Better Than a Best Friend

The Arabs have charmed President Trump into their embrace. On his Middle East tour, they gave his nation over $3 trillion in business. They offered deeper military cooperation, an expansion of his Avraham Accords, and even gifted him a $400 million private plane.  

Should we be worried?  

Some say President Trump is becoming like the Pharaoh of Egypt. He started as a dear friend of Israel, only to politically mutate into our worst enemy.  

The truth is that President Trump and America are still Israel’s best friends.  

The deeper truth is that when we think of friendship, we are lulled into the false sense that America will protect us, do our bidding, and have our backs if we are ever in trouble.  

In the Gate of Emunah, Rabbi Bahya ibn Paquda warns us of the perils of putting too much trust in your best friend: 

The friend being trusted must be so strong that he will not be won over by others who try to oppose him regarding any matter that he wishes to achieve. Nothing (or nobody) will stop the friend from fulfilling the request of the one who trusts him.  

 

If the friend is weak, then the trust in him cannot be complete, despite his clear compassion and attentiveness. In many situations, the friend will lack the means with which to fulfill the wants of the person trusting in him. 

The Limits of Friendship 

 This teaches us three limits of friendship: 

1. The friend can be enticed into forming a friendship with someone he likes more or feels will treat him better, but he will walk away.  
2. The friend will want to help, but won’t have the means or the strength to.  
3. The friend will have the strength or means to help, but he won’t want to.  

Recent actions are proving that even the best friendships have their limits. 

The Gate of Emuna goes on to describe seven traits a friend must possess for anyone to put their total trust in him. He proves that nobody has all seven traits, so our trust cannot be complete.  

In the same breath, he demonstrates how Hashem has all of these, and this is why we must trust Him and Him alone.  To achieve all our aims for this war, and every conflict going forward, we must turn to the only One Who we can trust. 

We Must Return to Hashem 

Our friends, who since 1967 have forced us to surrender over 75% of our land to actual or potential adversaries, want the same as our enemies: A two-state solution.  

What exactly does this mean?  

• Building our Beit Mikdash on Har HaBayit is an act of “illegal settlement.” 
• We cannot live in Hebron or Shechem, where our forefathers and Joseph are buried.  
• We cannot complete the promise God gives Avraham that when Mashiach comes, we will conquer all our eternal homeland from the Euphrates to the Nile.  

What does a ceasefire for the current war mean? 

• We surrender, and Hamas wins. We bomb them into oblivion, and they survive. To the Arabs, that’s victory.  
• Hamas will rebuild Gaza and return to full strength, even if it takes 20 years. 
• There will be another October 7. Fifty years after the last catastrophe of the Yom Kippur surprise attack in 1973, we were complacent. Fifty years from now, we risk the same complacency.  
• There will be more wars. More destruction. More tragedy among our brothers and sisters.  

This is what Europe wants. This is what the Arabs want. This is what the UN wants. This is rapidly becoming what America wants.  

We cannot fight Europe. We cannot fight America. We cannot fight the world.  

Only Hashem can.  

Our King Whom We Can Trust 

We have sunk so low into this “exile among the nations,” that abominations such as “land for peace,” “two state solution,” and “illegal settlements” have become acceptable assumptions for everything.  

Two states living on one land? That’s like the cancer living with the healthy organs in one body. Unless the cancer is eliminated, the body will die.  

The only way to erase these absurdities is to destroy the world as we know it – to crush Europe, to smash the nations of the UN, and to diminish America so badly that they won’t be able to prevent us from doing anything.  

We, the nation of Israel, cannot do these things on our own.  Only Hashem can.  

Without Hashem we cannot win. With Hashem we cannot lose.  God can smash Edom, and He will. He can tear apart the nations. He can rearrange world order in such a spectacular way that we will dispose of their diplomacy and transform our eternal homeland into a Torah Kingdom led by Mashiach.  

His victory is our victory: 

To be the children of Israel who fulfill the Torah of Israel in the Land of Israel to faithfully serve the God of Israel.  

For this, we must remember Who our only real Friend is and that we can trust in Him wholeheartedly with everything.  

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David Ben Horin lives in the Jezreel Valley with his family, Afula’s famous sunflowers, and the local camel, Matilda. David loves to write about Judaism, Torah, Israel, and personal happiness.