Trump’s Sec. of Defense Nominee: “Miracle of Temple in Jerusalem Possible”
Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, is proving controversial, raising the ire of the left wing. While being labeled a white nationalist, he also called for the construction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
When Hegseth addressed an Arutz Sheva conference in Jerusalem at the King David Hotel in 2018, he surprised the attendees when he said that visiting the Western Wall “got me thinking about another miracle that I hope all of you don’t see too far away, because 1917 was a miracle, 1948 was a miracle, 1967 was a miracle, 2017, the Declaration of Jerusalem as the capital was a miracle. And there’s no reason why the miracle of the reestablishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible.
“I don’t know how it would happen. You don’t know how it would happen. But I know that it could happen.”
He also hinted that the Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria would be a “critical next step.”
“A step in that process, a step in every process, is a recognition that facts and activities on the ground truly matter,” said Hegseth.
“That’s why going and visiting Judea and Samaria and understanding that sovereignty—the very sovereignty of Israeli soil, Israeli cities, locations—is a critical next step to showing the world that this is the land for Jews and the Land of Israel,” he added.
He also rejected the so-called “two-state solution” that would establish an unprecedented militarized Palestinian state inside Israel’s borders that has been ethnically cleansed of Jews with its capital in an exclusively Muslim Jerusalem.
“If you walk the ground today, you understand that there is no such thing as the outcome of a two-state solution. There is one state.”
The 2018 visit was Hegseth’s second to Israel. In a speech to National Young Israel, which took him on a tour of Hamas tunnels found in Israel, he said that “Zionism and Americanism are the front lines of Western civilization and freedom in our world today.”
Hegseth served as an infantry officer in the Minnesota National Guard. In 2004, his unit was called to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base where he served as an infantry platoon leader and was awarded the Army Commendation Medal. Hegseth volunteered to serve in Baghdad and Samarra, where he served first as an infantry platoon leader and later as Civil–Military Operations Officer. During his time in Iraq, he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, Combat Infantryman Badge, and a second Army Commendation Medal. In 2012, he deployed to Afghanistan with the Minnesota Army National Guard as a captain.
Hegseth has come under fire for his many tattoos which his detractors claim link him to white supremacists. One especially controversial tattoo is a large Jerusalem cross on his chest, a symbol featuring a large cross potent with smaller Greek crosses in each of its four quadrants. The symbol has its roots in Christianity as the symbolism of the five-fold cross is variously given as the Five Wounds of Jesus, Jesus and the four evangelists, or Jesus and the four quarters of the world. In the early 20th century, the Jerusalem cross was also used as a symbol of world evangelization in Protestantism.
Hegseth has claimed that the tattoo was the reason he was excluded from volunteering to protect President Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.
“Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo,” Hegseth said. “It’s a Jerusalem cross. Everybody can look it up, but it was used as a premise to revoke my orders to guard the inauguration.”
Hegseth also has “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” tattooed on his bicep. The phrase was used as a rallying cry for the First Crusade in 1096 and is also the closing sentence of his 2020 book, American Crusade.
Hegseth also has a cross and sword tattooed on his arm, representing a New Testament verse. Matthew 10:34 reads, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
He later added the Hebrew word “Yeshua” under the sword. The tattoo was done in Bethlehem.
Many of his tattoos date back to his military service, including the US Constitution’s famous opening phrase “We the People,” a “Join, or Die” snake from the American Revolution, an American flag with an AR-15 rifle, and a patch of his regiment, the 187th Infantry.
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