US presidential election 2024: Who has the better track record for Israel? - opinion

The US presidential election is less than a month away. The campaigns are in full swing with accusations hurled back and forth. The voters are hopefully thoughtfully evaluating what each candidate brings to the table and not just voting along knee-jerk party lines or wishful thinking. For some of the electorate, a looming question is: what should one who is concerned about Israel take into consideration as they decide for whom to cast their vote?

Obviously, in the heat of the campaign, promises are made and candidates say what they think the electorate wants to hear. Thankfully, in this campaign, the voter actually has more to go on than just election rhetoric. Trump served four years as president and Harris served as a senator and vice president, so both have records. These records include votes, statements, appointments, etc. It behooves the interested voter to scrutinize the records in an effort to assess who would likely be the more positive president from an Israeli perspective.

There are certainly many other issues that are important to people, and these two candidates have records on those issues as well. Furthermore, regarding these two candidates in particular, they are attacked for non-policy weak points, whether it is Trump’s legal issues, January 6, and immigrants eating pets, or Harris flipping on every position, messing up the border issue, being complicit in covering up President Biden’s cognitive decline, and being the lowest-rated VP in recent history partially because of her 92% staff turnover. 

Personality also plays a role – to many voters, neither of these candidates has charisma or is likeable. However, as a person for whom Israel is of central importance, one needs to put all else aside and let the record speak. So what is the record?

IN 2019, the Senate considered a bill called the Strengthening America’s Security in the Middle East Act. Among its goals were to authorize the appropriation of funds to Israel and to allow state or local governments to adopt measures to divest assets from entities that boycott the Jewish state. Obviously, isolationist Republican Rand Paul and anti-Israel Democrat Bernie Sanders voted against it. But it passed with strong bipartisan support by a vote of 77-23. Senator Kamala Harris, rated at the time as the second most liberal senator, voted against it.

Regarding one of her last acts as a senator before becoming VP, in January 2020 Senator Harris proudly tweeted “Yesterday my colleagues and I introduced the No War Against Iran Act….” She seems not to recognize the Iranian threat. Nor does she recognize other bad guys, as she voted in 2019 in favor of the Bernie Sanders-sponsored S. J. Res. (Senate Joint Resolution) 7 that directed the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities in the Republic of Yemen. Similarly, in 2018 she tweeted a criticism of a US strike in Syria that was in retaliation for Bashar Assad’s use of chemical weapons.

Not a good look

Ambassador David Friedman was likely the US ambassador with the warmest relationship with Israel and its people: Sen. Harris voted against his appointment.

According to a 2020 report by the Washington Beacon, “as California’s attorney-general and then as US senator, Harris forged a relationship with CAIR,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an organization that is unabashedly anti-Israel. In 2021-2022, VP Harris received a 100% rating from CAIR, and in 2018 and 2020, as senator, another 100% rating from the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), which some see as Iran’s de facto lobby in the West.

In her current role as VP, Harris’s recent appointments include Brenda Abdelall, an American attorney of Egyptian descent, a woman who previously said: “Zionists control much of American politics.” This follows on the heels of the appointment of Nasrina Bargzie, who has called Jewish college students’ complaints about antisemitism “legal bullying.” 

And maybe most concerning is Harris’s “Jewish liaison,” Israeli-born Ilan Goldberg, who in previous positions supported the Iran deal, supported Obama’s parting anti-Israel UN resolution, opposed moving the embassy to Jerusalem, opposed the Taylor Force Act, worked in the Biden-Harris administration to impose the “s” of BDS: essentially always being on the anti-Israel side of issues.

The vice president of the United States is also president of the Senate, who votes only in the event of a tie. This has occurred 301 times since 1789; Harris, in less than four years, has cast over 10% of them, thus being an active participant in that congressional body. Yet when the prime minister of America’s closest ally addressed Congress, Harris boycotted Netanyahu’s wartime speech.

THE BIDEN/HARRIS administration has released billions of dollars to Iran, including billions even after October 7. And Harris has promised to bring back an Iran nuclear deal. In the meantime, this administration has withheld shipments of arms in the middle of a war that actually slowed down Israeli offenses, capriciously sanctioned Israeli Jewish citizens (acting as if Israel has no justice system of its own), and threatened to sanction an Israel army unit and ministers of the democratically elected Israeli government. 

Quite ironic in light of the fact that in response to Israel’s decision to ban the entry of outspoken antisemites, the squad members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, then-senator Harris criticized the decision, tweeting: “I don’t believe any nation should deny entry to elected Members of Congress, period.”

Harris consistently mentions Gaza suffering whenever claiming to support Israel. As early as December, she said that “our ally needed to do more” to protect Gazan civilians, saying in a Dubai speech: “The United States is unequivocal; international humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.” The libelous implications are that Israel is violating international law and that the blame for Gazan suffering and the responsibility for alleviating it lies with Israel and not Hamas. 

Her position is not new; famously, in Sept 2021 while visiting George Mason University, a student said Israel was committing “ethnic genocide” and VP Harris, rather than correct the confused student, lauded her for voicing “her truth”!

A lot in a little time

ON THE other hand, while the Trump record might seem shorter, it contains some quite significant, even astounding, accomplishments. After successive administrations stalled in carrying out the congressional mandate, Trump finally moved the US embassy to Jerusalem. He recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. His administration succeeded in negotiating the Abraham Accords, a peace treaty between Israel and four Arab nations that has resulted in a warm peace.

 And he reversed a long-standing injustice and enabled my son to receive the first officially-sanctioned US passport in which an American citizen born in Jerusalem was able to declare his place of birth as “Israel”. He surrounded himself with morally conscious advisers such as secretary of state Mike Pompeo and UN ambassador Nikki Haley.

TRUMP ALSO strove to harm the bad guys: He exited JCPOA – the Iran nuclear deal – and placed sanctions on the Islamic Republic, halted funding for the PA’s “pay to slay” policy, halted support of UNRWA (an organization that has now been conclusively shown for all to see as a harborer of terrorists), and left the hypocritical UN Human Rights Council. The Biden/Harris administration reversed most of those funding decisions, thereby restoring funds to terror supporters.

Under the Trump administration, the Houthis were placed on the US terrorist list. In Feb 2021, in one of their first acts, the Biden/Harris administration reversed that. Despite the fact that in January 2022 the UN Security Council reiterated that the Houthis were engaging in terrorism, the Biden/Harris administration stuck by their immoral decision. 

Finally, after a surge in Houthi terror acts, in January 2024 the administration had no choice but to essentially admit that the Trump administration was correct and returned the Houthis to the official list of terrorists.

While obviously, past performance is no guarantee of future results, they do give an indication of likely policies. It has become clear that it can no longer be taken for granted that the United States will unquestionably support Israel – and this election is crucial for the future of US-Israel relations. 

It is of great significance for those of us privileged to live in the Holy Land. If one candidate surrounds themselves with advisers who know right from wrong and the other with anti-Israel advisers, if one removes support from terrorist organizations while the other increases support for terrorist organizations, and if one provides for Israeli needs while the other withholds them, it seems that voters who care about Israel should look at this record.

The writer is a professor of neuroscience at Bar-Ilan University.