1. Israelis Have Already Picked Their Winner
With the presidential race going down to the wire and with polls providing no useful indications, it’s anyone’s guess who will emerge victorious Tuesday night, or later on when the vote counting is complete. But if you’re getting your news about the U.S. election from the Israeli press, you’re in luck.
Many in the Israeli media, it seems, already know who will be the next president of the United States. Call it wishful thinking, or maybe it’s just plain disregard for the details of a distant overseas political race, but Israeli commentators are all but sure that Donald Trump will return to the White House come January 20.
Maariv, a center-right daily, hosted, alongside its reporting on the presidential campaign, experts and commentators predicting Trump’s victory. “Trump has a significant advantage over Harris,” read the headline of a commentary column written by Israeli social psychologist Liraz Margalit, who explained how Trump has the edge among voters who are concerned about change and are looking for a “daddy figure,” while Harris “is perceived as lacking perseverance in the face of political attacks.”
Israel Hayom, a right-wing publication, did report a week ago that “Harris is losing momentum,” while polls were showing a dead-heat race in all swing states. The paper, funded by Trump mega-donor Miriam Adelson, added to its coverage of the U.S. election with the help of columnists who explained the “decline of the Harris coalition,” as well as on-the-ground reporting from a Harris rally describing the event as “weird,” her speech as “sounding as if it was written by ChatGPT,” and concluding that while “Trump says awful things,” in his campaign speeches, “at least it is clear he is an authentic figure, something you cannot say about Harris.”
The more centrist Yediot Aharonot, and its popular news website Ynet, reported extensively on the presidential race and largely avoided taking sides.
Israel’s broadcast media followed a similar path of the right-leaning papers in covering the elections, with reporting on each turn and every latest twist in the campaigns and on the tiniest shifts in polls, while at the same time entertaining columnists and pundits in the studios who either take it for granted that it is Trump’s race to lose or simply say out loud that Trump should win for the sake of Israel. Standing out in its biased coverage was Channel 14, sort of an Israeli version of Fox News, which even ran a chyron on the screen stating: “Concern in Israel over electing terror-supporter Kamala Harris as U.S. president.” The network later issued an apology for describing the vice president of the United States as a terror supporter.
2. Israeli Love for Trump, Explained
A poll commissioned last week by Israel’s Channel 12 news, found that 66 percent of Israelis want to see Donald Trump as the next U.S. president. Only 17 percent support Kamala Harris and another 17 percent have no preference.
How striking is this number? Well, imagine for a second if Israel were a U.S. state. These Trump-support numbers would make Israel the third most pro-Trump state, trailing only Wyoming, where 69.9 percent of voters chose Trump in 2020, and West Virginia, with 68.6 percent of the votes going tor the Republican candidate last time around.
There are many reasons for this mind-blowing imbalance. Some Israelis believe that Harris will continue Biden’s policies and urge Israel to end the war in Gaza and Lebanon, while Trump will give Netanyahu a free hand to do whatever he wants. (Fact check: He won’t. Trump has stressed many times his wish to end the war as soon as possible.) Others think Trump will provide Israel with more military aid than Biden and Harris did. (Again, he won’t. Trump talks about ending U.S. spending on foreign wars. Not to mention the fact that it’s hard to top Biden’s aid to Israel.) And there are also Israelis who simply see Donald Trump as America’s Bibi Netanyahu, and so those who support Netanyahu also feel sympathy for his overseas buddy.
Reading through Israeli op-eds and watching commentators on the TV news channels, it is clear that Israelis have a fixed idea of what the Trump-Harris race means. Like any other foreigner watching U.S. politics, Israelis too have imposed their own local political perceptions on the American presidential race. That means that for the Israeli public, which is mostly positioned in the center-to-right end of the political spectrum, voting Trump means supporting a strong military posture, an interventionist foreign policy, and a president who is solely dedicated to the well-being of Israel while disregarding the wishes of its neighbors and enemies. This attempt to import Israeli right-wing standards to American politics is largely bogus, but still unavoidable.
A Maariv poll conducted shortly after Biden stepped down from the presidential race, confirmed the huge support for Trump among Israelis: 63 percent of respondents agreed that Trump “would be better for Israel,” while only 17 percent said that about Harris. And most surprisingly, 53 percent of Israelis who support opposition parties aligned with the center-left and left in Israel share the belief Trump would be the best choice. The explanation provided by pundits: Israelis appreciated Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Abraham Accords he brokered, and they view him as a leader willing to break with policies and traditions to operate based on his pro-Israel instinct.
What about Biden and Harris’s massive support for Israel, the historic military aid package they provided and their decision to deploy more than 40,000 American soldiers and seamen to the region to help protect Israel? That somehow got forgotten. Judging by the Israeli press, Biden will be remembered as the president who delayed an arms shipment to Israel and who urged Israelis to end the war and sign a hostage release deal. Harris is viewed as Biden’s accomplice and as someone who will be prone to more critical views on Israel emerging from the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.
3. Step Aside, Multi-Front War, We’re Covering the U.S. Election
U.S. elections are big news all across the world. It’s hard to think of any nation that won’t be impacted by the election’s outcome. Israel has more at stake than many other countries; much of Israel’s policy, especially now as it has been engaged in a major war for more than a year, depends on its relationship with the United States and with the person occupying the Oval Office.
And yet, Israelis have bigger issues to deal with right now than the question of who will be the next U.S. president. Wars are raging in Gaza and Lebanon, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have been called up for months of reserve service, tens of thousands remain evacuated from their homes along the southern and northern borders, the economy is in shambles, and —most important—101 Israelis and foreign nationals are still held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza tunnels.
But following Israeli media outlets, one could easily believe that all these are minor issues. Tremendous efforts have been put into reporting on the U.S. elections. All major publications and broadcast networks sent reporters to the United States to cover the process, and the nightly newscasts give precious time to describing the ins and outs of swing state polling, to interviews with voters in rural Pennsylvania, and to expert guests handicapping the American political horse race.
Some of this attention may be warranted. After all, Israel, alongside Ukraine, Russia, China and Iran, is among the handful of nations for which a Trump or Harris administration will make a difference. But it is also a form of escapism. After a year of focusing on the horrors of war, terrorism and displacement, Israelis may need a few days of relief, of feeling once again part of the world and of a news cycle that exceeds the immediate hardships at home.
4. Explaining the Jewish vote to Jewish voters
The Israeli media—and for American Jews this is always shocking to hear—cares very little about the Jewish community in the United States. With the exception of reporting on antisemitic attacks or on anti-Israel protests, Jewish Americans are hardly ever present in the Israeli press.
But election season is different. This is the one time Israeli media outlets reach out and express interest in the opinions of American Jews.
Well, not exactly.
The engagement with members of the Jewish community in election-related news reports has been less a show of keen interest in what American Jews have to say, and more an exercise in Israeli superiority.
Israeli reporters seemed perplexed by the notion that American Jews are liberal and largely support Kamala Harris, and puzzled by the idea that Israel is not the key deciding factor for Jewish voters.
Especially telling was a three-part series of reports that aired on Channel 12 evening news, the most watched news show in Israel. The stories documented encounters with Jewish voters from all denominations and focused on their views on Israel and on the rise of antisemitism in the United States this past year. These encounters, especially with liberal Jews, were more of an opportunity for the Israeli reporters to lecture their interviewees than an opportunity to listen to American Jews.
Much of the reporting on Jewish voters in the Israeli press has followed the same pattern and done little to provide Israelis with an understanding of the politics and beliefs of their American brethren.
But if anything, these encounters may prove instructive in demonstrating what Israelis think about American Jews: that they should vote based on the candidates’ views on Israel; that they should believe that all forms of criticism of Israel are antisemitic; and that they should make aliyah to Israel, or at least apologize for not doing so.
5. What about Doug?
America may be a few days away from having its first-ever first gentleman and having its first-ever first gentleman who is Jewish. The idea of a Jewish American living in the White House, not to mention the symbolic value of having a mezuzah on the White House door, as Doug Emhoff promised he would try to do if Harris is elected president, should have been big news for media outlets in the Jewish state. But that never happened.
The fact that Doug Emhoff is Jewish never really made the headlines in Israel, nor was there any discernible excitement in the Israeli press over the possibility that a member of the tribe will reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Perhaps it’s because for the Israeli press, accustomed to covering Israeli politics, the idea of Jews in high-powered positions seems obvious and ordinary. After all, almost all Israeli politicians, and their spouses, are Jewish. Or it may have to do with the fact that Emhoff, a liberal American Jew who is married to a non-Jew and attends a Conservative synagogue, does not fit the mold of Jews Israels are used to. Or, and this goes back to our first point, it could have to do with the fact that Israelis simply can’t imagine Harris becoming the next president of the United States.
Top image: Israeli media cover the United States presidential election (Credit: Gage Skidmore).
This all boils down to the fact that Israelis (most of them at least) are clueless as to what’s going on over here.