As the Democratic Convention unfolds this week in Chicago, the focus on Israel and the Gaza war will become acute, and American Jews will undoubtedly feel like they’re in the spotlight as both presumed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Republican nominee Donald Trump vie for their votes.
At The Jerusalem Post, we try to present a wide spectrum of views and opinions and always urge readers to synthesize what they take in and make their own decisions. We have our own views, as individuals, as Israelis and as journalists.
I have the utmost respect for the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, Zvika Klein. But I feel that his last two Editor’s Notes columns, which focused on the perceived dangers that a Harris presidency would pose for American Jews and Israel, mistakenly bought the Republican-fueled doomsday scenario.
The real disaster-in-waiting is if Harris loses in November and former president Trump returns to the White House. He not only presents a clear and present danger to American Jews and Israel but to the world at large.
It’s no secret that presumed Democratic presidential nominee Harris doesn’t see eye to eye with the policies of the Likud-led coalition in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at its helm, related to everything from the continuation of the Gaza war to a future state for the Palestinians.
Well, surprise, neither do about half of Israel’s voters.
That divergence however doesn’t mean that there’s any reason to think that a president Harris would not be committed to Israel’s security any less than her predecessor, Joe Biden.
It’s even clearer that she’s head over heels more qualified to lead the United States and stand up for ‘brave and free’ American people and its allies like Israel than Trump, the Republican nominee.
Trump is an unhinged loose cannon whose moods and utterances flit with the wind. The former president has gone out of his way to insult American Jewry at every turn if they don’t support him.
“If you’re Jewish, if you vote for a Democrat, you’re a fool, an absolute fool,” he told WABC FM on July 30, assuming that American Jews choose their candidates based only on one issue, their ‘dual loyalty’ to Israel. He also was quoted as saying American Jews should “have their heads examined,” which neatly provided the headline for this piece.
Trump has cozied up to white supremacists, Holocaust deniers, and just plain old antisemites – from rapper Kanye West to talk show host Nick Fuentes. He also possesses a storied history of failing to condemn hate speech, waffling over a 2016 endorsement of his presidential candidacy by the Ku Klux Klan, and standing up for the white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, saying there was “blame on both sides.”
Trump’s ROLE in the January 6 insurrection in Washington following his defeat in 2020, in which anarchist far-right lunatics with antisemitic overtones threatened the Union, will go down as one of the darkest days in American history.
But even ignoring those odious elements in Trump’s baggage, recent statements he’s made and interviews he’s given reveal an increasingly deranged and irrational mind.
Not rooted in reality
“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black,” he told ABC on July 30, and just last week, he said at a rally in Pennsylvania, “But I say that I’m much better looking than her [Harris]. Much better. Much better. I’m a better-looking person than Kamala.”
Aren’t these thoughts of a person who could be at the helm of the world’s most powerful country alarming to everyone, not just American Jews?
Jewish tradition is built on the elements of justice and tikkun olam. How does that jibe with Trump being the first US president to be convicted of a crime after a New York jury convicted him in May of 34 felony counts of falsified business records? Trump was accused of sending $130,000 to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election to buy her silence about an alleged sexual encounter years earlier.
Trump’s attitude toward Israel could turn on a dime. He’s shown that whatever achievements – from the Abraham Accords to recognizing Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights to moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem – he did to boost one person, Donald Trump.
The way he behaved with Netanyahu when the prime minister did the unthinkable and actually called President Joe Biden to congratulate him on his victory over Trump in November 2020 demonstrated how erratic and unstable the former president is and how dangerous he can be if he perceives he’s been slighted.
Taking America’s future policy toward Israel out of the equation, there’s no doubt that Harris would be better for the US than Trump. The combustible Trump has the maturity of a 5-year-old, and it’s imperative to keep him from a position in which he can rashly make decisions that could thrust the entire world into peril.
Will a Harris presidency present a challenge to Israel to break the habits and policies of the past and search for new avenues to create an environment in the region that will make peace possible? Almost certainly.
But like all presidents in the post-1967 era, Harris and her administration will act from the basic principle that Israel’s security is paramount and the special relationship between Washington and Jerusalem will continue unabated.
HARRIS IS a warm, intelligent individual – the exact opposite of Trump. She shares an affinity, along with her Jewish husband, Douglas Emhoff, for the Jewish values upon which Israel is built. Her policies and those of her new liaison to the Jewish community, Ilan Goldenberg, are not very different, if at all, from those of any centrist Israeli leader, from Yair Lapid to Benny Gantz to Yoav Gallant.
Trump, on the other hand, comes from the same line of thinking as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, where might makes right, and you can only stay strong by making others weak.
The bottom line is that Trump, besides being erratic, immature, rash, morally ambiguous, and lacking any empathy, does not possess the decency and goodness that a president needs to espouse. He appeals to the scared, angry, and vindictive elements of society.
American Jews and Israel should stand on the side of enlightenment, hope, and inclusiveness, not the politics of fear and hate.
The iconoclast author and journalist Hunter S. Thompson wrote these words about disgraced president Richard Nixon in 1974, as he was in the throes of the Watergate scandal and about to resign from office, but it could easily have been written in 2024 about Trump.
It is Trump “himself who represents that dark, venal, and incurably violent side of the American character that almost every country in the world has learned to fear and despise… He speaks for the Werewolf in us; the bully, the predatory shyster who turns into something unspeakable… when the moon comes too close…”
Israel will be just fine with a Harris presidency. If Trump wins, the whole world may be in danger.
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