Israel-Hamas War and the U.S. Presidential election

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Republican presidential candidates seized on the Hamas attacks on Israel Saturday to criticize President Biden, whom they sought to cast as enabling the offensive by Palestinian militants.

Several of the primary contenders argued that there was a connection between the surprise assault and a recent hostage release deal between the Biden administration and Iran, a longtime backer of Hamas.

Former President Donald J. Trump, who has frequently presented himself as a unflinching ally of Israel and who moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, blamed Mr. Biden for the conflict.

“Sadly, American taxpayer dollars helped fund these attacks, which many reports are saying came from the Biden Administration,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “We brought so much peace to the Middle East through the Abraham Accords, only to see Biden whittle it away at a far more rapid pace than anyone thought possible.”

In exchange for the release of five Americans held in Tehran, the Biden administration agreed in August to free up $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue funds for humanitarian purposes. The administration has emphasized that the money could be used only for “food, medicine, medical equipment that would not have a dual military use.”

Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, was not alone in assailing Mr. Biden, as the entire Republican field weighed in on the attacks on Saturday.

In a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida faulted the Biden administration for its foreign policy decisions in the Middle East.

“Iran has helped fund this war against Israel, and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran has helped to fill their coffers,” he said. “Israel is now paying the price for those policies.”

A spokesman for the Biden campaign directed questions about Saturday’s attacks to the National Security Council, which disputed G.O.P. candidates’ claims that there was a connection between the release of the funds and the attacks.

“Not a single cent from these funds has been spent, and when it is spent, it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people,” Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement. “These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today, and this is not the time to spread disinformation.”

In a statement issued through the White House, Mr. Biden pledged solidarity with Israel and said that he had spoken with Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister.

Republicans have repeatedly sought to burnish their pro-Israel bona fides during recent election cycles. In April, Mr. DeSantis visited Jerusalem to show his support for Israel, while former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas wore lapel pins featuring the U.S. and Israeli flags during the first primary debate in August.

Yet while the G.O.P. candidates rallied around the longtime U.S. ally on Saturday, there is a growing divide in the party between foreign policy hawks and those who favor a more isolationist approach.

In addition to criticizing Mr. Biden on Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence had harsh words for fellow Republicans who prefer a more hands-off approach to conflicts abroad.

“This is what happens when @POTUS projects weakness on the world stage, kowtows to the mullahs in Iran with a $6 Billion ransom, and leaders in the Republican Party signal American retreat as Leader of the Free World,” Mr. Pence wrote on X. “Weakness arouses evil.”

Other Republican candidates, including Nikki Haley, who was an ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, denounced the attacks as acts of terrorism.

“Make no mistake: Hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist organization backed by Iran and determined to kill as many innocent lives as possible,” Ms. Haley said in a statement.

Mr. Scott also joined some of his rivals in taking on Mr. Biden: “The truth is though, Joe Biden funded these attacks on Israel,” he wrote in a post on X. “America’s weakness is blood in the water for bad actors, but this is worse than that. We didn’t just invite this aggression, we paid for it.”

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey echoed the criticism of his Republican rivals in a social media post, calling the release of $6 billion by the Biden administration to Iran “idiotic.” Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Mr. Hutchinson similarly sought to connect the attack with the release of humanitarian funds for Iran.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, called the attacks “barbaric and medieval” in a post on X.

Former president Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and called Hezbollah terrorist attackers “very smart” as Israel recovers from the deadliest attack it has suffered in 50 years.

He has been hurt very badly because of what’s happened here,” Trump said of Netanyahu in an excerpt of an interview with Fox News presenter Brian Kilmeade that aired Wednesday night. “He was not prepared. He was not prepared and Israel was not prepared.”

Later on Wednesday, Trump, the clear polling leader in the Republican presidential race, complimented the intelligence of Hezbollah, which has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States. The Iran-aligned group, based in Lebanon, exchanged fire with Israeli forces on the country’s northern border Wednesday.

“You know, Hezbollah is very smart,” Trump said. “They’re all very smart.”

That remark drew condemnation from one of his Republican rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“It is 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,’ ” DeSantis said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He added, speaking again of Israel’s enemies, “They’re vicious and they’re smart and boy, are they vicious.”
Elsewhere in Wednesday’s speech, delivered to an auditorium of supporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., Trump elaborated that he had “a bad experience with Israel as president,” telling a story about the U.S. operation to assassinate Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani. In Trump’s account, Israeli intelligence helped the U.S. locate Soleimani and plan the drone strike that killed him, but on the eve of the operation withdrew its participation.

The accuracy of Trump’s account could not immediately be confirmed.

As Trump told the story, he suggested he was recounting it publicly for the first time, and that it possibly included classified information.

Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley weighed in on a two-state solution Tuesday, arguing that “it is not a true conversation” because Palestinians and Iran “don’t want it,” ahead of the expected end of a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas.

Asked by a voter at a town hall here if a two-state solution is possible between Israel and the Palestinians, the 2024 GOP presidential candidate said that when she was working at the U.N., “it was never Israel opposing a two-state solution.”

“It was always the Palestinians and Iran opposing a two-state solution. They never wanted that because they wanted to eliminate Israel altogether,” she said, later adding, “Whatever Israel says they feel like will keep them safe, I will support.”

In 2017, Haley supported a two-state solution while she was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The voter who asked Haley the question also said that Hamas is “teaching their 5-year-olds how to use guns and hate Jews.”

Haley agreed with the voter. She went on to describe a visit to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees, saying that there was graffiti everywhere that demonstrated aggression toward Jews.

She also said they had textbooks that said things like “You have five Israeli soldiers, and you kill four Israeli soldiers, how many Israeli soldiers are left?” NBC News has not independently verified Haley’s description of her trip.

The former U.N. ambassador said she “had to fight the State Department bureaucracy to” stop giving away taxpayer dollars to that Palestinian organization, a move the Biden administration has since reversed.

American Jews think Vice President Kamala Harris would handle the Israel-Hamas war better than former President Donald Trump by a wide margin — 54% to 36% — according to a new poll, but most also see Trump as more supportive of Israelis.

The national poll, conducted for the Forward by CHIP50, an academic consortium of experts in public opinion surveys, found that 65% of U.S. Jews think Trump only or mostly supports Israelis over Palestinians, while 42% believe Harris offers “equal support to both.”

The survey suggested that concerns about antisemitism and the war are weighing heavily in Jews’ choices for president this fall, though other issues — in particular, the preservation of democracy and the economy — concern them even more.

And the poll suggested that Harris may be struggling to lock in what has been a reliably Democratic voting bloc for decades: 62% of Jewish adults who plan to vote in November are backing her. That would be significantly below what President Joe Biden got in 2020 (77% or 68%, depending on which exit poll you believe) and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Jewish support in 2016 (about 70% according to two exit polls).

Harris’ support in this poll is also lagging other recent surveys of American Jews. The CHIP50 researchers and other experts said that is likely because this poll, of 907 Jews 18 and over, included people who did not vote in 2020, and are therefore somewhat less likely to this year. Remove them, and her support rises to 64%. If you also take out those who said they were unsure who they’d pick, Harris had 67% of the remaining Jews surveyed.

“They’re pulling her down pretty substantially,” Jamie Druckman, a political science professor at the University of Rochester and a CHIP50 principal investigator, said of those who didn’t vote last time.

The poll was conducted online from Aug. 30 to Oct. 8, with support from the Knight Election Hub. It has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.3% for the Jewish sample, which is part of a larger survey of more than 27,000 Americans adults.

Jews comprise 2% of the American population, but are reliable voters and account for as much as 3% of the electorate in swing states like Pennsylvania, where about 300,000 voted in 2020 (Biden beat Trump by 81,660).

In this year’s exceedingly tight presidential race, the campaigns have targeted Jewish voters in earnest.

Three weeks before the election, the Forward-CHIP50 poll sheds light on what’s on Jewish voters’ minds.

Israel and the war
The seeming disconnect between American Jews’ preference for Harris' approach to the war in Gaza and belief that Trump is more supportive of Israelis makes sense when viewed in the context of other survey results.

The largest group of Jews, 37%, want the U.S. to support Israelis and Palestinians equally. They outnumber the 31% who think it should mostly support Israelis and the 24% who think it should only support Israelis. (The smallest group, 6%, think U.S. policy should mostly or only support Palestinians, including 2% who think the U.S. should only support Palestinians.)

Asked about Harris’ views, 34% said she mostly or only supports Israelis (compared to 65% regarding Trump); 25% said she only or mostly supports Palestinians (14% said the same about Trump); and 42% said she offers “equal support to both” (Trump: 21%).

"There is likely a sizable number of Jewish voters who feel more aligned with Harris because they perceive her to be relatively even-handed with respect to the conflict,” said David Lazer, a political science and computer science professor at Northeastern University, and one of CHIP50’s principal investigators. ”Some voters also support her despite the fact that they are more closely aligned with Trump on Israel because they are closer to her on other issues."

Ann Lewis, co-chair of the Democratic Majority for Israel, said Harris “hasn’t had as much time to establish herself as a great friend of Israel” because she has been in the national spotlight for less time than Trump. Lewis, who served as White House communications director for President Bill Clinton, also posited that American Jews appreciate Harris’ “calm, serious” approach and distrust Trump’s bluster.

But Ari Fleischer, who served as press secretary to former President George W. Bush, had a simpler analysis: partisanship. “American Jews are overwhelmingly Democratic,” he noted, “so of course they’re more inclined to express support for Harris, even though they think Trump is stronger on Israel.”

Antisemitism and the war rank high as priorities
The poll also shows that antisemitism and the Israel-Hamas war are among the top concerns for Jewish Americans as they make their choices for president. Asked to rank issues from 1 (“not important at all”) to 10 ("extremely important"), more than 70% of American Jews give the war an 8, 9 or 10. That compares to less than 45% of non-Jews.

On antisemitism, 73% of American Jews surveyed rated it an 8, 9 or 10. (Less than 40% of non-Jews did so, making antisemitism — perhaps unsurprisingly — the issue with the largest margin between Jews and non-Jews.)