Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump greets an employee during a visit to The Great Commoner cafe, Dearborn, Michigan, Nov. 1, 2024. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(JTA) — WASHINGTON — A candidate listens attentively as a supporter laments that “Palestine is being erased” and that “No amount of money or power should be prioritized over human life.”
The same candidate praises a mayor who says Israel is committing genocide, calling him “great.”
The candidate in question was not Kamala Harris, whose interactions with pro-Palestinian activists on the campaign have been heavily scrutinized and criticized by Israel advocates. It was her rival, Donald Trump.
Trump’s appearance in Dearborn, Michigan this weekend — where he got the endorsement of local Arab Americans — yielded conventional campaign-stop headlines.
“Trump meets with Arab Americans in Dearborn, but top community leaders skip event,” CBS said. “Trump meets Arab Americans in Dearborn, vows to bring peace in Middle East,” said the Detroit Free Press.
There was barely a mention of the introduction Trump got from Albert Abbas, owner of the Great Commoner cafe.
“I can’t stand in silence when Palestine is being erased — please help us stop the bloodshed,” Abbas said, as Trump cocked his head. “No amount of money or power should be prioritized over human life”
At the event, Trump also greeted Amer Ghalib, the mayor of Hamtramck, one of a handful of municipalities to formally boycott Israel, who has accused Israel of “genocide” in its current war against Hamas. The Trump campaign sought Ghalib’s endorsement after hearing that his socially conservative views had alienated the town’s Democrats.
One conservative outlet, the National Review, lambasted Trump last month for accepting Ghalib’s endorsement — and for calling the mayor ”great” — but the outrage and mainstream media coverage that typically follows many encounters between Vice President Kamala Harris and Israel’s harsh critics did not ensue.
Last month, Harris was interrupted during a Wisconsin campaign stop by a student who accused Israel of genocide. Her team ejected the man from the event, but after he left, she said, “What he’s talking about, it’s real.” Under heavy criticism, a spokesperson clarified that Harris was not agreeing with the protester’s comments.
The episode fueled an ongoing narrative of Harris as siding with Israel critics when she speaks to them. The trend came into its fullest expression in August when the Uncommitted movement of pro-Palestinian advocates said Harris was considering an arms embargo on Israel, a measure the group supports. The Harris campaign clarified that she did not support an embargo and had only said she would continue to speak with the movement.
Conservative media seizes eagerly on Harris’s associations with some of the most vocal Democratic critics of Israel in Congress, including Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar and Pennsylvania Rep. Summer Lee. Meanwhile, CNN unearthed 2018 video of Gov. Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, praising a local Imam known for amplifying antisemitic comments.
Some observers, watching Trump court the Arab-American vote, perceived a double standard: “Trump is visiting Dearborn, Michigan. Had Harris done this, I’m sure the pro-Trump Israel advocates would condemn it loudly,” tweeted Corey Walker, a correspondent for the Algemeiner, a right-leaning Jewish publication.
When asked about a double standard, Rich Goldberg, who served as a national security official under Trump, said he had a better gut feeling about the former president.
“A lot of pundits like to talk about the ‘kishkes test’ — typically it’s a test of which candidate feels Israel and the Jewish community in their kishkes,” he said in a text.
“I think we have a very different kind of kishkes test this cycle — a question of which candidate turns your own kishkes upside down when you think about their views and policies on Israel and pro-Hamas activism in our country. Israel is at war,” he said. “Jews are under attack. This isn’t hypothetical anymore, it’s real and it matters. And I think that’s driving unprecedented numbers of Jewish voters to Trump.”
Naomi Rose, writing an op-ed for The Commentator, an independent student publication at Yeshiva University, cited a number of statements by, and associations of, Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, her running mate, that she deemed hostile to Israel. “To vote for a Harris-Walz administration would be to vote for an administration that is inherently anti-Israel, and consequently, antisemitic,” she concluded.
Trump’s supporters say there’s a reason his pro-Israel supporters are not unnerved by associations or incidents that would have them rushing to social media to condemn Democrats: his record from 2017 to 2021, when as president he reversed years of orthodoxies on the Middle East, favoring Israel’s claim to Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and parts of the West Bank, cutting funds to the Palestinians, pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement and brokering normalization deals between Israel and countries in the region.
The Trump campaign referred a request for a statement to the Republican National Committee, which in an email noted that polling of Israelis shows they strongly favor Trump.
Elizabeth Pipko, an RNC spokeswoman, said Trump was the best guarantor not just of the safety of Israelis but of American Jews.
“For many American Jews like myself, the events of October 7th, 2023, and the year that followed, will forever remind us of the threats we face around the world, and in our own country,” she said in an email. “To this day, many I know are afraid to leave their homes appearing visibly Jewish, in major cities across the United States. It is not difficult for most to recognize that the leadership of Kamala Harris failed when it came to our protection and that the Democrat party of our parents and grandparents no longer exists.”
Who Trump meets with is less important than what he did, said David Friedman, who served as Trump’s ambassador to Israel. (Friedman, notably, criticized Trump after the former president dined with a Holocaust denier in 2022, and said he subsequently spoke with Trump about that dinner.)
“Trump and Harris both have a record of four years in office,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “That’s what counts. Trump’s record was the most pro-Israel in history; Harris, one of the worst.”
Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Committee, said that Trump earning Arab-American support is a measure of how much he can get accomplished with diverse and even antagonistic actors.
“We obviously we don’t agree with everything this guy says,” he said, referring to Ghalib, the Hamtramck mayor, “but he endorsed Trump knowing full-well how pro-Israel he is.”
While it’s true that the Biden administration has in recent months had tense relations with Israel over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war, supporters of the president and Harris note that it also shepherded through $14 billion in emergency defense assistance for Israel and deployed U.S. forces to the Middle East to inhibit threats on Israel by Iran or its proxies. Harris has committed to full defense assistance for Israel and has said all options are on the table to keep Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
Trump’s ties to critics of Israel have come more into view as he cultivates the Arab and Muslim American vote in Michigan, a swing state. In a recent letter to community leaders. he has vowed to restore peace to Lebanon.
A political action committee backed by billionaire Elon Musk targets Arab Americans with ads emphasizing Harris’ pro-Israel bonafides — as well as the Jewishness of her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Matt Brooks, the CEO of the Republican Jewish Committee, said that Trump earning Arab American support is a measure of how much he can get accomplished with diverse and even antagonistic actors.
“We obviously we don’t agree with everything this guy says,” he said, referring to Ghalib, the Hamtramck mayor, “but he endorsed Trump knowing full-well how pro-Israel he is.”
Trump has not quite won over the Arab-American vote: Some Arab-Americans cannot shake memories of a president who wholeheartedly backed Israel when he was in office, and who instituted — and vows to reinstitute — a ban on entry targeting citizens from a number of Muslim-majority countries.
He has also, at times, made his Jewish supporters uneasy: Trump notably gets plenty of attention and criticism when he flirts with antisemites and antisemitic rhetoric, including from Jewish Republicans.
And his relationship with Israel could get tense. Israeli officials, the Times of Israel has reported, have expressed concern that Trump’s insistence on a quick end to the war — by some accounts, he wants it done by inauguration — could upend U.S.-Israel ties.
His running mate, Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance, has advocated isolationist policies and for a time blocked a joint Ukraine-Israel-Taiwan defense assistance package. He recently said that Israel and the United States will not always agree on Iran.
Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said there was no guarantee that Trump would be as supportive of Israel in a second term, noting his predilection toward isolationism.
“His foreign policy has been egregiously inconsistent, and — according to his own former national security adviser, John Bolton — his support of Israel is not guaranteed in a second term,” she said.
Ellie Cohanim, a top staffer in the State Department’s antisemitism monitor office under Trump, said Trump’s past — not his campaign-trail associations — predicts his future.
“For anyone curious what President Trump’s policy will be towards Israel as our 47th president, you just have to review his track record as our 45th president,” she said in an email. “Donald Trump showed such historic support for Israel as our 45th president, that he will go down in history as the most pro-Israel, pro-Jewish President in American history.”
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
