LAS VEGAS —
Former President Trump painted a dire picture of the effect of a Kamala Harris presidency on the future of Israel and the security of Jewish people in the United States as he courted Jewish Republicans on Thursday and urged them to convince their non-GOP friends to support him in the November election.
“Kamala Harris is the candidate of the forces that want to destroy Western civilization and Israel,” he told about 1,000 members of the Republican Jewish Coalition gathered at the Venetian Las Vegas for their annual leadership summit. “If Kamala Harris wins, terrorist armies will wage an unceasing war to drive Jews out of the Holy Land. … Israel will no longer exist.”
The former president spoke via satellite just days after six Jewish hostages kidnapped during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel were found executed in an underground tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a 23-year-old Berkeley native. A spotlighted table set with linens, china and glasses was left empty — to symbolize the hostages who remain in captivity as well as those who had been killed — during the nightly dinners.
This comes after months of Democratic divide about the Biden administration’s response to the attack and Israel’s subsequent response, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Trump, noting that he received roughly a quarter of the Jewish vote in the 2020 presidential election, said he expected to receive about 50% in November because of actions he took while president, such as moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and negotiating the Abraham Accords, under which Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates recognized Israel’s right to exist. The agreement was later expanded to include Sudan and Morocco.
“I only ask you who are the 50% of Jewish people who are voting for these people who hate Israel and don’t like the Jewish people,” Trump said.
The former president has faced fierce criticism about his own statements and actions, such as saying “there were very fine people on both sides” after white nationalists marched through Charlottesville, Va., chanting, “Jews will not replace us!” and dining with a Holocaust denier at his residence at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
In a statement, Morgan Finkelstein, national security spokesperson for the Harris campaign, said, “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.”
Harris, she added, “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 said.
The Republican Jewish Coalition, or RJC, which was founded nearly 40 years ago under a different name, aims to draw Jewish voters into the GOP fold. Though it is unlikely that Jewish American voters would switch party allegiances in large numbers, if Republicans are able to make small inroads in battleground states, it could affect the outcome in November.
“We were created for this moment,” said former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the group’s chairman, at the gathering. The event was rife with harsh criticism of the Democratic nominee, including speakers who called her “stupid,” a “Marxist Islamist” and an “antisemite” — although Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, is Jewish.
Major RJC gatherings typically unfold at the Venetian, a mega-resort created by billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of the group’s and Republicans’ major donors, and a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before Adelson died in 2021.
Thursday morning, Adelson’s widow, Miriam, introduced Trump.
“He sees what I see — the world is against us and we need a good friend,” Miriam Adelson said. “He is our best friend. He will save us. And I’m eagerly awaiting for him to enter the White House and to save the Jewish people.”
The donors and other RJC members who attended the four-day event heard from a slew of prominent GOP leaders including Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Sens. Rick Scott of Florida and Joni Ernst of Iowa. They also took part in a poker tournament.
Republicans have long been trying to make inroads among Jewish voters, who have overwhelmingly voted Democratic in American presidential elections for nearly a century. Roughly 7 out of 10 have supported Democrats in presidential elections since 1968, according to the nonprofit American–Israeli Cooperative Enterprise. Even though Joe Biden easily won the Jewish vote in 2020, some polls suggested Trump did better than he had four years prior.
The GOP argues that the events of Oct. 7 and the United States’ response will make more Jewish voters rethink their political allegiance, potentially enough to make a difference in battleground states such as Pennsylvania. Four years ago, Biden won the Keystone State, which has roughly 300,000 Jewish voters, by about 80,000 votes.
“This has been a big wake-up call to lot of my friends who are very pro-Israel and who are Democrats who spend their time as volunteers lobbying members of Congress to support Israel,” said Jeff Miller, an RJC board member and longtime advisor to former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield).
They were already disturbed by comments made about Israel by the Democrats’ progressive wing, notably the “Squad,” and more recently by Harris’ comments earlier this year warning Israel not to launch a major military operation in Rafah, where the hostages’ bodies were recovered, he said.
Rob Eshman, the former editor of the Jewish Journal who is now a senior columnist at the influential Jewish American online newspaper the Forward, said he was skeptical that many Jewish voters on either side would change their viewpoints based on the events of the last 11 months, or last week.
“I don’t think it’s going to change anybody’s views. … There is a vast difference in policy between Trump and Kamala when it comes to how to handle these issues,” he said. “It does raise the emotions around it. It’s just so awful.”
Three speakers at the gathering said that they had voted for Democrats all their lives and still believed in many of the party’s values, such as abortion rights, but that the recent events as well as the pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses have made them decide to cast their vote for Trump in the fall.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, a registered Democrat who says he supports the Green New Deal, a $15 minimum wage and a woman’s right to choose, said he cannot support Harris because of the administration’s response to antisemitic acts related to some protests and other actions that he believes show the party’s disdain for Jews.
“I did not support Trump in 2016. I did not support Trump in 2020. Hell, I did not support Trump six months ago,” said Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity School graduate who is suing the university for its response to antisemitism on campus in the aftermath of Oct. 7. He spoke at the Republican National Convention, and said he offered to speak at the Democratic National Convention but was rebuffed. “The Democrat party has taken the Jewish vote and Jews for granted for too long.”
Democrats have been concerned about the Democratic divide about the administration’s response to the crisis in the Middle East, notably before last month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, when Harris formally accepted the party’s presidential nomination.
While there were protests outside the convention and at least one disruption in the hall, the conflict was not the spoiler of the event that some feared it would be. And Harris’ tone and message when she addressed delegates after accepting the nomination attempted to bridge the divide by recognizing the need to stand by Israel while also acknowledging the plight of innocent Palestinians.
“I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival,” she said on Aug. 22.
“At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost. Desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking,” she said. “President Biden and I are working to end this war, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
Several families of hostages have spoken out in support of the Biden-Harris administration’s attempt to broker a cease-fire in exchange for the release of hostages, including Goldberg-Polin’s parents, who delivered emotional remarks at the DNC.
But the families of the hostages, like Jewish voters and any other group, are not monolithic about their views on a two-state solution or an effort to eradicate Hamas to try to ensure an attack like that which occurred on Oct. 7 never happens again.
Republicans at their party’s nominating convention also tried to highlight their support for Israel, featuring University of North Carolina fraternity brothers who protected an American flag from pro-Palestinian protesters who sought to take it down; and an Orthodox Jewish college student who spoke about his decision to turn away from the Democratic Party.
The most gut-wrenching moments of the RJC gathering occurred as Orna and Ronen Neutra, the parents of a young American hostage, spoke Thursday evening. The audience, largely voicing partisan vigor and bile for much of the meeting, grew solemn as the Neutras described their ordeal since hearing from their son, Omer, a member of the Israeli military, the day before the Oct. 7 attack. And not once since.
After describing how, after they shower or have a meal, they wonder about the last time their son had access to water and food, the couple praised Biden and Trump.
“We realize … that this is a political gathering, but this is not a political issue. It is a dire humanitarian issue, and we need all hands on deck,” said Ronen Neutra. “Omer and the other 100 hostages are running out of time. The news of this weekend makes that abundantly clear.”
