Victorious Trump pitched to Jewish voters on his support for Israel; they didn’t back him

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Donald Trump’s presidential victory looks set to reshape the United States and could change its relationship with Israel, while ushering in an administration whose domestic priorities do not match those of most American Jews.

For many US Jews, Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel — which launched a multifront war and sparked a global surge in antisemitism — shaped the campaign. The war split the Democratic Party, whose progressive wing pressed Vice President Kamala Harris to temper her support for Israel, and each campaign accused the other of being antisemitic, anti-Israel and fascist.

Trump centered his pitch to Jewish voters on his support for Israel. He pointed to his record as president, when he fulfilled a long list of Israeli government priorities — from moving the US embassy to Jerusalem to recognizing Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights to brokering normalization deals between Israel and several Arab countries. In polls shortly before the election, Israelis overwhelmingly preferred Trump to Harris.

He also promised to crack down on anti-Israel campus protests, which many Jewish students have said create an antisemitic atmosphere. Trump has said he will defund universities that do not adequately protect Jewish students and will deport foreign students who participate in the unrest.

He has encouraged Israel to achieve its goals in the war. But has also called for a quick end to the war in Gaza, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far resisted. “I’m not going to start wars; I’m going to stop wars,” Trump declared in his victory speech.

He has also suggested repeatedly that Israel’s survival depends on his election, but has campaigned with and praised harsh critics of the country who endorsed him.

And he disquieted many Jews, including some of his supporters, when he said they would be partly to blame if he lost. While he made efforts to secure a historically large share of the Jewish vote, exit polls indicate that the vast majority of Jews voted for Harris.

In the longer term Trump — through his associations with isolationists like his running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, and Tucker Carlson, the talk show host who recently interviewed a Holocaust denier and has become an informal adviser to Trump — appears to favor a retreat from the traditionally robust American role on the world stage.

More broadly, Trump ran a campaign promising both a restoration and an acceleration of his first administration, from 2017 to 2021, and outside groups and think tanks comprising veterans of his presidency have proposed a massive expansion of his executive powers. He plans mass deportations of immigrants and social policies that would favor Christian influence in government. He has also vowed “retribution” against his opponents, whom he has discussed jailing, and has spoken repeatedly of “the enemy within” the US.

Harris had pledged to continue pursuing President Joe Biden’s agenda, including supporting Israel while pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of the hostages Hamas abducted.

Biden and Harris have also been seeking a ceasefire in Lebanon and no further escalation of tensions with Iran. They have criticized Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and said Israel is at least partly responsible for the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.

Harris has said Trump encourages white nationalists with talk that belittles vulnerable populations, and noted that he has consorted with people who have spouted antisemitic rhetoric like Ye, the entrepreneur formerly known as Kanye West, and Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier.

Polls before and on Election Day showed that most Jews opposed Trump. The majority of American Jews also do not align with his key policies, from ending federal protections for abortion to his draconian pledges on immigration.

An exception was the Orthodox community, which has shown support for Trump in large numbers. Trump acknowledged that affection during the campaign in a visit to the gravesite of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late leader of the Chabad Hasidic movement.

Jewish voters across the board were bombarded by campaign materials about Israel, with the discourse especially tense in Michigan, which also has a large Arab-American population.

Attention had been especially focused all year on seven battleground states that were considered toss-ups and likely to decide the election, all of them home to substantial Jewish communities: Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and the largest, Pennsylvania, which has a Jewish population of around 400,000.

As votes were still being counted into Wednesday, Trump was leading in all of them.

Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.