Speaking to Christian Zionists, Ron DeSantis outlined his strong support for Israel as Florida’s governor and before that in Congress.
If elected, he told Christians United For Israel (CUFI) on July 17 at their annual Washington summit, he would push for an Israel–Saudi peace deal to end Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians.
He said he would terminate the Biden administration’s efforts to appease Iran and resurrect the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons agreement with the theocracy, which has vowed to use nuclear weapons against Israel.
Florida has a new law, effective July 1, banning environmental, social, and governance policies (ESG) by financial firms in their investing decisions, Mr. DeSantis said.
He announced Florida has launched an investigation of the financial firm Morningstar “for violations of our anti-BDS law. We’re not letting them target Israel and get away with it.”
BDS refers to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction tactics used against Israel at universities, corporations, and elsewhere.
Florida has had an anti-BDS law since 2016.
“In this most recent year’s legislative session, I was able to sign legislation expanding Florida’s anti-BDS law.”
“They’re trying to smuggle anti-Israel policies into this so-called ESG criteria,” Mr. DeSantis said. “First of all, ESG is a total fraud and we’ve kneecapped it in the state of Florida.”
“They’re trying to use the economy and business to impose a radical left-wing agenda. It’s wrong and it’s destructive for the country.”
Donald Trump made some of his biggest foreign policy marks in the Middle East during his term as president. He moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem, which presidents had delayed doing for years.
He recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights, which it gained from Syria during the Six Day War of 1967 and is now the center of its wine industry.
Through the diplomacy of his son-in-law Jared Kushner he obtained the historic Abraham Accords establishing diplomatic relations Israel and several Muslim nations, including two religiously conservative Persian Gulf states, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.
They were the first Muslim nations to recognize Israel since Egypt and Jordan did in the 1990s.
Mr. DeSantis’s plans involved building on the accomplishments of Mr. Trump, whom he didn’t mention by name. And he specifically attacked the administration of President Joe Biden.
Mr. Biden has recently pushed for an Israeli-Saudi agreement. His administration suffered a blow to its prestige, though, when a deal lowering tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia was brokered this spring, not by the United States, but by China.
The president has sought to reinstate the Obama administration’s controversial nuclear deal with Iran, one severed by Mr. Trump during his presidency. The China-brokered deal allowed Iran to lessen its regional isolation without making any agreement to limit its nuclear research.
The White House on July 17 invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington. The move had been delayed, something seen as a slight by Mr. Netanyahu, whose current coalition Mr. Biden has described as “one of the most extremist” since the 1970s.
Republicans are generally supportive of Israel and Netanyahu. Democrats are split. Many progressives side with the Palestinians or term Israel “racist”. Some have threatened to boycott a speech before Congress by Israel’s ceremonial president Isaac Herzog.
“I think it’s been disgraceful the way they treat a strong ally like Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Mr. DeSantis told CUFI.
Mr. DeSantis said he had strongly backed Israel while in Congress, pushing to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
He chaired a Congressional subcommittee overseeing the State Department, he said.
“We did a small delegation over to Israel. We scouted all the potential embassy sites. We talked with different people in the State Department and the CIA.”
It was “interesting,” he said, “that every single person I talked to, from State or CIA, claimed, ‘If you move the embassy to Jerusalem, there’s going to be World War III, it’s going to be nuts. Everything’s going to go crazy.’ ”
“Every one of them was wrong about that. We knew that was not going to happen. And we also knew it was the right thing to do.”
As a Congressman, he supported Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights.
As governor, he launched a “massive” trade mission to Israel in 2019 with more than 100 people on it. “I actually conducted a Florida Cabinet meeting in the American Embassy in Jerusalem.”
“We engaged in 20 memorandums of understanding between businesses and universities to really make that Florida and Israel connection even stronger, and I was the first major public official to do public events in Judea and Samaria.”
Judea and Samaria, also called the West Bank, has been a major flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. The largest concentrations of the Palestinian population are there, but so are Jewish settlements designed to stake Israel’s claim to the land.
“Judea and Samaria are not occupied territory,” Mr. DeSantis said. “These are some of the most historic lands going back to Biblical times.”
He noted the Arabs’ rejection of a partition plan in 1948 and the declaration of war on the brand-new state of Israel. “I understand they’re still disputes, but Israel has the strongest claim of a right to Judea and Samara. We have to be willing to say that’s because it’s true.”
His administration has acted to protect Jews living in Judea and Samaria against discrimination, pushing back against companies like the rental company AirBnB and the Unilever corporation, owner of Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream.
Mr. DeSantis said he opposed the Biden administration’s efforts against a unified Jerusalem and to force a “two-state solution” giving Israel its pre-1967 borders.
“Those borders are indefensible. They want to carve up Jerusalem and all that, but here’s the thing: You can’t do peace with people that don’t believe you have a right to exist as a Jewish state.”
“We’re also going to reverse Biden’s BDS policy of prohibiting funding for scientific cooperative projects in eastern Jerusalem, the Golan, and Judea, and Samaria,” he said, noting Israel’s strong track record of scientific innovation.
And President Joe Biden does this, Mr. DeSantis said, while promoting sanctions relief for Iran and for funding projects with the Chinese Communist Party. “How does this make any sense at all? It is wrong.”
If he is elected, Mr. DeSantis said, he will cut U.S. funding to United Nations agencies that target Israel, such as the Human Rights Council.
“We reject things like UNESCO [the UN cultural agency] that doesn’t even recognize the connection of the Jewish people to places like Jerusalem. Are you kidding me? So this shamefully targets Israel and it promotes anti-Semitism.”
He will move to expand the Abraham Accords. which also included Morocco and Sudan.
“We should be able to do a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. We need to get that done.”
“If you look at where the Middle East is going, these Arab countries understand the top threat to the Middle East is not Israel. The top threat to the Middle East is Iran.”
He noted that during his military service in Iraq in 2007, while the U.S. was mainly fighting in Sunni Muslim areas, most American casualties came at the hand of Shiite militias funded by Iran. He estimated those forces killed a thousand U.S. soldiers during the Iraq War.
“It just shows you how the foreign policy elite in this town always missed the mark. Because for decades, they said Middle East peace goes through the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict.
“You can never have peace in the Middle East unless you, quote, ’solve that problem.' I think the Abraham Accords show just the opposite.”
“And this was something that people like me had been saying for years. You want to make peace with these countries? Make peace with them. You don’t need to worry about the Palestinian-Arab-Israeli conflict. Worry about the rest.”
“I believe if we do a U.S.-brokered Saudi-Israel peace agreement, that effectively ends the Arab-Israeli conflict for good, and that will be huge for the cause of a peaceful Middle East.”
On his 2019 trip to Israel, Mr. DeSantis said his group prayed at the Western Wall; as is custom, he wrote down a prayer on paper and put it into the wall’s cracks. The media asked him what he prayed for.
“I said, ‘I pray that we don’t have any hurricanes this summer in Florida.’”
“Fast forward a couple of months,” he said, and Hurricane Dorian formed in the Caribbean. “It was a Category Five massive, massive hurricane, barreling straight toward the east coast of Florida.”
The storm was the most powerful that ever hit the Bahamas, the nearest parts of which are only 40 miles from Florida.
“Some people were snickering at me, saying, ‘Well, that prayer must not have gone very far.’ And yet, within 48 hours, that storm took a 90-degree turn to the north. And it did not hit the state of Florida. We were free and clear.”
“The question sometimes I’m asked is, ‘Man, you’re a stalwart for Israel and a strong U.S.–Israel relationship. Why? Why Israel?’ ”
“Well, it’s something that’s personal to my wife, Casey, and to me, it comes from our faith in God.
“It comes from visits and I’ve done a number of visits to Israel over the years, where you can walk with a Bible in your hand, read the Bible, and stand right where people like David and Jesus stood 1000s and 1000s of years ago.
“The Bible comes to life when you’re in Israel.”
