Does Vice President Vance Have a Jewish Problem?

There have long been, if vague, concerns that Vice President JD Vance is uncomfortable with the alleged “few questions asked” approach to U.S. support for Israel. While not accused of necessarily harboring antisemitic feelings, he does seem to suggest from time to time the toxic notion that Israel has undue influence on American Middle East policy, often at the expense of American interests. Last week the question took center stage.

As reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, in the course of a debate with students at an event sponsored by conservative Turning Point USA at the University of Mississippi, a student asked why the U.S. should support Israel when it has committed “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza.

That student went on to say that he is a Christian and asserted of Judaism, “Not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the persecution of ours.”

Another student asked Vance, “Do you think it’s a conflict of interest for Miriam Adelson, an Israeli donor, to have given millions of dollars to his campaign, and then Trump proceeds to have pro-Israeli policies?”

As to the question about Christian American collaboration with the Jewish state of Israel, Vance responded, “[President Trump] pursues the interests of Americans first. That doesn’t mean…that you’re not going to work with other countries from time to time.... Israel, sometimes they have similar interests to the United States, and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes, they don’t have similar interests to the United States.”

And Vance similarly responded to the questioner hinting about possible leverage Ms. Adelson could have bought with her financial support. He made reference to the recent ceasefire and hostage return deal brokered by Trump saying the president succeeded by “actually being willing to apply leverage to the state of Israel.”

That “leverage,” Vance said, proved that Trump was acting in America’s interests. “So when people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the president of the United States, they’re not manipulating or controlling this president of the United States.” [Italics ours]

But what was alarming was that Vance did not challenge the questioners’ premises and seize the opportunity to debunk the false and outrageous antisemitic tropes that Israel was committing genocide in the war with Hamas or that past presidents of the U.S. were “controlled” by Israel and pursued policies that were in Israel’s and not the U.S.’s interests.

In fact, Vance’s performance even drew the ire of Jewish conservatives who, increasingly of late, have been warning of rising antisemitism on the right. As the JTA noted, prominent Jewish conservative activist Sloan Rachmuth wrote on X that Vance, “could have set an example for the young people who are steering in that direction. JD Vance chose not to.”

Similarly, commentator Daniel Mael wrote on his Substack, that at a recent Turning Point USA event, two students each “said something that should have been met with instant moral outrage. Instead, the Vice President of the United States treated each of them as a legitimate question.

Mael went on to say, as reported by the JTA, that Vance’s failures to respond to claims that Israel was committing ethnic cleansing and to the remark about Judaism targeting Christians was also troubling: “This is not based on ignorance. It is the sewage of the alt-right media machine.... If conservatives do not confront this now, the movement will rot from within. The world’s oldest hatred has returned, speaking the language of patriotism and pretending to defend faith.”

And this is all to say nothing of Vance’s extraordinary criticism of the recent vote by the Knesset to preliminarily advance a bill on the proposed annexation of the West Bank, calling it “a very stupid political stunt.”

The vote took place while Vance was in Israel and he said, “I personally take some insult to it. The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy. And if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that, but we certainly weren’t happy about it.”

But the thing is, the vote was to preliminarily move the bill forward and it got only the barest majority. And Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office also denounced the bill calling it “a deliberate political provocation by the opposition to sow discord during Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Israel.

Yet, not only did Vance criticize the internal action of the opposition party members of the legislature of a sovereign state – which, without the support of the prime minister, did not have the proverbial “prayer” of passing – he also did so with a decidedly disrespectful gutter remark.

For many, Vance has become all too cozy with mindless, out and out antisemites and conspiracy theorists with rants typically seeming to have Israel in mind. We fear that this most recent episode is more evidence that the Vice President and leading candidate to succeed President Trump may well be more of a problem than we all thought.