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David E. Weisberg

I Know What’s Best for You

That headline has an annoyingly smug and arrogant tone, doesn’t it?  It’s something a parent might say to a recalcitrant child.  But when adults are discussing an important and contentious issue, it would seem to be entirely inappropriate for one to say to the other: You ought to agree with my position, simply because I know what’s best for you.

Yet that kind of arrogant, offensive attitude overflows in the numerous blogs churned out by Jewish Americans who contend that Americans who care about Israel—whether those Americans are Jews or not—ought to vote for Kamala Harris.

Those pro-Harris bloggers invariably overlook the indisputable fact that Israelis themselves overwhelmingly support Trump, and not Harris.  It’s exactly as if the Jewish American bloggers are saying to large majorities of millions of Israelis: You should be rooting for Harris, because we Jewish Americans know better than Israelis do what is best for Israel.

That Israelis support Trump by huge margins cannot be denied; I’ve previously laid out the facts here.  To summarize, all available polling data of Israeli preferences show that the margin of Israelis in favor of Trump over Harris ranges from more than 2 to 1 in a poll taken in August, to almost 4 to 1 in a poll taken in late October.  Israelis know who they want to be the next US president, and that person is Trump.

In previous blogs, I’ve also critiqued several of those “featured” posts in the Times of Israel written by, shall we say, know-it-all Jewish Americans—the ones who know better than Israelis do what is best for Israel.  My critical blogs are here, here, and here.

To my mind, what is truly astounding about those pro-Harris posts is that not a single one contains one word about the preferences of Israelis.  Each of the posts urges Americans to vote for Harris as the best choice for Israel, and yet not one of them bothers to note that Israelis overwhelmingly prefer Trump over Harris.  Amazing!

There of course is no Eleventh Commandment that says that any American voter, whether Jewish or not, must take into account the best interests of Israel in deciding how to cast his or her vote for US president.  The great majority of US voters will take no account of Israel or its interests when they cast their vote for president, and that is perfectly fine.  Other issues are much more important to them.

And even many Jewish American voters will give little or no consideration to Israel’s best interests, and that too is a decision they are perfectly free to make, even if it is not one I would make myself.

But we are dealing with an entirely different situation when any American, whether Jewish or not, tells US voters that it is in Israel’s best interests to vote for Harris rather than Trump.  In that situation—where an American blogger or pundit insists that he or she knows that a vote for Harris best serves Israel’s interests—it is irresponsible and negligent to ignore entirely what Israelis themselves believe as to who best serves Israel’s interests.

Israelis support Trump by huge margins.  Are Israelis delusional, or do they have good reason to believe that Trump would better serve Israel’s interests than Harris?

The following are facts, not delusions, about Trump’s first term:

  • The Trump administration caused the U.S. to recognize a unified Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol and moved the US embassy
  • The Trump administration recognized Israel’s claim to the strategically-vital Golan Heights.
  • The Trump administration literally presided over the signing of the Abraham Accords, an important breakthrough in normalizing relations between Israel and moderate Arab states.
  • The Trump administration withheld funding (which the Biden/Harris administration later restored) from Mahmoud Abbas’s kleptocratic, powerless Palestinian Authority, which to this day provides “pay for slay” payments to the families of imprisoned or dead Hamas terrorists guilty of murder(s).
  • During Trump’s term as president, Hamas never mounted a murderous, savage invasion from Gaza into Israel. That invasion was mounted during the tenure of the obviously weak and fumbling Biden/Harris administration (see, the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan).

Vice President Harris is of course an important figure in the current administration, but she is not the president, and it is perhaps unfair to either praise or blame her for the actions and/or omissions of the administration.  But she is certainly directly responsible for the statements she herself makes, and those statements do not bode well for Israel if she becomes president.

Perhaps the most glaring recent example was her response when a protester at one of her rallies shouted out accusations that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza and challenged Harris to call Israel’s actions “genocide”.  Harris then told the crowd: “So, listen, what he’s talking about, it’s, it’s, it’s real, and so that’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real, and I respect his voice.”

After her campaign had a full day to figure out how to walk back her “it’s real” comment about genocide, it could say only that it is not Harris’ position that Israel is committing genocide.  But the Harris campaign could not bring itself to say that Israel is not committing genocide; that true statement would apparently offend too many woke young voters and Muslim voters.  That sums up Harris on Israel.

No thoughtful person would believe that Americans, no matter how devoted they might be to Israel, would know better than Israelis how to advance Israel’s best interests.  Israelis would choose Trump over Harris, and that choice is solidly grounded on hard facts.

About the Author
David E. Weisberg is a semi-retired attorney and a member of the N.Y. Bar; he also has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from The University of Michigan (1971). He now lives in Cary, NC. His scholarly papers on U.S. constitutional law can be read on the Social Science Research Network at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2523973
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