The Hamas attacks — and the Biden administration’s response — have so far not only united a fractured Israeli society but also buried animosities between the world’s two largest Jewish communities, in Israel and the United States.
Speaking for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Yinam Cohen, the consul general of Israel to the Midwest, praised Mr. Biden for a “moral clarity” that “lifted the spirit of Israelis amid the greatest tragedy that has occurred in the 75 years of our existence.”
“History will remember President Biden as a guardian of the Jewish State,” he said.
Republican presidential candidates have tried to turn the crisis into a political liability for Mr. Biden. Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, said the president had “blood on his hands” for unfreezing $6 billion for humanitarian needs in exchange for the release from prison of five Americans now under house arrest until the money is distributed. The National Republican Congressional Committee on Thursday tried to hit vulnerable House Democrats on the same issue.
Then the Biden administration and Qatar reached an agreement on Thursday to refreeze those assets.
Mr. Trump, the prohibitive front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, has not helped his cause with Jews in either Israel or the United States. His dinner last November with the performer Kanye West, who had already been denounced for making antisemitic statements, and with Nick Fuentes, an outspoken antisemite and Holocaust denier, had earned the condemnation of some Trump allies. Then, Israelis on Thursday woke up to clips of the former president criticizing Mr. Netanyahu, mocking a senior Israeli military official and finger-wagging at a vaunted Israeli security apparatus that he said was unready for Hamas.
By Thursday evening, the Trump campaign had rushed out a statement from the former president, saying that under his leadership, “the United States stood in complete solidarity with Israel, and as a result, Israel was safe.”
But the damage may have been done.
“I think what Israelis got about Trump today was the ego,” Mr. Somfalvi, the journalist, said. “It’s so childish.”