‘Let them prosecute the war as they see fit’ says Trump's new VP pick Vance about Israel and the Middle East
JD Vance is outspokenly pro-Israel but also known as an isolationist
Former U.S. President Donald J. Trump announced James David (JD) Vance as his vice-presidential running mate on Monday.
While the relatively young and inexperienced first-term senator from Ohio has been outspokenly pro-Israel, he is also known for his isolationist stance and as a leading voice criticizing foreign aid. This has raised questions about what his nomination will mean for Israel and broader U.S. policy in the Middle East.
Vance on Israel
In his first interview directly after the nomination was announced, FOX News' Sean Hannity questioned Vance regarding his views on Israel.
“[Israel] didn’t have a better friend than Donald Trump. Joe Biden has made it harder and harder for Israel to win that war,” Vance said.
🚨Vance on the war in Gaza, echoes Trump:
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) July 16, 2024
“Number one, you want to get this war over and as quickly as possible because the longer it goes on, the harder their situation becomes. But second, after the war you want to reinvigorate that peace process between Israel, Saudi Arabia.” pic.twitter.com/N2XDJAE0lf
“You want two things to happen: Number one, you want to get this war over and as quickly as possible because the longer it goes on, the harder their situation becomes. But second, after the war you want to reinvigorate that peace process between Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Jordanians, and so forth. What Biden has done is the worst of all possible worlds. He’s prolonged Israel’s war to take out Hamas, but in the process, has made it harder for us to move to a sustainable peace.”
Vance’s first visit to Israel came during his 2022 campaign for the Ohio senate. During the visit, he told The Jerusalem Post that in his view, the U.S.-Israel relationship was based on deep cultural ties and common values.
“I will be as strong an advocate for the US-Israel relationship as anyone,” Vance said at the time, praising Israel’s high birth rate as proof of its traditional family values.
The senator, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, also cited his Christian faith as an important factor in his relationship with Israel, saying that he didn’t realize its importance emotionally until his visit to the country.
“[Jerusalem] is the most important cultural heritage site in the world. If Israel didn’t control this land, I would never understand this experience,” he said after visiting the City of David and the historic pathway to the Temple.
“A big part of the reason why Americans care about Israel is because we are still the largest Christian-majority country in the world, which means that a majority of citizens of this country think that their Savior… was born and died and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory on the Mediterranean,” he said on a different occasion.
On a policy level, Vance has laid out his reasons for supporting Israel several times, taking pains to differentiate between Israel and support for Ukraine, which he opposes.
“I’m supportive of Israel and their war against Hamas. I certainly admire the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russia, but I do not think that it is in America’s interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine,” Vance said in a speech at the isolationist Quincy Institute in May.
Vance has repeatedly emphasized that support for Israel must be based on American interests.
“Israel is one of the most dynamic, certainly on a per capita basis, one of the most dynamic and technologically advanced countries in the world,” Vance said, praising Israeli developments that were helping the U.S. achieve “missile defense parity,” which he called “a very important national security objective.”
“We have to sort of ask ourselves, what do we want out of our Israeli allies? And more importantly, what do we want out of all of our allies writ large? Do we want clients who depend on us, who can’t do anything without us? Or do we want real allies who can actually advance their interests on their own with America playing a leadership role?”
Vance has also expressed support for Israel’s Netanyahu-led government amid the judicial reform crisis, criticizing reports of U.S. support for the protest movement against the reforms.
“The people who say they love democracy are actively pressuring Israel to give up their democracy to judicial supremacy. Almost all of the ‘democracy’ worship in Washington is from elites who hate when the people dare to disagree with them,” Vance tweeted in 2023.
On another occasion, he wrote on 𝕏: “Netanyahu is concerned about the risk of nuclear war because he’s a responsible statesman.”
Congratulations to @JDVance1 on his selection as President Trump’s running mate. A powerful and inspiring ticket if ever there was one. On to victory in November! pic.twitter.com/M99uAP039E
— David M Friedman (@DavidM_Friedman) July 15, 2024
Vance on the Gaza War
In his comments regarding the ongoing war in Gaza between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization, Vance showcased his support for Israel in general, as well as his isolationist instincts.
Speaking to CNN in May, he stated: “I think that our attitude vis-a-vis the Israelis should be, look, we’re not good at micromanaging Middle Eastern wars, the Israelis are our allies, let them prosecute this war the way they see fit.”
“You’re never going to defeat the ideology of Hamas, but you can root out those commanders, those final military-trained battalions, and I think you should empower the Israelis to do it,” Vance added, while also cautioning, “I have a big fear for Israel… that they’re going to need to try to f___ something else up, because the psychology impact of October 7 was so, so powerful.”
On Oct. 7, Vance blamed the Biden administration’s decision to unfreeze $6 billion in funds for Iran for the Hamas invasion. “I wish our friends well, but most of all I wish they weren’t fighting against weapons bought with our money,” he wrote on 𝕏.
Vance on the Middle East
Regarding Vance’s broader view of the region, he has touted the Abraham Accords normalization deal as a blueprint for U.S. policy in the region, pivoting away from the Biden/Obama plan toward empowering U.S. allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia at the expense of Iran, while lessening direct U.S. involvement.
“Remember when [Trump] left office? You had real growing peace movements all over the world. The Abraham accords that showed a real promise of unity of the Israelis with some of the Sunni Arab states,” he told FOX News on Monday.
During his speech at the Quincy Institute, he advocated “combining the Abraham Accords approach with the defeat of Hamas. That gets us to a place where Israel and the Sunni nations can play a regional counterweight to Iran.”
“We don’t want a broader regional war. We don’t want to get involved in a broader regional war. The best way to do that is to ensure that Israel, with the Sunni nations, can actually police their own region of the world. That allows us to spend less time and resources on the Middle East and focus more on East Asia, in the same way that we want our own allies to do the job in Europe [with Ukraine].”
Vance’s position on Ukraine could, however, become an area of concern for Israel, as the burgeoning alliance between Russia and Iran may necessitate stronger action against both sides.
Speaking to the Jewish Insider, Vance said when it comes to the Iranian threat, the most important thing for the U.S. was to make sure Israel had the weapons to “keep the [Iranian] nuclear program in check.”
Vance was among 15 Republican senators to vote against the foreign aid package in April that combined foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, accusing Biden of using “dead Israeli children” to sell more Ukraine aid to the American public.
Vance on American Jews
Like Trump, Vance has been criticized by left-leaning Jewish institutions and individuals for alleged antisemitic comments.
Among other things, the senator was criticized for not signing on to the bipartisan Countering Antisemitism Act in April, which proposed the appointment of a new presidential advisor on antisemitism and a bill mandating the Department of Education to use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
Vance has also defended controversial U.S. politician Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been accused of antisemitic and wildly conspiratorial statements. According to Jewish Insider, Vance told Jewish community leaders at the time that his way of confronting bigotry was “doing it in the way most likely to affect change, which isn’t always a public reprimand.”
On the other hand, Vance told the Jerusalem Post in 2022, “America remains one of the great places to live if you are Jewish. The question now is how to reverse the negative trend of the last years.”
The answer, Vance stated, was “to aggressively stamp out and prosecute crimes,” adding that “antisemitism is a particular kind of crime. You have to enforce the law. If you beat up a Jew and don’t face consequences, the attacks will continue and get worse.”
Following the wave of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel campus protests, Vance proposed a bill to stop federal financial assistance to colleges that don’t remove disruptive encampments from their campuses.
In a speech to a mostly Orthodox Jewish crowd earlier this year, Vance said, “In America, we love Jews.”
Hanan Lischinsky has a Master’s degree in Middle East & Israel studies from Heidelberg University in Germany, where he spent part of his childhood and youth. He finished High School in Jerusalem and served in the IDF’s Intelligence Corps. Hanan and his wife live near Jerusalem, and he joined ALL ISRAEL NEWS in August 2023.
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