Your support helps us to tell the story
Donald Trump has claimed Israel will be “gone” if Kamala Harris wins the election, during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.
“If they win, Israel is gone. Just remember that. If they win, Israel is gone,” Trump told the crowd via live video feed on Thursday. “You can forget about Israel, that’s what’s going to happen. So they have to get out on Nov. 5 and they have to vote for Trump. If they don’t, I think it’s going to be a very terrible situation.”
He also claimed Jews who vote for Democrats need to have their “head examined” and wondered: “How do they exist?” He also claimed if Harris becomes president, “you’re not going to have an Israel...Israel will no longer exist.”
During the speech, the former president appeared to initially misstate the last name of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israel-American hostage killed by Hamas, as “Goldman.”
Goldberg-Polin was one of six hostages found dead in Gaza last week, which prompted widespread protests across Israel as residents demand faster progress on returning the remaining Hamas captives, and ending the war nearly a year after the militant group’s initial October 7 invasion.
The Republican presidential candidate’s remarks to the group in Vegas were met with a mix of praise and criticism. A longtime member of the RJC told The Dispatch that the room largely viewed Trump as the superior candidate to Harris.
“People may have lingering concerns or they wish maybe their preferred primary candidate would have prevailed,” the member said. “But everybody here I think is—not everybody, but the vast majority of people are—practical, living in the real world, and they understand that it’s a binary choice and most people think that’s a very easy choice.”
Caroline Glick, an Israel-based policy expert and political commentator, said on X after the speech Trump was “on fire” at the RJC event.
Others argued that Trump’s remarks, which echo claims he has made on the campaign trail, were both inaccurate and antisemitic.
The Harris campaign says it will strongly support Israel if the Vice President wins the White House in November, while also pushing for a ceasefire with Hamas and the return of hostages. The Democrat’s campaign accused Trump of being an insincere ally to Jewish people.
“Donald Trump openly demeans Jewish Americans, proudly dined with a neo-Nazi, and reportedly thinks Adolf Hitler ‘did some good things,’” Harris-Walz 2024 spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said in a statement to Politico.
“He has said the only people he wants counting his money are ‘short guys wearing yarmulkes,’ and praised neo-Nazis who chanted ‘Jews will not replace us’ as ‘very fine people.’”
Others echoed that criticism. “For centuries antisemites have depicted Jews as existential threats lurking inside the countries they inhabit,” Rob Eshman wrote in the Forward, a Jewish news publication. “Trump makes the same charges, not against all Jews, just against the ones who refuse to vote for him — which is most Jews.”
He added: “There’s a word for hatred directed at Jews you disagree with. The word is: antisemitism.”
Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, had a similar view, tellingThe Washington Post, “This is antisemitism, plain and simple, and if any other elected official or candidate said these things even once — let alone on a nearly daily basis — they would be condemned as antisemitic.”
In office, Trump’s actions on Israel won praise from the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but did not earn him the support of most U.S. Jews, nearly three-quarters of whom identify as Democrats.
Many young Jewish people have also been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian activism across the U.S. since October 7, and are unlikely to side with Trump on Israel issues.
During the Trump administration, the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital; formally recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights; and pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.
The Trump administration also helped usher in the Abraham Accords, through which the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain became the first Gulf states to formally normalize relations with Israel.
