President Donald Trump arrives in Saudi Arabia. Photo: White House.

A leading American Jewish advocacy organization praised Donald Trump’s speech to Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, saying the president had demonstrated “refreshing honesty…in describing the Islamist extremist threat that developed in the Middle East years ago.”

“We agree that the fight against Islamist extremism is a battle between the forces of good and decency, on the one hand, and evil and a death cult, on the other, and that victory depends, above all, on what Arab and Muslim nations do to counter and defeat this violent, deadly scourge,” said David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), in a statement.

Trump issued an urgent plea to the leaders of more than 50 Muslim countries to join a “coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God.”

Trump pointed out to his hosts that “in sheer numbers, the deadliest toll has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence.”

Trump pointedly included organizations other than ISIS on his list of terrorist organizations.

“The true toll of ISIS, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It must also be counted in generations of vanished dreams,” Trump declared.

“He could not have been clearer in his description of Hezbollah and Hamas as the terrorist groups they most assuredly are,” the AJC’s Harris added.