This US election could be uniquely bad for Israel

For the first time in my lifetime, both candidates in a US Presidential Election should deeply concern Israelis and American Jews.

The candidates and Israel

Kamala Harris’s actual stated positions on Israel seem pretty standard for the Democratic Party: supports Israeli security; supports a two-state solution; is a fan of liberal, “start-up nation” Israel; is not a fan of settling-the-West-Bank Israel. But as part of a younger generation of Democrats, she lacks the instinctive pro-Israel feeling that Biden or the Clintons have. (I’m not sure we’ll hear her calling herself “a Zionist” anytime soon.) Far more concerning, there’s every reason to fear that a President Harris would pander to the “progressive” wing of her party; she has a record of adjusting her positions to fit the political winds, and in the activist base of her party (though not among Democrats more broadly) there is a hurricane of anti-Israel sentiment.

And what of Donald Trump? Will he be good for Israel?

“Of course! The guy who moved the Embassy to Jerusalem and withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal? What’s wrong with you??” (This is a more-or-less verbatim quote from a friend on social media when I posed this question.)

Ok, don’t get upset Trump-supporting friends, but if you think that Donald Trump has some kind of personal affinity with Israel, you’ve misread the guy. Trump is not driven by ideology. He will follow his instincts at any given time, and weigh up what best feeds his ego and need for status, wealth and self-aggrandizement. Everything is transactional; “values” (democratic, pro-Israel, or other) are irrelevant.

Now, given the broad pro-Israel consensus in the Republican Party, there’s good reason to assume Trump would be generally supportive of Israel, just as he was in his first term. (Though Trump’s Middle East policy was by no means all positive: Syria became an Iranian/Russian outpost on his watch; Islamist Turkey was shamefully appeased with Trump showering praise on President Erdogan – yet another authoritarian he’s mysteriously drawn to.) But Trump is entirely capable of shunting Israel aside if he decides there’s something in it for him, or if Israel is an obstacle to some other objective. Maybe Vladimir Putin, who he so openly admires, will request it of him?

If Mohammad Bin Salman (another Trump favorite) gets impatient with Israel’s refusal to commit to any movement on the Palestinian issue and asks Trump to strongarm Bibi, does anyone think Trump would say no because of some deep-seated personal commitment to Israel? If you do, I have a bridge to sell you. When the Abraham Accords was threatened by Netanyahu’s promise to settler leaders to annex the West Bank, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner humiliated Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer and forced Bibi to renege on his annexation promise (raising the bizarre possibility that Israel’s pro-settlement right could have the most to fear from a Trump presidency.)

But there’s a wider problem with Trump if you’re concerned about Israel’s security and place in the world. The choice of J. D. Vance as running mate shows Trump doubling down on America First isolationism. Vance is part of an ideological movement that pushes wholesale American abandonment of its post-WWII role as “Leader of the Free World”. Vance is by no means anti-Israel, but no serious Israeli security analyst would be anything but horrified at American withdrawal from the Western alliance, and the concomittant strengthening of Russia and China.

The parties and antisemitism

The whole question of antisemitism has become disastrously political in the US.

Both parties are excellent at condemning antisemitism from across the aisle, and equally good at turning a blind eye to the antisemitism on their own side.

Currently the major wave of antisemitism in the US is coming from the left, so Republicans look like the party that’s “taking antisemitism seriously”. If I were an American student on an Ivy League campus, I’d be feeling very positively towards the GOP after the rousing display of pro-Israelism at the Republican National Convention last week. When conservatives claim that a similar show of unequivocal support for Israel is unlikely at the Democratic Convention, it’s hard to argue.

But… when the major antisemitism story was not about Israel and the left’s anti-Zionism, but about a shooter slaughtering worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue because he believed in the Great Replacement theory, or white supremacists in Charlottesville chanting “Jews will not replace us”, the Democrats were the ones who could condemn it without fear of embarassement or hypocrisy. Republicans had to hope people didn’t notice they have members of Congress and cheerleaders in conservative media who traffic in exactly that White Nationalist conspiracy theory.

Pro-Putin propagandist Tucker Carlson has been one of the leading right-wing proponents of “the Great Replacement”. He was also at the RNC last week, palling around with Trump and J. D. Vance. And where were the Republican figures taking Trump to task for hosting Kanye West and the Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago last year?

With a few exceptions (Congressman Richie Torres comes most readily to mind) very few prominent figures in either party actually oppose antisemitism on both sides of the political divide.

The extremes are winning

Since 2020, the extremes of both left and right have become louder. Parts of the left, with their obsession with permanent “victim” and “oppressor” classes (Jews, as “white” and successful can never be victims; and because Israel is a “racist, colonial” project, Jews are obviously oppressors unless they disavow Zionism) have moved into unapologetic antisemitism and support for Hamas.

Parts of the right were radicalized by Trump’s defeat in 2020 and his subsequent campaign to overturn that defeat, culminating in the horrendous riot at the Capitol on January 6 2021.

Biden has no truck with the far-left’s take on Israel; Harris, while certainly not an antisemite or Hamas apologist, is far more likely to nod and wink to progressive activists with her statements on the Middle East.

Trump has always been both the promoter of conspiracy theories and the emboldener of conspiracy theorists. Every conspiracy which identifies “enemies” and “evil” which must be fought, sooner or later casts its suspicious eyes on the Jews. QAnon – which Trump has praised despite its clearly insane premise (that the Democrats are running a devil-worshipping pedophile ring) – is no different. Jews are, inevitably, part of the global elite supporting and providing cover for this satanic child abuse. The Rothschilds are even mentioned explicitly by ‘the Q Shaman‘, that most memorable of the Capitol Hill insurrectionists, dressed in horns and furs, carrying a spear as he filmed himself sitting in the chair of the Vice-President.

In 2020, you had a moderate Democrat, hostile to the toxic extremes in his party, vs. a populist Republican, very much encouraging his own party’s lunatics. This time, both parties have candidates who (for very different reasons) could cause Israel’s policymakers sleepless nights; and who are unlikely to fully reject those on their side of the aisle threatening the wellbeing of American Jews.