Trump Gave Us Global Instability—and Mamdani & Company.

Many Israelis and Jews initially viewed Trump’s return with optimism. After all, this was the president associated with the recognition of Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords, and a generally confrontational posture toward Iran. But Jews should know better than to confuse tactical victories with strategic realities. The question is never what happens this week. The question is what happens five years from now.

Among the oldest mistakes in Jewish history is the belief that history moves in straight lines. It never does. The Jews left Egypt and found themselves in the wilderness. They returned from Babylon and discovered new enemies waiting at the gates. Every apparent victory carried within it the seeds of a future crisis. American politics has proven no different.

For many American Jews, the election of Barack Obama represented the triumph of a certain vision of America—cosmopolitan, educated, internationalist, and confident. Yet politics abhors a vacuum. The cultural and political backlash that accumulated during the Obama years did not disappear; it exploded. Out of that backlash emerged Donald Trump, a political force unlike anything America had seen in modern times. The irony is almost biblical. The movement that believed it was burying old forms of populism ended up awakening them with unprecedented force.

Then came Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, promising a restoration of normalcy. Yet........

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