It is not a vote. It is a letter. On Sunday Donald Trump endorsed Benjamin Netanyahu for the 27 October election. Reuters put the wire. Al-Monitor picked it up. The message, on Truth Social, to “the Great People of Israel”: “complete and total endorsement”. The formula is his. It is not a ballot count. It is not the Graham law. It is another letter.

Trump called him a “great warrior prime minister” and a peace partner. He set beside him the February strikes on Iran. The war is in its seventh month. “He did not wilt. He got stronger.” That is campaign praise, not a staff report. Netanyahu answered on X: “Together we will complete the mission!” Both men spoke, on Sunday, about finishing the job in Iran. That is the sentence. It is not a bombing calendar.

The election is the first since 7 October 2023. Israel’s prime minister is not chosen directly. A coalition is built in the Knesset. The polls, Reuters writes, give no one a clear path. Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition is projected to lose its majority; the centrist opposition may, in turn, fail to close a government. Caretaker, then another poll: that is a survey scenario, not a sentence.

Israeli support for Trump has weakened, on disagreements with Washington about Iran. Tamar Hermann, at the Israel Democracy Institute: a last-minute letter may bring back wavering Netanyahu voters, not a new mass. Aaron David Miller, Carnegie: in a close race, “it couldn’t hurt him, and it might help.” Trump has already backed candidates in Hungary, Colombia, Argentina, Japan, Honduras. He breaks an American habit. He does not decide the Knesset.

Their relationship has been close and rough. Trump has criticised him, in public and in private. The Iran war is unpopular in America, where Congress is voted on 3 November. Miller: a non-endorsement would have raised questions about the Iran venture. In the end Trump sided with a man he sees as strong and unfairly hounded. That is the analyst’s reading. It is not the urn.

Until the 27th, it remains a letter. After the 27th, the mandates remain. Anyone who mixes them turns Truth Social into a government.

Image: Gary Todd, the Knesset building, Jerusalem, 5 July 2018, CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The photograph shows parliament, not the Truth Social letter.

Sources consulted: Trump endorses Netanyahu in Israeli election — Reuters; Trump endorses Netanyahu in close Israeli election — Al-Monitor.