Vote for me or Israel will be annihilated, Trump says in pitch to Republican Jews
Warning marks intensification of effort to lure Jewish voters, as ex-president fumes they aren’t flocking in larger numbers; he puts colleges on notice for ‘antisemitic propaganda’
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
If US Vice President Kamala Harris wins the White House, Israel will cease to exist, former president Donald Trump told a gathering of Republican Jews on Thursday.
“I will work with you to make sure Israel is with us for thousands of years,” the Republican nominee said in a satellite address to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference in Las Vegas. “You’re not going to have an Israel if she becomes president… Israel will no longer exist.”
The warning marked an intensification of Trump’s campaign to lure Jewish voters, as he continued to express frustration that they aren’t flocking to him in larger numbers due to his Mideast policy.
“I don’t understand how anybody can support them — and I say it constantly — if you had them to support and you were Jewish, you have to have your head examined,” Trump told the RJC crowd, referring to his Democratic rivals. “They’ve been very bad to you.”
“I can say honestly that we got 25 percent of the vote, 26 percent after four years after I’ve done more for Israel than anyone. This year we will probably be around a 50% mark,” Trump said. The most recent polling of American Jews was done in June, before US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, but it still put support for Trump at 24%.
Reprising his oft-criticized habit of conflating US Jews with Israelis, he told the crowd of Americans, “Right now, what you are going through is horrible that you have to go through that, with all the death, destruction and waste and ruining a civilization,” he said, without clarifying. The crowd did not appear to mind, cheering Trump enthusiastically throughout.
“You’ll never survive if they get in, and our country America will never survive if they get in,” he said, apparently trafficking in a dual loyalty trope that he has used in the past.
He claimed Jews felt safe in public while he was in office, ignoring a documented spike in antisemitic incidents during his presidency.
“If Kamala Harris wins, terrorist armies will wage an unceasing war to drive Jews out of the Holy Land,” he claimed.
Harris hits back
Harris’s presidential campaign hit back at the former president on Thursday evening.
“Donald Trump openly demeans Jewish Americans, proudly dined with a neo-Nazi and reportedly thinks Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things.’ He has said the only people he wants counting his money are ‘short guys wearing yarmulkes,’ and praised neo-Nazis who chanted ‘Jews will not replace us’ as ‘very fine people,’” said Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein.
“Donald Trump has made it obvious he would turn on Israel in a moment if it suited his personal interests; and, in fact, he has done so in the past,” she continued.
“Meanwhile, the vice president has been incredibly clear: she has been a lifelong supporter of the State of Israel as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people. She has an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel and will always stand up for its right to defend itself. She also stands steadfastly against antisemitism both at home and abroad and will do the same as president,” Finkelstein added.
Trump: PA is not our friend
Trump opened his RJC remarks by offering his condolences to the family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli who was one of the six hostages recovered by the IDF last week after they were executed by their Hamas captors in a tunnel underneath the Gaza city of Rafah. Trump claimed that Harris and Joe Biden have “sought to cast blame for these deaths on Israel,” even though both issued statements placing responsibility squarely on Hamas.
Biden did say on Sunday that he doesn’t think Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doing enough to secure a hostage deal, joining the criticism voiced by the hostage families publicly and Israel’s security establishment privately. The premier has maintained that pressure should be directed at Hamas.
Trump didn’t mention Netanyahu in his speech but did say, “I will support Israel’s right to win [the war]… You have to win and you have to win fast.”
The Republican nominee also told the confab that the Palestinian Authority “is not our friend,” defending his decision to cut funding to Ramallah during his term in office, despite historic US backing for the PA.
In July, Trump published a letter he received from PA President Mahmoud Abbas in which the latter expressed his outrage over the assassination attempt on the GOP nominee. Trump thanked Abbas for the letter and said he looked forward to brokering peace in the Middle East if elected.
“I defunded the Palestinian Authority and choked off the money to Hamas, and we actually defunded, we were paying them a fortune every year, the United States was paying a fortune, and I said ‘we’re not gonna pay it, they’re not our friends and not the friends of Israel,'” he said on Thursday.
Ending ‘antisemitic propaganda’ on campus
Turning to anti-Israel protests that have rocked college campuses over the past year, Trump declared that US universities would lose accreditation and federal support over what he described as “antisemitic propaganda” if he is elected to the White House.
“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said.
In the United States, the federal government does not directly accredit universities but has a role in overseeing the mostly private organizations that give accreditation to colleges.
Republicans have said the protests show some Democrats are antisemites who support chaos. Biden has condemned the anti-Israel protests that have praised Hamas, deteriorated into violence or featured the targeting of Jewish students, while also trying to draw a line between hate speech and free speech.
Trump also said Thursday he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror-infested” areas like Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the anti-Israel protesters on campuses and beyond.
While Hamas is blacklisted as a terror organization in the US, free speech laws in the country largely defend the ability to express support for hate groups.
“When I am president, we will deport the foreign jihad sympathizers and Hamas supporters from within our midst,” he said as the crowd responded with an extended chant of “Trump.”
Under Trump and Biden, similar numbers of Palestinians were admitted to the US as refugees. From the fiscal years of 2017 to 2020, the US accepted 114 Palestinian refugees, according to US State Department data, compared with 124 Palestinian refugees from fiscal year 2021 to July 31 of this year.
Agencies contributed to this report.
