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1. Trump’s dark warning on Israel
Jewish Democrats came back from the Democratic convention in Chicago last month with a bunch of Jewish-related mementos, including the unavoidable “Harris-Walz” pin in Hebrew and posters praising Doug Emhoff as “First Mensch.”
Jewish Republicans have their own campaign memorabilia, and it was on full display last week in Las Vegas. Nearly 1,000 activists, supporters and donors attended the Republican Jewish Coalition summit, where they were provided signs reading “Kamala…Oy Vey!” and “Trump” in Hebrew.
The signs were waved time and again as Donald Trump appeared on the screen, addressing the crowd remotely from the East Coast.
In his 16-minute speech, the Republican candidate tried out a new message. “If Kamala Harris wins,” he warned, “Israel will no longer exist.”
This was no slip of the tongue. Trump repeated this idea again and again, arguing that Harris is the candidate of the forces who seek to “destroy Western civilization and Israel,” and repeating that “You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president.”
Now, claiming that your political rival will take actions that will harm a cause your voters believe in is par for the course, and a fair amount of hyperbole is also to be expected in political speeches on either side of the aisle. But Trump seems to have taken this further than any other politician. How exactly will Israel cease to exist if Kamala Harris occupies the Oval Office for the next four years? There doesn’t seem to be any plausible line of reasoning, unless Trump was trying to say that the Democratic candidate, who has vowed to support Israel’s military and who, as a senator, consistently supported legislation backing Israel, will order U.S. troops to join forces with Iran and Hamas to help them achieve their ultimate goal.
But this is speculation. Trump is now on the record as claiming that four years of Harris in the White House will put an end to the Zionist project and eliminate the Jewish state. A room full of Jewish Republicans cheering this claim is all the proof he needs that his argument is worth making.
Trump has since added this claim to his stump speech and will likely also repeat it in this week’s presidential debate.
2. Loyalties, citizenships, politics
Donald Trump has a knack for mixing up Jewish Americans with Israeli citizens. In fact, by now it is fair to say that he sees them as one.
“You’ll never survive if they get in,” he told his Jewish-American listeners Thursday, referring to Harris-Walz. Trump meant the survival of Israel, not of American Jews.
“You’re going to be abandoned if she becomes president, and I think you have to explain that to your people because they don’t know,” Trump went on. “You must get them to vote for Trump and if you don’t you’re not going to have a country.”
This is a recurring theme when Trump addresses Jewish audiences, which has raised concern about the underlying premise: that all American Jews are somehow not fully American but hold another loyalty to another country, to the State of Israel.
This premise is ignorant, but more important, it is dangerous. The notion of Jews’ disloyalty to their country has fueled antisemitism in the past all across the world.
But here’s the point. By now, Trump must be aware of the discomfort his choice of words has caused many Jews. Or at least he must be surrounded by advisers and supporters who can inform him of this sentiment and urge him to be careful not to conflate American Jews with Israelis. And still he insists on sticking to this choice of pronouns, even though his argument could stand without them.
Then again—the audience cheered, so why should Trump change course?
3. A separate hostage deal?
A deep sense of despair has settled over efforts to release the 101 hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, even as the Biden administration continues to frantically try to put the negotiations back on track. However, most observers in Israel and in the United States fear that the murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas and the focus by both Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas on conditions the other side will not accept have put an end to hope of a peaceful release of hostages as part of a cease-fire agreement.
It is this despair that led several representatives of the families of the hostages who hold U.S. citizenship to try to get Biden to back an idea initially raised more than six months ago: a separate deal between the United States and Hamas focusing on the release of the eight American citizens, four of whom are believed to be alive.
The rationale behind this idea is that the United States is committed, first and foremost, to the safety of its own citizens, and therefore if negotiations aimed at a broader cease-fire deal fail, Biden should at least do whatever possible to save those citizens.
Administration officials, however, argue that this idea will not fly.
First of all, it is hard to imagine a practical way of releasing hostages in Gaza without Israel’s cooperation. The IDF controls the region, which is still an active war zone, and Hamas has made it clear that any hostage release must be done only after fighting is halted, including a full cessation of Israeli air raids and drone reconnaissance flights.
There’s also the matter of the price America is willing and able to pay. Hamas wants the release of Palestinians imprisoned in Israel for terrorism charges. Although the United States does hold several Hamas prisoners, it also cannot give the terror group what it is asking for. The only potential upside for Hamas would be an intangible one: The satisfaction of knowing that the United States has abandoned Israel and has chosen a separate side deal.
But there’s a more significant argument being raised against a separate deal. Even if it could bring about the release of American citizens, it wouldn’t achieve any of the other—much bigger—goals of a deal: Ending the entire hostage crisis, allowing much-needed aid to enter Gaza, reaching a cease-fire that would end the war and using that cease-fire to calm tensions between Israel and Hezbollah and Iran.
4. The Russians are coming
A bombshell affidavit released by the Department of Justice last week described in great detail an organized Russian campaign to use online influencers and fake social media accounts to disrupt the American political system.
And yes, there’s a Jewish angle.
According to the Department of Justice, a Russian company called SDA set up online profiles impersonating Israelis. Their goal was to spread disinformation and sow distrust among Israelis in a way that would strengthen anti-Western beliefs and push Israel out of America’s circle of influence. The efforts also targeted American Jews, with the objective of turning them against the Biden administration.
It’s a fascinating story, and while there is no real way of knowing how successful this Russian influence campaign actually was, it does raise real concerns about how much of the information leading American Jews to make their political choices is real and how much of it is fake.
5. Debate watching checklist
It’s debate night on Tuesday, and the stakes for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump couldn’t be higher. According to polls, the candidates are in a statistical dead heat, and both are in desperate need for a bump coming out of the debate.
There’s much to look for, but here are some aspects that Jewish Americans might care about more than others: How will both candidates relate to the war in Gaza? Harris usually sticks to a message that includes a clear pledge to help Israel defend itself and an unequivocal denunciation of Hamas’s attack, while stating the need to end the war and to provide the Palestinians with a political horizon. Trump usually takes a one-sided pro-Israel approach, focusing on attacking Biden and Harris for their managing of U.S. Middle East policy, but he is also known for criticizing Netanyahu and for calling for an end to the war. Will the ABC anchors succeed in pushing both candidates to go beyond their established talking points?
Also, will antisemitism be an issue in the debate? Democrats accuse Trump of cuddling up to antisemites, while Trump accuses Harris of supporting extremists on college campuses. It could be interesting. But with only 90 minutes to cover pretty much everything, it is not clear if these issues will come up.
Top image: Screenshot by Gage Skidmore.
It’s embarrassing that neither candidate, but more so Kamala Harris who spouts the political rhetoric that she wants to be the “President of all America, seemingly deliberately neglected to address the religious discrimination deliberately targeting Jewish young people on bothe the streets and campuses across America.because of incomplete , ineffective opposition, this discrimination, like the virus it represents has infected to one degree or another all levels of education; elementary, high school, and college/university.it would be bad enough if it were limited to baseless hatred spewed by fellow students as such can be observed, situationally abetted by teaching staff and administrator’s. A loud outrage to such should have followed in this case of tolerated civil rights abuses; but because it is directed towards Jews, the powers that be turn a blind eye. If such were directed against our African-American or our Muslim brothers and sisters, such unAmerican intolerance would be visibly challenged in courts across the land, most especially by the U.S. Department of Justice and its FBI. Shame on America and those who silently cower in the shadows.