to clean house and reestablish that dictum that opens the American Constitution, ‘We the People’ — that is, the legitimacy of a government stems from the consent of the governed.

Under any measure, it has also been an explosion onto the international scene, ‘America is Back and You Had Better All know It’ is the unmistakable message of the new administration.  Rather than continually apologising and offering reparations for being the most powerful and successful nation on the face of the Earth (whether we view that as wishful thinking or not, me being a non-American), and doing obeisance to and supporting a wider globalist order at odds with the spirit, and sometimes the letter of the American Constitution, the world is put on notice you will be required to do it the US way when doing business with the US.  Trump’s address to the WEF, where he called out the Bank of America’s chief executives live on air for the scandal of ‘debanking’ those with ‘conservative’ political positions (whatever that might mean), was simply unprecedented.[3]  ‘Unprecedented’ will be an adjective in great demand in the coming months.

In light of this glorious Second Coming, I was wondering who the first foreign leader would be to be invited to the Whitehouse and indeed who would be the first to be visited by the President.  In my shortsightedness, I thought perhaps Putin or Zelensky (‘we will fix that war with a phone call’) or a fellow traveller from populist movements around the globe, maybe a beer-drinking Farage or a chainsaw wielding Milei.  It should have been obvious that it would be Israeli Premier Netanyahu, and not just because of the war in the Middle East.  Let me explain.  The brother of JD Vance, Trump’s VP, is an associate pastor at the River Church of Tampa, Florida.  He was in attendance in Washington for the Inauguration and testified that it felt like it was a Church Service — not in the modality of Episcopalian Prayer Service where the woke Bishopess castigated the newly sworn in executive — but like the Pentecostal fire of the RHB River Church meeting that are alleged to regularly exceed 5 hours in length during a conference (to which I can now bear personal witness that is indeed true).  Washington seemed to have a joyous atmosphere permeating its streets with the promised 10000s of demonstrators to the inauguration of the American Hitler, reduced to a few dozen in the snow. He said that you could see the evil on the faces of the outgoing administration, but you could also see it leaving with them as they left.

This is the most revealing and significant observation.  Trump himself has testified that he now believes he was spared by God to ‘Make America Great Again’ but also to allow the world, suffocating under a blanket of censorship and wokeness in the wake of the perceived injustice suffered by George Floyd,[4] to breathe the fresh air of ‘Common Sense’[5] again.  Like many right-leaning commentators have observed (and, notably, some traditional liberals), Trump has a penchant for extreme rhetoric on the campaign trail but is moderate in government.  It has just been that what would have been considered the “centre,” “mainstream” or “common sense” a decade ago was characterised as “extreme Right” by the loud and noisy “extreme Left” that captured the consciousness of much of the West in the post-Floyd era that looks like it might be coming to an end in the US at least.  It is this ‘spiritual’ dimension of the Trump decision that is so interesting, and which arrested my attention when it was announced Netanyahu would be the first foreign leader invited to the Whitehouse this Presidency.[6]

One of the most ferocious of theological arguments ever to have been suffered in the history of the Christian church centres around the status and role of the nation of Israel and the Jews as a people.  The two poles of the argument can be distilled down quite simply:

  1. One position asserts that the Jews in crucifying their Messiah (the ‘Christ’ Jesus) forever became apostate from the purposes of God and are now replaced by the church, the true ‘Israel’ of God. Consequently, the modern state of Israel, particularly its reformation in 1948 after its destruction in AD70, has absolutely no significance.
  2. The contrary position is that the Jews remain forever the people of God by virtue of God’s choice, with the Church grafted into the olive tree, which is the spiritual Israel, the chosen people of God being both Jew and Gentile. Consequently, the reformation of the state of Israel is considered of principial prophetic significance and an expression of God’s continuing defence of the Jews.

Unsurprisingly, position a. is known as ‘replacement theology.’  Position b. re-emerged intellectually with the Christian Zionist movements from the mid-19th century onwards and is also unsurprisingly known as ‘restorationism.’  Replacement theology has been dominant during the history of the church since the second century, surviving even the protestant Reformation, with a few notable exceptions of individual theologians who anticipated restorationism. It is still the official position of most ‘mainline’ Catholic or Protestant denominations, and notably ‘House’ and ‘Charismatic’ churches that emerged from them. Restorationism became the position of Fundamentalist churches and their successors in the mainline Pentecostal churches who although phenomenologically equivalent to the charismatic and house churches, maintained a distinct theology.

It is only with the Restorationist movement that we need concern ourselves for the premise of our essay here for it is only to the restorationists that Israel as the first visitor to the Whitehouse could be significant.  Central to the restorationist position is the declaration in Genesis 12:

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;  2 And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing;  3 And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Now verse 3 is the lens through which all is focussed for the purposes of this argument:  I will bless those who bless you, [I will] curse those who curse you.  In other words, the hermeneutic for world history is laid out before us here, God will take it personally and will deal with the nation(s) who persecute the Jews and will ensure the success of the nations which stand with and assist the Jews.  It is a PhD thesis to justify this as the interpretative principle for world history, but I believe the 20th century illustrates the posit well with the example of Britain and the United States.

Britain in the second half of the 19th century, supported the Zionist vision to reestablish a Jewish homeland,[7] being one of the strongest supporters of it that led to the Balfour Declaration on November 2, 1917.  Britain, had for centuries, been one of the refuges for the Jews that had been persecuted throughout Europe and Russia, and it initially lent its enormous influence and power in the world as the strongest imperial power, to standing with the Jews to establish an independent homeland where they could live without persecution or discrimination.  The United States also, offered quieter but firm support because of the emergence of influential Jews within its administrations and sympathetic Presidents.  However, it was the European powers rather than the isolationist US administration in the pre-WWII period, which maintained the balance of power in the Middle East, with Britain after the defeat of Hitler becoming the administrator of what was the protectorate of Palestine.

Britain elected its first socialist administration immediately after WWII and as a matter of government policy abandoned support for the nation of Israel and worked with the regional enemies of the Jews to frustrate the UN-backed resolution for the partition of Palestine.  The Jordanian Arab league was supplied and officered by the British.  The consequence of this action, according to our historical hermeneutic principle, explains the almost total collapse of the British Empire and the British influence and standing in the world. Britain deteriorated culturally, socially, and economically until it suffered the utter humiliation in 1976 of borrowing $3.9bn from the IMF (when $3.9bn was significant), the largest loan ever granted up to that time for which the IMF extracted enormous conditionalities and led to the ‘Winter of Discontent’ when thousands of strikes were triggered throughout Britain, rubbish literally piled up in the capital city of London.  Britain was bankrupt, suffering from ethnic and communal conflict, and radically divided along class lines.  It was only with the coming of the Thatcher era in 1979 and her strong support for the Jews and Israel,[8] that Britain recovered.

The story of the US is an interesting reciprocal to the British experience.  The US became the first supporter of the unilateral declaration by the proto-Jewish government of the establishment of the State of Israel on the basis of the UN resolution.[9]  This ensured the survival of the State of Israel, and the US has since been the primary supporter of Israel, being the principal veto of hundreds of attempts by the UN and the UN Security council to undermine the state of Israel, or to impose its will upon it (particularly in regard to the Palestinian ‘refugees’).  As Britain receded as the world’s principal power, the US emerged as the world’s principal power, because, it is argued, their support for the Jews and Israel.  God blesses those who bless His people, and curses those who stand against them.  We can even be more granular with the US experience and argue that those US leaders who stood closely with Israel have caused the US to be strengthened, those who worked against the interest of the Jews and Israel brought economic and social problems to the US.

The most anti-Israel movement in recent US political history was the Obama-Biden period.  The collapse of the optimism associated with the election of Obama culminated in the emergence of the renegade Trump, elected because he was not a politician.  The cohesiveness of the US was coming apart as the progressive sought to remake the US in the globalist image.  In contrast, Trump dramatically arrested the economic decline of the US and became Israel’s strongest supporter to the degree he crafted the Abraham Accords and at the end of the first term had seemingly brought an impossible peace and reconciliation to the Middle East.  The Biden interlude ushered in an era of political chaos, war and social dysfunction.  Biden reneged on his early support for Israel against HAMAS and ended his term as seemingly senile, irrelevant and subject to a coup by his own party.  Trump made the biggest political comeback in history and seeks to usher in the New Golden Age of America, being the first Republican since Reagen to win both the Electoral college and the popular vote.

So, what does our posited hermeneutic argue will be a precondition of making good this declaration?  The answer is to be a blessing to Israel that God might bless America — the blessing is to be the facilitator for Israel that it can take control of its own war against its enemies, not that the US exerts a hegemonical control over the Middle East, but merely that it supports the integrity of the nation of Israel so that the Jews might maintain their prosperity as a people and live at peace with their neighbours, internally[10] and externally.  Thus, it should be of no surprise to us that Netanyahu is the first invited guest of the Trump Whitehouse.  If Trump maintains his support for the Jews and the nation of Israel, he will be able to fulfil his own vision for a renewal of his own nation and a restoration of its greatness.

Notes

[1] The story of Laken Riley, the 22-year-old nursing student who was brutally assaulted and then killed by an undocumented illegal immigrant who had previously been arrested in two other US jurisdictions but released back into the community in the name of ‘sanctuary’ and ‘humanity’ rather than being turned over to ICE, featured predominantly in Trump’s election campaign.  The incident offended many US-citizens and legal immigrants.  The testimony of Riley’s mother at the signing ceremony was particularly powerful, https://youtu.be/dEQfBs59G3k?t=1692 .  The outrage was sufficient that three Democratic senators were prepared to break ranks and vote with the Republicans.

[2] The irony should not be missed that Elon Musk, who has manufactured more electric cars than any other human on the planet, is a pivotal figure within Trump’s administration.

[3] Speaking as a British citizen, this became a national political issue for us also a few years ago to the degree that government ministers put public pressure on the Banking sector that denying banking because of political positions that offended just the progressive or Marxist Left, was not considered acceptable.  The debanking of Nigel Farage, a political ally of Trump this side of the Atlantic, was the paradigmatic example — internal Bank documents showed that it was purely because of Farage’s politics and the associated ‘reputational risk’ (with, we must assume, the intolerant ‘liberals’) rather than any business reason, that he was debanked.

[4] George Floyd had been characterised as the victim of a racially motivated killing during arrest by a white police officer who used an illegal choke hold where he put his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9 ½ minutes during arrest, the autopsy ruling that this had caused a cardiopulmonary arrest.  The enormous civil unrest at his death unleashed a tide of self-flagellation, nation-hating, wokeness, and racially charged DEI initiatives that extended far beyond the borders of the US — I remember watching British dramatic re-creations of the arrest, anyone and everyone who was something was mouthing ‘I can’t breathe’ in tribute to Floyd, footballers were kneeling at games, demonstrators were throwing down statues of historical civic leaders now deemed guilty of profiteering from slavery, nations were charged with making reparations for their imperialist past, “white-privilege” was hiding under every rock and around every corner. There were only two classes of people, oppressor and oppressed, a ‘person of colour’ was by definition in the West a victim of oppression, and it was legitimate to use any means (such as violent resistance and counter discrimination) to throw off the chains of the oppressor; a paradigmatic, neo-Marxist critique of the modern West.

In fact, Floyd who had a long criminal history and had served multiple stints in prison, may have died of a heart condition exacerbated by drug overdose of fentanyl and methamphetamine, companions at the arrest attesting to the fact they were high at the time of the arrest where Floyd had attempted to make a purchase with a counterfeit $20 note at a convenience store.  It was noted as a possible contributory factor in the first autopsy report, although a second autopsy report commissioned by his family had downgraded the significance of any medical complications or the significance of recent drug use.  However, the police officer currently serving at least 20 years for the murder of Floyd is presently attempting to overturn his conviction.  Chauvin has cited ‘ineffective assistance of counsel,’ meaning key forensic evidence passed to his original lawyer had not been acted upon, perhaps because of the ferocity of the reaction to Floyd’s death.  In the context of the subsequent accusations of institutional racism and a country built on slavery and the oppression of people of colour, it is not unreasonable to observe that the severe and exceptional punishment handed down to Chauvin (the Judge permitted the Prosecution to seek a harsher sentence on a technicality) was more politically and socially motivated than concerned with the legalities of the case.

It is now particularly controversial as President Biden in four years issued more pardons (8064) than any other President (excluding Carter’s mass pardoning of Vietnam ‘Draft Dodgers’), Biden pardons have allegedly included traffickers, murderers, child molesters, drug dealers, and career criminals, although some have argued that Biden was not fully cognisant in these controversial pardons, as some of the recent pardons in even the dying 15 minutes of his Presidency, had caused outcry even among his political allies. For comparison, Andrew Johnson (1865-1869) in the wake of the Civil War pardoned 7654 (most of those being ex-Confederate soldiers), Bush in 8-years pardoned just 200 people.

[5] We need to avoid the philosophical discussion of the problematic concept of ‘common sense’ other than to observe it is frequently culturally defined.  My wife is Japanese, and one must concede that our conceptions of “common sense” are frequently divergent.  Perhaps a “common sense” based on a Bell curve distribution might be more scientifically tenable, and we can perhaps safely assert a “Western” concept of common sense would satisfy the 10-80 percentile distribution, relegating the Marxists and the Fascists in our midst to the tails.  We should also note that the concept has strong intuitive validity before us philosophers attempt to deconstruct and invalidate it.

[6] We can acknowledge without contradiction that Trump has received many of his friends and foes, even national and international leaders to Mar-a-Lago, but that is of a different order than being received at the Whitehouse.

[7] I write more fully about the emergence of secular and religious Zionism here:  https://planetmacneil.org/blog/hamas-vs-israel-understanding-the-conflict/#_Toc154072288

[8] Thatcher’s political career began in 1959 when she was elected Member of Parliament for Finchley, a constituency in north London with a large Jewish community.  She became so highly regarded within that community that she gained the title ‘the honorary Jew,’ see https://www.bitebackpublishing.com/books/the-honorary-jew .

[9] The UN had adopted the resolution effectively creating a ‘two-state’ solution and recognising a state of Israel.  However, British and Arab subterfuge, driven by the economics of the enormous oil fields (Britain chose Arabs with oil rather than support the moral right of the Jews to a homeland), worked to undermine the resolution and draw back from it.  The Jewish leaders then unilaterally declared the creation of the state of Israel citing the mandate of the original resolution in protest and were supported by the US.  Again, I look at the details of this in https://planetmacneil.org/blog/hamas-vs-israel-understanding-the-conflict/ .

[10] It should not be overlooked that Israel is a multi-ethnic and a multi-religious democracy.  To quote myself:

“The Israeli parliament passed a law in July 2018 (62-55, with 2 abstentions) that might be considered to its advocates as formalising Israel as a “Jewish” state and elevating Jewish identity within Israel as apartheid era laws had done in South Africa.  However, this seemed more akin to Netanyahu’s struggle against corruption allegations and his struggling to form a working coalition with extreme religious Jewish political parties who would probably concur with some idea of Jewish racial superiority, than a fundamental shift to a proto-apartheid State.  The narrowness of the vote also indicates the unpalatability of the law for many citizens of Israel.

It also met with a vigorous riposte from Israeli President Reuven Rivlin who reiterated on Twitter that Israel “has complete equality of rights for all its citizens,” adding, “There are no first-class citizens, and there are no second-class voters. We are all equal in the voting booth. We are all represented at the Knesset.”  Rivlin did not refer to Netanyahu directly but certainly had him in mind, saying in a tweet, “Recently, when political thinking is turning all reason on its head, we hear entirely unacceptable remarks about the Arab citizens of Israel.”  It should also be noted Arabic has remained an official language and Arab members of parliament have not been politically disadvantaged; each Israeli has full voting rights and equal rights before the law.  There is no homogeneous “Jewish” identity, the politics and tensions of Israel are famous for their contention and diversity.

Perhaps most significantly, functionally, Israel is the only democracy of the Middle East which is known for its autocratic familial dynasties that were often established in their modern form with Western imperialist help.  It is not difficult to find the testimony of Arabs living in Israel who are glad they are living in Israel or who grew up in Israel.”  The full article is found at https://planetmacneil.org/blog/hamas-vs-israel-understanding-the-conflict/ .

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