Former President Donald Trump at Yad Vashem on May 23, 2017. Photo by DEBBIE HILL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

By Jacob Kornbluh
25 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump planned to announce the move of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem during his 2017 visit to Israel, but postponed the decision after speaking with his national security adviser, a new book reveals.

Trump and his allies highlight the embassy move and other changes in US-Israel policy as important successes in their appeal to Jewish voters.

Retired Lt. Gen. HR McMaster, who served as Trump’s national security adviser during the first year of his presidency, reveals in a new book: At war with ourselves: My work in the White House under Trumpthat he convinced Trump not to announce the move during a speech at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. The book is due to be published on Tuesday.

McMaster, who accompanied Trump on his May 2017 trip to Israel – which followed a visit to Saudi Arabia, Trump’s first foreign trip during his presidency – wrote that he was told by a senior adviser Stephen Millerwho co-wrote Trump’s speeches in Israel, said the president had planned to include the embassy announcement in his Yad Vashem remarks. McMaster urged Trump to reconsider his decision and suggested discussing the decision with the Cabinet to give the White House time to maximize benefits and minimize potential consequences.

Trump agreed and said, “Okay, General, you can take it out of the speech.”

Sheldon Adelson, the largest single donor to Trump in the 2016 and 2021 presidential elections, has died, had demanded that Trump announced the relocation of the embassy immediately after his election as president and that Trump assured in several meetings that the horror scenarios were “exaggerated”.

Although Trump signed a six-month exemption in May 2017 to delay the embassy move, as recommended by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, he revisited the issue in November. During a White House meeting before a December deadline, Tillerson again recommended signing a waiver to further delay a decision, but Trump had already made up his mind. On December 6, announced the decision to move the embassy to Jerusalem.

During his trip to Israel in May 2017, Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Trump complained to then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that “Bibi doesn’t want peace,” according to Netanyahu’s latest memoirs.

“He was not wrong,” McMaster wrote, but added that these were “legitimate concerns” Netanyahu had about the viability of a two-state solution. The October 7 Hamas attack, McMaster said, “demonstrated” that the viability of two states depends on terrorist groups not taking over the areas from which Israel has withdrawn.

McMaster said he faced a smear campaign from far-right media personalities accusing him of hostility toward Israel during the 13 months he served as national security adviser. He also blamed a Russian-sponsored social media campaign designed to get him fired. McMaster resigned in March 2018.

What McMaster thought of Netnayahu’s embrace of Putin

In the book, McMaster recalls conversations with Israeli decision-makers and warns them not to “fall for Putin’s excuses” if they want to strengthen their relations with the Russian president to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold in the region. Netanyahu praised his good relations with Putin during his re-election campaign in 2019.

“Putin poured fuel on the fire of war, supporting the murderous Assad regime while whispering to Israeli and Arab leaders that he promised, in time, to help reduce Iran’s influence in a post-civil war Syria,” McMaster wrote. “Putin would never shut Iran out, and Assad would never let the Iranians go.”

McMaster recounted a private conversation he had with Netanyahu at the 2018 annual Munich Security Conference in which he expressed concerns about Israel’s “hedge-and-burn approach” toward Russia. “Prime Minister, you know that Putin is using a bait-and-switch tactic – luring you with promises to limit Iran’s presence and influence in Syria while in reality allowing Iranian proxies on your borders,” McMaster told the Israeli prime minister, who sat next to him to discuss the Hezbollah threat ahead of Netanyahu’s keynote speech.

“Netanyahu smiled and said he had better go back to his seat,” McMaster wrote.

McMaster described Netanyahu’s positive views on Putin’s intentions as “delusional,” a perspective he said Netanyahu abandoned after the October 7 attacks. Putin did not immediately condemn the attack on Israel, received Hamas leader in Moscow And criticized the war in Gaza.