Trump Endorses Netanyahu Nine Days Before Israel Votes
The American president has endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu for the Israeli election on 27 October, calling him “a Great Warrior Prime Minister, and an even greater Partner for Peace in combatting the Islamic Republic of Iran”. He had withheld the endorsement for months while the two diverged over strategy. It is Israel’s first national vote since the October 2023 attacks.
The endorsement also praised Mr Netanyahu as “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition, including that coming from even Israel, itself” — a formulation that acknowledges how contested he is at home. The reply was immediate: Mr Netanyahu thanked him on X for “tremendous support and the joint work… Together we will complete the mission!” In a party video he told voters “we have crushed Iran” and that the partnership “will continue in order to eliminate the Iranian threat over the next two years, or even sooner”; those are campaign claims rather than established facts and are reported as such. The timing sits awkwardly against the other Israeli story of the weekend. The European Union condemned Friday’s attack by settlers on European diplomats in the West Bank, and the American ambassador has called for the prosecution of those who attacked a photographer during the olive harvest. The election will be the first test of whether the war has changed Israeli politics or merely hardened it.