My Trump victory toast: ‘May dust clouds of camels cover America!’

Last Wednesday evening, watching post-election commentary with a gathering of friends and basking in the glow of President Trump’s increasingly evident landslide victory, just as drinks were being poured in celebration, a videotaped clip ran of our proud President-elect promising to create a “Golden Age” for America.

“I want to offer a victory toast,” I said, lifting my glass to my jubilant friends. Once all glasses were hoisted, I said, “May dust clouds of camels cover America, from sea to shining sea!”

“Wait, what?” they said, not certain they wanted to drink to such a toast.

“Dust clouds of camels? That sounds revolting, Sieg. Have you changed sides?”

Another laughed, “Is this some weird attempt at Irish toasting humor, like, ‘May you be in heaven 30 minutes before the devil knows you’re dead?'”

“It must be a Hebrew thing,” one grimaced. (My friends know me well.)

It was indeed a “Hebrew thing,” providing a teaching moment as I pointed to Isaiah’s prophecy of a new day dawning:

“Arise, shine, for your light has dawned!
As you behold, you will glow; your heart will throb and thrill …
For the wealth of the sea shall pass on to you …
Dust clouds of camels shall cover you!”

(Isaiah 60, Jewish Publication Society, Hebrew-English Tanakh)

“Trump just promised a Golden Age for America,” I explained. “Isaiah’s dust clouds, stirred up by caravans of camels, was gold dust!”

What Isaiah saw coming was a new day of economic prosperity through vibrant international trade made possible by peace. He predicted that wealth would arrive upon the waves of the Mediterranean in the west, and across the dusty desert caravan trade routes from the east.

One reason the phrase is unfamiliar to most speakers is that most English versions translate the text as “multitudes” of camels, or “vast caravans” of camels, or “herds” of camels. Nothing in those translations about dust.

Camels were, and are, valuable commodities. Many of my female guests in the Holy Land return home with a story to tell, how a merchant complimented her by offering her husband camels in exchange. “A hundred camels for your wife!” you may hear in a shop in Jerusalem, a merchant’s playful compliment intended to build friendship and invite the customer to relax.

Not to brag on my wife (well, perhaps a bit), I once was offered 3,000 camels for her.

Our economic/financial sector also uses animal-inspired imagery to describe market phases. We speak of bear markets (a bad thing) and bull markets (a good thing). The names may derive from the fact that a bull’s attack is an upward thrust of the horns, while a bear’s attack is a downward swipe of the claws.

Wall Street investors love the bull market’s upward trajectory of rising stock prices in an economic environment of prosperity.

Isaiah’s “Rise and shine!” elation at the prospect of a new morning of prosperity and peace in Israel, leading the prophet to envision camel dust as gold dust, encapsulates the thrill that conservatives are now experiencing, both in America, Israel and beyond.

Trump’s victory is causing many hearts of my friends in Israel to “throb and thrill” (to use Isaiah’s words), sending me photos of the many billboards throughout Israel congratulating Trump with the words, “Make Israel Great Again.”

I am writing this just as I see breaking news that President Trump has nominated my friend and former governor of Arkansas, Mike Huckabee, to serve as ambassador to Israel, a nomination no doubt amplifying the glow of hearts throughout Israel, knowing Mike to be one who will work tirelessly for peace in the region, not through a forced ceasefire, but through strength.

Gov. Huckabee knows Hamas to be responsible for every death since Oct. 7, not only in Israel, but also throughout Gaza and Lebanon, and that peace would be immediate if Hamas and Hezbollah would surrender and release the hostages.

What a beautiful “Rise and shine!” moment that would be, were hostilities to cease, opening an avenue, however slight at first, for dust clouds of camels to cover Ha-Eretz (the Land).

“Rise and shine!” is precisely the spirit in which conservative, common-sense Americans have greeted each new day since the Nov. 5 election, euphoric that the disastrous four years of Biden-Harris will soon be over.

A foul detritus far more filthy than camel dust has forever buried the vacuous Harris campaign, and rightly so. Enough Americans saw through the campaign’s primary strategy of divisive rhetoric, calling Trump Hitler and his followers fascists, to result in a landslide electorally (which I predicted often in my WND articles) and even a rout in the popular vote (which I was too timid to predict, despite wanting badly to do so).

Also buried under an avalanche of well-deserved ordure are the celebrities whose vile rhetoric deserves to rot in Gehenna. I think especially of Oprah’s abominable last-minute screeching that, should Trump be elected, we will never have another election in America.

How stupid does one need be to buy such pure inanity, even when spouted by an accomplished and beloved celebrity? How delicious for the out-of-touch with American celebs to realize that voters don’t care what they think, nor do they listen anymore to the regime media elite.

So, from now to Inauguration Day let us “Rise and shine!” in the mornings with excitement as we see Trump’s government being put in place, and in the evenings let us lift our glasses in celebration of how soundly voters rejected the radical progressive wokeness of the left.

America, may dust clouds of camels cover you from sea to shining sea, a golden age glowing with the promise of prosperity and peace.

May God bless the United States of America as we awaken to the shafts of light heralding the dawn of a new day.