As their last living hostages returned home from Gaza after two years of war, Israelis gave visiting President Donald Trump a hero’s welcome — and threw out some lofty comparisons.

“Mr. President, you stand before the people of Israel not as another American president, but as a giant of Jewish history — one for whom we must look back, two-and-a-half millennia into the mists of time, to find a parallel, in Cyrus the Great,” Amir Ohana, speaker of the Knesset, told Trump on Monday as he welcomed the president for a victory speech to the Israeli parliament.

To be compared to Cyrus is no small thing . Living around 600 BCE and shrouded in myth, the Persian ruler is traditionally credited with granting Jews permission to return from exile in Babylon to the land of Israel and for h

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