Why most American Jews will and should vote for Kamala Harris

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Caroline Glick, the former Jerusalem Post columnist who authored a pro-Trump, anti-Harris hit piece published by J-Wire a few days ago, views the world through such a hardline right-wing prism that a point-by-point refutation of her article, while probably fun to write, would not be particularly instructive.

Menachem Rosensaft                Photo: Shahar Azran/WJC.

Suffice it to say that when her most critical observations about former U.S. President Donald Trump are that his “rhetoric is inarguably indelicate, even crass” and that said “rhetoric is doubtless hard for liberal Jews to absorb,” it is fair to conclude that her analysis of the issues might, just might, be a bit skewed in Trump’s direction.

Perhaps the principal difference – one of many – between Glick and myself, and most American Jews for that matter, is that we do not want to see the return to power of an autocratic wannabe despot who is prepared to contemplate the “termination” of the U.S. Constitution to achieve his goals and who incited a violent insurrection on January 6, 2021 to try to overthrow an election he clearly lost.

Reality check: On November 6, 2020, three days after that year’s presidential balloting, Glick wrote of a “widespread fear that the Democrats are working to falsify the US presidential election results.” The only place where such a panic existed was in the minds of Trump and his supporters who could not reconcile themselves to the fact that the American electorate had rejected him and who to this day propound the ludicrously false scenario that that election had been stolen from him and them.

But then again, Glick also waxed euphoric about the ham-fisted attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his unctuous Justice Minister Yariv Levin to scuttle Israel’s independent judiciary, an ill-conceived initiative that brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets in protest but that she extolled as “astounding for its modesty.” Raging, as she always does, against the “leftist establishment,” she erroneously predicted that the Netanyahu government would prevail in its efforts to scuttle any judicial checks on its powers because, in her words, “the fight over judicial reform in Israel isn’t about judicial reform at all. It is about the radical Left, and its refusal to accept the validity of democratic outcomes when its side loses.”

I think you get the picture. Glick sees the American scene the same apocalyptic way. She constructs an ultimate conspiracy theory according to which a terrible, monolithic, decidedly anti-Israel and always antisemitic left is engaged in a battle of biblical dimensions against what she views as the good guys, that is, Trump and his reactionary, anti-democratic MAGA movement.

Oh well.

Of course, that’s not quite how it is in real life. Come to speak of it, let’s look at real life a bit.

Two separate issues are front and centre for American Jews in the run-up to Election Day on November 5. First and foremost, should they vote for Vice President Kamala Harris, and can they be comfortable with her views and positions on issues of concern to the American Jewish community, including but not exclusively on Israel and on surging antisemitism? And second, should they support former President Donald Trump for another term as U.S. president?

The unambiguous answers to these questions are, in my considered opinion, absolutely yes to the first, and not just no, but hell, no to the second.

I support Kamala Harris enthusiastically in large part because there are, in fact, two Americas.

There is the America that is rooted in democracy, in civil and human rights, in aspiring toward true equality, in fundamental decency. That is the America of Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Ronald Reagan, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and of George H.W. and George W. Bush, And yes, it is the America of Kamala Harris.

And then there is the America of white supremacism, of misogyny, of antisemitic and racist dog whistles designed to denigrate Jews, African Americans, and members of other minorities. This is the mindset of the likes of Senator J.D. Vance (R – OH), now the Republican vice presidential candidate, who argued only two years ago that in the absence of a national anti-abortion ban, the Jewish billionaire George Soros could send daily 747s to Ohio “to load up disproportionately black women to get them to go have abortions in California.”

In the context of the anti-immigrant, autocratically-inclined, and far too often racist and misogynistic ideology and rhetoric propagated by the 2024 incarnation of what once was the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, Americans, including American Jews, are forced to remember who we must strive to be. I support Harris enthusiastically not only because she represents the Jeffersonian concept of and vision for America but also, in equal measure, because we cannot afford to give Donald Trump the opportunity to return us to that other America in which he will once again seek to undermine if not scuttle altogether our country’s values and constitutional principles.

Harris stands for the rule of law. Full stop. Trump, by promising to pardon the perpetrators of the Jan.6 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., stands for the diametric opposite. That in and of itself is reason to vote for her in November.

Harris is also an unshakeable friend and ally of the American Jewish community. “When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity,” she declared in November 2021, “when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is anti-Semitism. And that is unacceptable.”

Over the course of her time in the U.S. Senate, she co-sponsored a number of resolutions condemning antisemitism and other bigotries. As a woman of colour, she understands discrimination, including antisemitic discrimination, viscerally.

In addition, we must not lose sight of the fact that Harris and her husband, Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff, have been the principal protagonists of the Biden Administration’s broad-based efforts to combat surging antisemitism in this country. Glick’s contentions in her article that they are somehow not 100 percent committed to this endeavour is, to use a legal term, utter claptrap (another expression associated with male cattle but perhaps not suitable on this platform comes to mind).

Harris has been 100 percent on the same page as President Biden in supporting Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist pogrom on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. This is nothing new. Over the years, she has made no secret of her strong commitment to Israel’s security and has been outspoken in her condemnation of Hamas and its murderous terrorism. In this connection, her recent statement in reaction to what she called “despicable acts by unpatriotic protestors and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric” at pro-Hamas demonstrations in Washington bears quoting:

“I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews,” she declared unambiguously. “Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation. . . . I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.”

At the Munich Security Conference in February of this year, she said that “we are working to end the conflict that Hamas triggered on October 7th as soon as possible and ensure it ends in a way where Israel is secure, hostages are released, the humanitarian crisis is resolved, Hamas does not control Gaza, and Palestinians can enjoy their right to security, dignity, freedom, and self-determination.”

Somehow, Glick seems to have missed both of these statements, or perhaps they simply doesn’t fit her pro-Trump, anti-Harris narrative.

She has also been a stalwart advocate on behalf of the hostages and their families and has both highlighted and validated the rape and sexual abuse suffered by Israeli women at the hands of Hamas on October 7, and subsequently, in their Gaza captivity. “On October 7, Hamas committed horrific acts of sexual violence,” she declared definitively at a White House event on sexual violence on June 17. Describing in some detail the images of atrocities that occurred on Oct. 7, she said: “I saw images of bloody Israeli women abducted. Then it came to light that Hamas committed rape and gang rape at the Nova music festival. And women’s bodies were found naked from the waist down, hands tied behind their back and shot in the head.” Referring to the accounts of their ordeal by freed hostages, she added: These testimonies, I fear, will only increase as more hostages are released. We cannot look away. And we will not be silent.”

At the same time, as is reflected in her above-quoted statement at the Munich Security Conference, Harris has not shied away from expressing empathy and compassion for Palestinian civilians killed, wounded and displaced in the Gaza war. This puts her in the position of becoming a legitimate facilitator for the eventual resumption of a long-term Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

The obvious question then arises: What about the strident antisemitism from the extreme left as manifested in the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist demonstrations and university encampments over the course of the past ten months? And what about the failure of far too many supposedly liberal or progressive groups to denounce that antisemitism? According to Glick, this mindset is pervasive in the Democratic Party. Here again, she is wrong.

Antisemitism emanating from the far-left is a serious concern, to be sure, but the mainstream of the Democratic Party as represented by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among many, are outspoken in both their support for Israel and their abhorrence of any form of antisemitism. Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D – MI), Ilhan Omar (D – MN), and the soon-to-be former Representatives Jamaal Bowman (D – NY) and Cori Bush (D – MO) are in their party’s minority in this regard.

Which brings us to why American Jews roughly 75 percent of American Jews did not want anything to do with Trump the last two go rounds and are almost certain to remain true to form this year. At a recent fundraiser hosted by Jewish real estate developers, he quoted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as telling him that American Jews voted for Democratic candidates out of “habit.” That explanation is as insulting as it is inaccurate.

Insulting because the likes of Trump and Netanyahu cavalierly dismiss and denigrate any principled positions that do not align with theirs. And surprise, surprise, most American Jews do not support or identify with his far-right views or his association with white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

Trump’s comments over the years have ominous implications. Let’s not forget that he considered at least some of the neo-Nazis who screamed “Jews will not replace us” in Charlottesville, Virginian, in 2017 to be “very fine people.” Or that he had a highly publicized dinner at Mar-o-Lago with two quite notorious antisemites, the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West ((“I’m going Death con 3 on Jewish people”) and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes (“All I want is revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory … I’m just like Hitler”). Or that he does not hold Jews generally in particularly high esteem.

At the above-mentioned fundraiser, he reportedly said – for the umpteenth time, as it happens – that “Any Jewish person that votes for Kamala, or a Democrat, should immediately have their head examined.” In a subsequent radio interview, he reiterated that “If you love Israel or if you’re Jewish . . . if you vote for a Democrat, you’re a fool, an absolute fool.”

He likes to make stereotypical “rich Jews” jokes. “I don’t want your money,” he told members of the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Republican Party’s Jewish arm, in 2015,  “therefore you’re probably not going to support me, because stupidly you want to give money,” Four years later, he said in a speech at the Israeli American Council that, “A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me; you have no choice.” After speaking with a group of Jewish lawmakers, he supposedly complained that Jews “are only in it for themselves.”

Why else are most American Jews highly unlikely to climb aboard the Trump express train in 2024? One reason is that they fundamentally believe in the rule of law, and rightly see his incitement of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and his subsequent promise to pardon the perpetrators of that insurrection as conclusive evidence of his willingness to subvert that rule of law.

Another principled reason why the majority of American Jews are highly likely to vote for Harris over Trump: According to the highly respected Pew Research Center, over 80 per cent of them believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And Trump proudly takes credit for the U.S. Supreme Court decision that took away abortion and related rights from American women. Oops.

Yet another reason: Almost as many American Jews support continued aid to Ukraine (77 percent) as support aid to Israel (80 percent). Does anyone think these 77 percent are unaware of Trump’s and many Republicans’ willingness to throw Ukraine overboard and align themselves with Vladimir Putin? Or that they don’t think Trump could do the same to Israel if Putin were to insist on it?

The fact – contrary to Glick’s dystopian assessment of the U.S. political scene – is that the overwhelming majority of American Jews have good reason to support Harris and to reject Trump and Trumpism. That reflects extremely well on them and their values.

As a Jew and as a Zionist, I endorse Kamala Harris without hesitation because I am confident of her support of and commitment to Israel and the American Jewish community. But from a broader foreign policy perspective, I also do so as an American because those of us who back her candidacy for president want the United States to remain the most powerful single force on behalf of international democracy rather than be dragged into an era of jingoistic isolationism on the global scene.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. A former senior official of an international Jewish organization, he is the author of the forthcoming Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).