Having directed the deal that brought home the final 20 living hostages and ended the Gaza war, US President Donald Trump took a victory lap at the Knesset on Monday – delivering a 65-minute address that often felt like a lengthy acceptance speech at the Oscars.
He began his free-form remarks by doing something that neither Israel’s prime minister nor the opposition leader had thought to do: “Give our deepest thanks to Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”
Declaring that this was “the historic dawn of a new Middle East,” Trump then praised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a man of “exceptional courage and patriotism.” Netanyahu, he said, “is not the easiest guy to deal with, but that’s what makes him great.”
The tone was markedly different from Saturday night’s rally at Hostage Square, where Netanyahu’s name was met with boos when US envoy Steve Witkoff mentioned it.
And then, like at the Oscars, he launched into a long list of thank-yous – to Witkoff, to his son-in-law Jared Kushner, to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and to General Dan “Razin” Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Trump’s freewheeling address touched on everything from his daughter Ivanka’s conversion to Judaism to how many billions of dollars Miriam Adelson has in the bank. He called Joe Biden “the worst US president ever,” said – to applause in the Knesset plenum – that Barack Obama “was not far behind,” and even publicly urged President Isaac Herzog to pardon Netanyahu.
Ironically, when Trump made that appeal – and coalition members rose to applaud – one of those who also stood was Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman, among Netanyahu’s fiercest political foes.
“It just seems to make so much sense,” Trump said, adding that Netanyahu had been one of Israel’s greatest wartime leaders. “Cigars and champagne – who the hell cares about it?” he quipped about Netanyahu’s ongoing trials, drifting off script and away from the teleprompter.
Hostages' return a 'tremendous moment'
But not all of the speech was improvisation. For much of the time, Trump stayed on message: that the hostages’ return was a tremendous moment – “The hostages are back! It feels so good to say it!” – that the end of the war would bring a fundamental change to the Middle East, and that the time had come to stop thinking in terms of war and defense and begin channeling energy into building up the country and the region.
He also made an interesting observation that few have discussed: this moment likely would not have arrived had Israel – and then the US – not bombed Iran in June.
What made the deal possible, Trump said, was that nearly all the Arab countries in the region had rallied behind it. That, he acknowledged, would not have happened had Iran not been significantly weakened and still been able to intimidate its neighbors.
“We took a big cloud off of the Middle East and off of Israel,” he said, adding that without those strikes, some of the Arab and Muslim countries involved would not have signed off on the agreement.
Trump also did something else that stood out: he acknowledged Israel’s role in defending the wider region.
“This is now a very exciting time for Israel and for the entire Middle East,” he said. “Across the region, the forces of chaos, terror, and ruin that plagued it for decades now stand weakened, isolated, and totally defeated. Because of us, the enemies of civilization are in retreat. Thanks to the bravery and incredible skill of the Israeli Defense Forces in Operation Rising Lion.”
“You’ve won,” Trump declared, “and now you can build – you can do things you never even thought possible.”
It was vintage Trump: part showman, part statesman, part self-congratulatory figure. Yet beneath it all was a message Israelis could appreciate: that after two years of darkness, the time may finally have come to rebuild, and to believe in the possibility of something different – for the country and the region.