Israel will disappear if United States Vice President Kamala manages to make her way into the White House come November this year, former President Donald Trump has argued.
Speaking in Las Vegas, Nevada, before Jewish donors on Thursday, the Republican nominee said that as president, Harris would “totally abandon” Israel and that “terrorist armies” would go to war to “drive Jews out of the Holy Land”.
You are going to be abandoned if she becomes president, and I think you have to explain that to your people. Because they don’t know it, they have no idea what they are getting into,” Trump said in a remote address to the Republican Jewish Coalition. “You are not going to have an Israel … if she becomes president. Israel will no longer exist.
Trump vowed to ban refugees from “terror-infested areas” including Gaza, imprison “pro-Hamas thugs” who destroy government property, and yank funding and accreditation for universities that spew “anti-Semitic propaganda” if he wins a second term in office.
US university campuses were earlier this year rocked by protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, which triggered claims of anti-Semitism, alongside counter-claims that accusations of bigotry were being used to silence legitimate criticism of Israeli policy.
Trump also said that if he was president, Hamas would not have attacked Israel on October 7, and seized the opportunity to lash out at Jewish people who voted for Democratic candidates, adding confidently that he had done more for Israel than any other US president.
Who is the 50 percent of Jewish people that are voting for these people that hate Israel and don’t like the Jewish people?” he said. “Why are they, why are they voting? How do they exist?
Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein reacted to Trump’s comments and said the vice president “stands steadfastly against anti-Semitism” and has been a “lifelong supporter of the State of Israel as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people”.
Finkelstein added that Trump has a record of demeaning Jewish people and associating himself with far-right figures, including hosting a private dinner with white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
He 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’,” Finkelstein said.
Harris has largely mimicked President Joe Biden’s staunch support of Israel, bucking pressure from the progressive wing of her party to hold shipments of weapons being used by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The Democratic nominee has, however, emphasized the sufferings of the Palestinians in her public statements more fervently than ever, averring that she won’t be “silent” about the suffering in Gaza and that “far too many” innocent civilians have been killed in the war.
