Since the November 5 elections, it seems that J Street – the self-styled pro-Israel group with a liberal bend – has undertaken to demonstrate that for all of the Trump breakthroughs for Israel during his first term, the percentage of Jewish voters across the country who voted for him remained essentially the same at 26 percent. And the Harris Jewish vote also was consistent with tallies of Jewish voters for Democrats in previous elections, at 71 percent.
Their point is apparently that most American Jews disagree with what Trump has wrought: think recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the relocation of the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords and the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And as recounted by the American Jewish Committee, President Trump also tried to pressure the Palestinians to engage in negotiations with Israel by closing the PLO mission in Washington and cutting aid to UNWRA and the push to end the practice of paying stipends to terrorists including those convicted of murder and sentenced to long prison terms and to the families of so-called “martyrs” who died while committing acts of terror against Israelis. Also of supreme importance, during his first term, President Trump took significant actions against Iran, which Israel considers an existential threat to Israel.
While we get the fact that J Street may disagree with this or that Trump policy, the fact is that Israelis preferred Trump over Harris 66% to 17% in surveys taken in the run-up to November 5.
This is certainly an odd posture for a “pro-Israel” organization to take. This is all the more so, because the J Street statistics are based on notoriously unreliable exit polls with definitive analyses of voting patterns still to emerge.
Nor should this all be of only academic interest. The New York Times reported that last week saw three bills to block weapons transfers to Israel for use in the Gaza war. According to The New York Times, although all three were handily defeated, “Seventeen Senate Democrats and two independents backed at least one of the measures…. The vote showed that support for restricting Israel’s military operations has grown beyond just the most progressive lawmakers, with notably more senators joining them than in previous efforts.”
J Street may want to toot its own horn here in the U.S. and impact policy in Israel. But we should all be careful about what we wish for.
