Slight majority of Iowa Republican voters say Trump best to handle Israel war

A new poll by the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom Iowa has found that 52% of likely GOP caucusgoers think that of all the Republican candidates for US President in 2024, former president Donald Trump is best equipped to handle the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. 

Trump beat the runner-up, Nikki Haley, by 30 points. Haley, who is performing a very distant second behind Trump in the race for the Republican nomination, quickly developed a reputation while serving as UN ambassador for her stalwart support of the Jewish state, and recently had a heated exchange with primary opponent Vivek Ramaswamy over his proposal to reduce security assistance to Israel. 

Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida, came in third, with 9% of voters selecting him as best prepared to handle the war, followed by Vivek Ramaswamy, with 3%, Tim Scott and Chris Christie each with 2%, and a generic 'Someone else' at 5%. 4% of respondents said they were not sure.

The poll surveyed 404 likely Republican caucusgoers. It was conducted October 22-26 by Selzer & Co., with a margin of error of 4.9%. 

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have sparred since the war started over the question of whether the US should accept Gazan refugees fleeing the violence unleashed by the war. "They are all antisemitic," the Florida governor said. Haley took issue with this characterization, saying Sunday that "so many of these people...want to be free from this terrorist rule," and that "we should care about the Palestinian citizens, especially the innocent ones, because they didn't ask for this." Haley did not, however, say that the US should take anyone in. 

Trump criticized Netanyahu after Oct 7 attack

Donald Trump made headlines in recent weeks for responding to Hamas's attack on October 7 with criticism of Netanyahu, including a seemingly unrelated jab that Netanyahu "let us down" by declining to participate in the US's airstrike in early 2020 that killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. "That was a very terrible thing," Trump said. 

Netanyahu "was not prepared," Trump said on Fox News after the Hamas attack, adding that Hezbollah, to Israel's north, was "vicious, and they're smart." The ex-President also insisted that the attack would not have happened if he was still in office. "If the election wasn't rigged," he said, referring to a discredited belief that the 2020 election suffered widespread foul play, "there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel." 

This earned Trump a rare rebuke from his competitors. "Absurd that anyone, much less someone running for president, would choose now to attack our friend and ally Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as 'very smart,'" wrote DeSantis on X, formerly Twitter. Mike Pence, Trump's Vice President who has since bowed out of the 2024 race, said it was "no time for the former president or any other American leader to be sending any message other than America stands with Israel." 

The rancor marks a departure from Trump's reputation as a pro-Israel president, his having won particular plaudits from the pro-Israel community while in office for moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, and for promoting the Abraham Accords between Israel and various Arab governments.