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Israel Declared War on the Torah. Now Even Trump Has Turned!

• 6 min read
Israel Declared War on the Torah. Now Even Trump Has Turned!

This week the patron Israel leaned on above every other turned cold. The most pro-Israel president in living memory now scolds the Jewish state before the world, says Syria should fight its wars, and defends a deal with Iran that Israel rejects. The analysts are baffled. The Gedolei Yisrael are not — and they have said the reason out loud: when Klal Yisrael wages war on its own Torah, the siyata dishmaya that shielded it, the favor of kings included, begins to withdraw.

The facts are not in dispute. At the G7 summit in France on Tuesday, June 16, President Trump faulted Israel's war on Hezbollah as too long and too deadly, suggested that Syria — under a former jihadist now ruling Damascus — should take over the fight, declared that "without me there'd be no Israel," and stood behind a US–Iran agreement that Israel has flatly rejected and warns will leave its deadliest enemy enriched and emboldened. The hand Israel had leaned on hardest pulled back almost overnight.

To the world this is a riddle of politics and personality. To the Torah world it is something the Gedolim named with perfect clarity — while everyone else was still searching for an explanation.

I. What the Gedolim Have Said

Speaking at a dinner for Keren Olam HaTorah — the emergency fund keeping alive the yeshivos and kollelim that the State's budget cuts pushed to the brink — the mashgiach HaGaon HaRav Dan Segal shlita pointed straight at the cause. "We clearly see," he said, "that when Torah is supported, there is siyata dishmaya, and when it is not, there is none." And then he named the proof unfolding on every front page: "It changes the rules of the game. The same Trump who until now was so helpful to Israelis is now singing a different tune."

He is not a lone voice. HaGaon HaRav Moshe Maya, a member of the Moetzes Chachmei HaTorah, has tied the wider storm now gathering against Israel — the diplomatic isolation, the allies turning one by one — to the very same root: a loss of siyata dishmaya brought on by the State's unprecedented war against its lomdei Torah. This is not the impression of one mashgiach having a hard week. It is the considered voice of daas Torah, spoken from more than one mouth.

II. The King's Heart Was Never His to Give

The principle beneath their words is as old as Sefer Mishlei: "Like channels of water is the heart of a king in the hand of Hashem; He turns it wherever He wishes" (Mishlei 21:1). Trump's friendship was never, in truth, Trump's to give. It was a current of siyata dishmaya running through him, directed by the Hand that turns every ruler's heart. And siyata dishmaya is not random. The Torah tells us precisely what draws it down and what drives it off: a people that cherishes and upholds its Torah is flooded with Heaven's help; a people that turns against its Torah forfeits it. "Torah magna umatzla" — the Torah protects and saves (Sotah 21a) — and that protection is not only spiritual. It reaches into the hearts of presidents and the councils of nations.

So when the favor of the world's mightiest patron drains away in a single news cycle, the Torah Jew is not mystified. He understands that the favor and its withdrawal flowed from the same Source — and that the Source answers to how His Torah is treated.

III. Measure for Measure

This is where the Gedolim's words strike with such force, because the timing is no accident. At the very moment the State chose to open war on the world of Torah — jailing bnei yeshivos, more than a hundred behind bars, slashing the budgets of the yeshivos, driving avreichim from the beis midrash toward the prison cell — the shelter that their Torah had drawn down over the whole nation began, visibly, to lift.

This is middah k'neged middah, measure for measure, the way Hashem so often runs His world: strike the wellspring of your own siyata dishmaya, and the siyata dishmaya recedes. Persecute the very Jews whose learning was shielding the country, and find that the country's other shields — even a superpower's friendship — were never as solid as they appeared. The State convinced itself that the bnei Torah were a burden it could afford to crush. The Gedolim are telling it, with sorrow rather than satisfaction, that those bnei Torah were the hand that had been feeding it all along.

IV. "Our Salvation Will Not Come From Trump"

None of this should startle anyone who listens for the Torah's voice. Already in February of 2025, HaGaon HaRav Moshe Shternbuch warned plainly that "our yeshuah will not come from Donald Trump." Dovid HaMelech said it three thousand years earlier: "Do not place your trust in princes, in a mortal man, who holds no salvation" (Tehillim 146:3). Ein od milvado — there is nothing besides Him. A nation that staked its survival on a foreign capital built on sand, and this week it felt the sand shift beneath it.

V. The Way Back Runs Through the Beis Midrash

But here is the mercy folded inside the warning — and it is the only reason the Gedolim speak at all: middah k'neged middah runs in both directions. If turning against the Torah withdrew the siyata dishmaya, then turning back toward it restores it. The road to Israel's security never ran through Washington; it runs through the beis midrash. Cherish the lomdei Torah instead of jailing them, sustain the yeshivos instead of starving them, and the same Hand that cooled a king's heart can warm it again in an instant.

And let this be said as plainly as anything in this article, because ahavas Yisrael demands it: not one word of this is a wish for harm to befall a single Jew. We daven with everything in us for the safety of every soldier at every post and every family in Eretz Yisrael, and we ache for the siyata dishmaya to return and guard them all. The Gedolim's warning is not a curse flung at the nation; it is a hand extended to it. As Rav Dov Landau and Rav Moshe Hillel Hirsch have taught, the zechus of supporting Torah learning protects the entire yishuv — every Jew in the land, the soldier no less than the ben Torah. To uphold the Torah is to protect them all.

VI. The Bottom Line

The headlines are frightening, and we will not pretend otherwise. But the Gedolim have handed us the key to reading them, and it turns out to be a key of hope. The favor of kings follows the honor of Torah. When the Torah is upheld, even a Trump is "so helpful"; when it is attacked, even a Trump "sings a different tune." The variable was never in Washington. It was always, and only, in our own hands.

Return to the Torah. Defend its learners. Fill its yeshivos. And the One who turns every king's heart — who has never once abandoned His people through all the empires that rose against them and crumbled — will turn it back toward His children again.

May Hashem return His siyata dishmaya to His people, guard every one of His children in Eretz Yisrael and wherever they are scattered, soften the hearts of the nations toward us, and gather us back to His Torah in love — bimheirah b'yameinu, amen.

Sources

The events

  • Reporting from the G7 summit in France, June 16, 2026 (Times of Israel, Time, and others): President Trump's criticism of Israel's conduct against Hezbollah, his suggestion that Syria take over the fight, his "without me there'd be no Israel" remark, and the US–Iran agreement that Israel has rejected

The words of the Gedolim

  • HaGaon HaRav Dan Segal shlita, at a Keren Olam HaTorah dinner (reported by The Yeshiva World): that siyata dishmaya follows the support of Torah and withdraws in its absence, and that this is visible in the reversal of President Trump's posture toward Israel
  • HaGaon HaRav Moshe Maya (Moetzes Chachmei HaTorah): connecting the political storm against Israel to a loss of siyata dishmaya caused by the war on lomdei Torah
  • HaGaon HaRav Moshe Shternbuch (February 2025): "our yeshuah will not come from Donald Trump"
  • HaRav Dov Landau and HaRav Moshe Hillel Hirsch: that the zechus of supporting Torah learning protects the entire yishuv

The Torah's principle

  • Mishlei 21:1 — "like channels of water is the heart of a king in the hand of Hashem; He turns it wherever He wishes"
  • Sotah 21a — "Torah magna umatzla," the Torah that protects and saves
  • Tehillim 146:3 — "do not place your trust in princes, in a mortal man, who holds no salvation"; ein od milvado

The structural relationship to other articles in this series