President Donald J. Trump and Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu shake hands in the Oval Office of the White House, March 25, 2019. Image by Michael Reynolds – Pool/Getty Images

By Aiden Pink July 17, 2019

Election posters promoting Israel’s conservative Likud Party were spotted in Tel Aviv with an unusual English-language slogan: “Make Israel Great Again.”

The posters echoed President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. Likud party leader Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is one of Trump’s closest global allies.

“This is not part of the formal campaign,” A Likud official told Jerusalem Post reporter Lahav Harkov.

Official or not, it wouldn’t be the first time Likud and Trump have been linked in election materials. A giant Likud campaign poster of Netanyahu and Trump shaking hands was posted in Tel Aviv in February along with the caption, “Netanyahu is in a different league,” the Times of Israel reported. And a “Make America Great Again” flag was waved at Likud’s election night party in April.

After Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition, new elections were called for this September.

Trump is popular in Israel due to his recognition of Jerusalem as the country’s capital and his recognition of its sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Several locations in Israel, including a new town in the Golan and a Jerusalem train station, have been named in his honor.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$36 $500

$120 $180 Other amount