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| Vice President J.D. Vance as a recent press conference |
“You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have.”“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time. And he happens to be the head of state of the world’s superpower.”
“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.”
“The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump. And anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”
“There is a real backlash to a consensus view in American foreign policy.”
These are some of the actual statements made by Vice
President J.D. Vance about - or related to Israel.
During the war there was effusive praise of Israel as
America’s partner in its war with Iran by key American leaders. Most notably by
the president, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff General Dan Caine, and Admiral Brad Cooper, the operational commander
overseeing the actual war effort through CENTCOM.
I don’t recall the vice president saying a word about Israel
in that vein at the time. The only thing I keep hearing from him are comments
that smack of an underlying antipathy toward Israel. Tempered only by his
loyalty to the president.
It’s hard to know exactly what’s in his heart. But I’m not
feeling very good about it.
J.D. Vance is literally a heartbeat away from the
presidency. He is also very likely to be the Republican nominee for president
in 2028. Once in the Oval Office, his true sympathies toward Israel will surely
emerge. Based on his comments thus far - and the lack of the comments he should
have made - I am not very confident about America’s support for Israel going
forward under a Vance administration.
If Vance is the Republican candidate, I am hard-pressed to
believe that the Democratic nominee will be any more sympathetic to Israel.
Most of them have turned opposition to AIPAC - the advocacy group whose sole
purpose is strengthening the relationship between the United States and Israel
- into a virtue. They treat support for AIPAC as unethical; as though
advocating a strong U.S.-Israel relationship is anti-American.
And it isn’t only radical progressives. It is mainstream
Democrats who have a real shot at the nomination. Such as J.B. Pritzker and
Gavin Newsom. There aren’t too many Democrats like John Fetterman, whose moral
compass is still intact. Most Democrats have jumped onto the now-popular
anti-AIPAC bandwagon as a necessary credential for having a realistic shot at
being a nominee for any position in government.
So unless some sort of miracle occurs between now and the
fall of 2028 - and these politicians see the light and have their moral
compasses reset - I’m not feeling very confident about Israel’s future
relationship with the United States.
I realize, of course, that many angry Netanyahu critics
place the entire blame for this turn of events on him. The belief is that by
cozying up to Republicans and dishonoring their ‘saintly’ Barack Obama,
Netanyahu somehow caused the loss of American support. This criticism continues
for a variety of reasons, none of which I believe have any bearing on the
current decline in American support for Israel.
Netanyahu’s critics often employ the same arguments made by
anti-Israel activists. They blame his aggressive prosecution of the Gaza war
for the deaths of ‘too many’ innocent Palestinians. They criticize his
aggressive attacks in Lebanon. Some even claim that Netanyahu’s real motive in
confronting Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon is solely to retain power
and improve his chances in the upcoming election.
I don’t buy any of it…
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