Israel Wants Trump

It’s now officially a wrap: Every single available poll confirms that Israelis overwhelming prefer victory by former-President Donald Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming presidential election. Those American voters—Jewish or not—who care deeply about Israel have to ask themselves why they would vote for anyone other than the candidate Israelis support by huge margins.

The Mitvim Institute, in September of 2024, published a survey reporting (at page 16) that, among the 85% of Israelis who had an opinion, 68% believed Trump would better serve Israel’s interests, while 14% believe Harris would. That’s a ratio of almost 5 to 1 for Trump over Harris.

On October 4, 2024, Langer Research Associates published a poll showing that 54 % of Israelis with an opinion favor Trump, while 24% favor Harris—more than 2 to 1 in Trump’s favor.

Most recently, on October 28, Israel’s Channel 12 TV published a poll showing that 66% of Israelis with an opinion choose Trump, while 17% pick Harris—a ratio of almost 4 to 1 in Trump’s favor.

All the polling in the US indicates that American voters are very, very closely divided over the two major candidates. But Israelis are not at all closely divided; they’re overwhelmingly in Trump’s corner. So, if an American voter cares deeply about Israel, why would he or she vote for Harris?

Ms. Kinney Zalesne, who is the Deputy National Finance Chair of the Democratic National Committee and a Co-Chair of Women for Harris, thinks she has an answer to that last question. Zalesne has published a blog in ToI, “The case for Kamala,” in which she presents (you guessed it) the case for Kamala Harris. Let’s consider that case, which Zalesne says is three-fold.

Zalesne’s first contention is that Harris “has stood faithfully and steadily by Israel and the Jewish People.” Some might disagree with that contention. Like President Biden, she has regularly criticized the tactics Israel believes are necessary to defeat its enemies.

Perhaps the most glaring example was her insistence that Israel should not occupy the southern Gaza city of Rafah; she infamously and ridiculously claimed that she knew it would be a mistake for Israel because “I’ve studied the maps.”  Israel ignored the advice from the Biden/Harris administration, successfully captured Rafah without significant harm to civilians, and killed master-terrorist Yahya Sinwar there.

And was Harris faithfully standing by Israel when she said, just a few days ago, that grotesquely false accusations that Israel was committing “genocide” in Gaza addressed something “real”?

The second contention Zalesne offers is that Harris “believes in Israel’s capacity for long-term peace.” This sounds very much like the kind of platitudes we’ve come to expect from the vice president herself. Who doesn’t believe Israel has that capacity? Every fair-minded person in the world already accepts that truth, and that’s why it’s a platitude.

Finally, Zalesne asserts that Trump “cannot be trusted to stay attentive to Israel or to advance its long-term interests.” But that assertion is belied by the history of Trump’s first term.

Trump’s term in office substantially benefited Israel in numerous ways. President Trump actually did what many candidates promised they would do if elected but never did when in the Oval Office: he caused the US to recognize a united Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol and moved its embassy there. The Trump administration also recognized Israel’s claim to the strategically-vital Golan Heights. The Trump administration facilitated and oversaw the signing of the Abraham Accords—an important breakthrough in normalizing relations between Israel and moderate Arab states. The Trump administration withdrew funding (which the Biden/Harris administration restored) from Mahmoud Abbas’s kleptocratic, impotent Palestinian Authority, which to this day provides substantial regular payments to the families of terrorists who have been found guilty of murder(s).

Perhaps most important, when Trump was president, Hamas never mounted a murderous, savage invasion from Gaza into Israel. Hamas was mostly quiescent, probably because Hamas’s masters in Iran feared the joint response of a Trump administration and Israel. The obviously weak and fumbling Biden/Harris administration (see, the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan) presented no such concerns for Hamas and Tehran.

Ms. Zalesne’s mini-biography indicates that she has homes in the US and Israel.  One would think that, as a person who clearly is very actively involved in US politics and also is part of the Israeli community, she would be interested in how Israelis feel about US political trends. Yet there is not one word in her recent op-ed that reflects any knowledge of, or even interest in, Israeli opinion regarding the pending US presidential election—not one word.

The three polls cited in my opening paragraphs establish definitively, without any question, that Israelis themselves overwhelming believe that the election of Donald Trump would better serve Israel’s interests than would the election of Kamala Harris. Of course, no American, whether Jewish or not, is obligated to consider the interests of Israel when deciding how to vote in the US presidential election. But there are many Jewish Americans, and Ms. Zalesne is one, who insist that Harris would be best for Israel.

Do American bloggers, commentators and pundits know more about Israel’s best interests than do the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens? Anyone who is capable of rational thought knows that the only correct answer is “no”.  With all due respect, 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 want Trump, not Harris, and that’s a fact.