OPINION:
In a now-infamous 2012 campaign speech, President Obama told an audience of supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”
Maybe there’s something in the White House water supply because President Trump recently took his own cringe-inducing turn at the ‘You didn’t build that’ podium.
“What we did for Israel is amazing, but that’s nothing compared to what we have planned for the United States, Canada and the rest of the world,” he said in a speech last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, touting his planned Golden Dome defense system.
“We are going to build a dome like no other. We did it for Israel — and, by the way, I told [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] to stop taking credit for the [Iron] Dome. That’s our technology, that’s our stuff.”
This probably came as news to Israeli firm Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, which developed the Iron Dome.
Composed of two subsystems — a dual-mission counter rocket, artillery and mortar (C-RAM) and very short-range air defense (V-SHORAD) — the missile shield is the brainchild of an Israel Defense Forces officer, now-retired Brig. Gen. Daniel Gold, who first had the idea in 2004.
Israel began work on it two years later, during the 2006 war in Lebanon, and used it to intercept and destroy rockets launched from the Gaza Strip.
Did the U.S. financially back the Iron Dome? Absolutely, starting in 2011 — and to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. That money was indeed crucial for scaling up a lifesaving system, and it’s funding for which the Jewish state will surely always be grateful.
But that was not what Mr. Trump said.
What’s more, it wasn’t until 2014 that the U.S. and Israeli governments signed a deal allowing the Americans to produce system components. Only then was the U.S. given full access to what had, until that point, been proprietary Israeli technology.
To be fair, Mr. Trump’s Davos talk included a few pats on Israel’s collective head. After recounting his admonishment of Mr. Netanyahu, he went on: “But they had a lot of courage, and they were good fighters, and they did a good job, and we wiped out the Iranian nuclear threat as nobody can believe.”
It was the world leader equivalent of speaking sternly to a child and then, feeling a bit guilty, giving him half-hearted praise for having cleaned up his toys earlier.
And it’s a tone that, especially in as public an arena as the World Economic Forum, grossly and unfairly minimizes Israel’s irreplaceable role in Operation Midnight Hammer. That was the U.S. military’s stealthy, highly successful June 22 strike on three of Iran’s four key nuclear sites.
Beginning June 13, Israel laid the groundwork for that success with Operation Rising Lion, its own offensive against the Islamic republic’s nuclear aspirations.
So effective was Israel’s 12-day war against Iran that a U.S. military fact-finding delegation in August called it an “operational masterpiece.”
“We came away convinced that in Operation Rising Lion, Israel displayed intelligence and military capabilities that exceed any of America’s allies in the world,” retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, a member of the fact-finding contingent, said during a November press conference, according to JNS.
“More than just operational excellence, Israel achieved major strategic effects advancing not just its own, but America’s national interests.”
The U.S. is and has long been generous with its taxpayer-funded aid to Israel. No argument there. The Iron Dome would very likely not be what it is today (a capable air defense setup with a 90% success rate) without the U.S.
But, Mr. President, without the Iron Dome — built, inarguably, by Israelis in Israel — there would very likely be no plan for a Golden Dome either.
So, please, stop making like Barack and taking away credit where it’s due, particularly when it’s because of a U.S. ally as staunch and as true as Israel.
• Anath Hartmann is deputy commentary editor for The Washington Times.
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