RSS
Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy spar over aid to Israel at first GOP debate
(JTA) – In a night of standoffs between Republican presidential candidates on the debate stage, one of the fiercest occurred over Israel.
During the first debate of the 2024 presidential campaign season in Milwaukee on Wednesday, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley attacked entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy over his proposal to cut United States aid to Israel. It was the longest conversation about Jewish issues all evening, and brought increased visibility to a topic that, after decades of being a political third rail, has come under discussion on both sides of the aisle.
The debate, which was hosted by Fox News, included eight candidates but not the frontrunner, former President Donald Trump. Trump opted for a taped interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that was aired at the same time on the social media platform X, which is popularly known as Twitter.
Beyond Israel, the candidates also invoked Ukraine’s Jewish President Volodomyr Zelensky in a surprising way, and progressive megadonor George Soros, who is Jewish, in an unsurprising one. Here were the big Jewish moments of the debate.
Vivek, Nikki and Israel
Haley lashed out at Ramaswamy over his recent suggestion that he would cut American aid to Israel if elected, leading to tense sparring between the two candidates in which Ramswamy defended his position while asserting that he considered Israel a “friend.”
“He wants to go and stop funding Israel,” Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, said about Ramaswamy, referring to the rising political neophyte’s promise to cut aid to the country after the current funding deal, which gives Israel $3.8 million annually, expires in 2028.
In response, Ramaswamy sought to clarify his stance on Israel without backing down from his position.
“Our relationship with Israel will never be stronger than by the end of my first term,” he said. “But it’s not a client relationship, it is a friendship. And you know what friends do? Friends help each other stand on their own two feet.”
Ramaswamy went on to reiterate his previous pledge to “lead Abraham Accords 2.0,” referring to the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab states, by getting other Middle Eastern countries to establish relations with Israel. He added that he would “make sure Iran never is nuclear-armed.”
He also readily rattled off a list of things he said “I love” about Israel, including “their border policies,” “their tough on crime policies,” their “national identity” and “an Iron Dome to protect their homeland” — the latter of which, a missile defense system, is partially funded by U.S. military aid.
But Haley shot back. “He wants to stop funding Israel. You don’t do that to your friends,” she retorted. “It’s not that Israel needs America. America needs Israel.”
The exchange may have helped both candidates stand out. It was a familiar position for the former ambassador to take. Haley, who is trailing Ramaswamy in the polls, built a close relationship with Israel (and with the American pro-Israel establishment), and was known for her vocal defense of the country at the United Nations.
Ramaswamy, by comparison, is an untested quantity in the Israel debate, and his stance on aid differs from the mainstream Republican position, which supports military funding for Israel. Yet during the debate he bragged about his multiple visits to the country, and he has strong ties with a Jewish society at Yale University. The society’s co-founder, Rabbi Shmully Hecht, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that Ramaswamy “is the most pro-Israel candidate running for president of the United States.”
Other Republicans on the stage declined to weigh in on Haley and Ramaswamy’s dispute, though several of them have built up their pro-Israel bonafides and one, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, sported a dual U.S.-Israel flag pin on his lapel.
‘Pope Zelensky’
Aid to Israel wasn’t the only foreign-policy issue where Ramaswamy’s position differed from those of his opponents.
During a segment on continued U.S. support for Ukraine in its war against Russia, he accused his opponents of being too loyal to “their pope, Zelensky,” referring to the country’s Jewish president. Ramaswamy has previously claimed, without evidence, that Zelensky has endangered Ukraine’s Jewish population.
His stance was swiftly rebutted by former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who both pledged increased U.S. aid to Ukraine as a bulwark against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
A swipe at ‘George Soros funding’
When the spotlight turned to Ron DeSantis, he blamed rising crime on local district attorneys with “George Soros funding”, invoking the Jewish progressive megadonor who is a frequent target of the right (and of antisemitic conspiracy theories).
The Florida governor, who has attacked Soros previously, also bragged about ousting attorneys in his home state who, he claimed, received funding from Soros.
“You have George Soros funding these radical left-wing district attorneys, they get into office and they say, ‘We’re not going to prosecute crimes,’” DeSantis said, adding to massive cheers, “When we had two out of three district attorneys in Florida elected with Soros funding who said they wouldn’t do their job, I removed them from their posts. They are gone.”
One of the attorneys DeSantis suspended last year was Tampa-area Jewish prosecutor Andrew Warren, who had vowed not to prosecute violations of the state’s abortion ban. The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund, which supports police officers, has classified Warren as a “Soros-backed social justice prosecutor.”
Blaming rising crime on Soros-backed prosecutors more generally, DeSantis pledged to flush them out of the federal government if he were to be elected. “As president we are going to go after all of these people, because they are hurting the quality of life and they are victimizing innocent people in every corner of this country,” he said.
DeSantis is currently polling a distant second in the primary, just in front of Ramaswamy.
‘Judeo-Christian values’
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott made the night’s sole reference to “Judeo-Christian values,” a popular idiom on the right.
“Our nation was founded upon the Judeo-Christian values that has made this the greatest nation on God’s green Earth,” Scott declared, quoting the New Testament in response to a question from the moderator about how “faith is on decline in this country.”
—
The post Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy spar over aid to Israel at first GOP debate appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
RSS
Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says
An Israeli flag flies in Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, following the ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah, as seen from Metula, northern Israel, Dec. 3, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Stoyan Nenov
Israel said on Tuesday it had agreed to hold talks to demarcate its border with Lebanon, adding it would release five Lebanese detainees held by the Israeli military in what it called a “gesture to the Lebanese president.”
A statement by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel had agreed with Lebanon, the US, and France to establish working groups to discuss the demarcation line between the two countries.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from southern Lebanon under a ceasefire deal agreed in November, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area with airstrikes in southern Lebanon citing what it described as Hezbollah activity.
The ceasefire deal ended more than a year of conflict between Israel‘s military and the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah that was playing out in parallel with the Gaza war.
The fighting peaked in a major Israeli air and ground campaign in southern Lebanon that left Hezbollah badly weakened, with most of its military command killed in Israeli strikes.
The post Israel Agrees to Talks on Lebanon Border, to Free Five Lebanese, PM Office Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium
Members of the Security Council cast a vote during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the 3rd anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at UN headquarters in New York, US, Feb. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/David Dee Delgado
The United Nations Security Council will meet behind closed doors on Wednesday over Iran’s expansion of its stock of uranium close to weapons grade, diplomats said on Monday.
The meeting was requested by six of the council’s 15 members – France, Greece, Panama, South Korea, Britain, and the US.
They also want the council to discuss Iran’s obligation to provide the UN nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency – with “the information necessary to clarify outstanding issues related to undeclared nuclear material detected at multiple locations in Iran,” diplomats said.
Iran’s mission to the UN in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the planned meeting.
Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon. However, it is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the IAEA has warned.
Western states say there is no need to enrich uranium to such a high level under any civilian program and that no other country has done so without producing nuclear bombs. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful.
Iran reached a deal in 2015 with Britain, Germany, France, the US, Russia, and China – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Washington quit the agreement in 2018 during Donald Trump’s first term as US president, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments.
Britain, France, and Germany have told the UN Security Council that they are ready – if needed – to trigger a so-called snap back of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 this year when the 2015 UN resolution on the deal expires. US President Donald Trump has directed his UN envoy to work with allies to snap back international sanctions and restrictions on Iran.
The post UN Security Council to Meet Over Iran’s Growing Stockpile of Near-Bomb-Grade Uranium first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says
A man inspects a damaged car in Latakia, after hundreds were reportedly killed in some of the deadliest violence in 13 years of civil war, pitting loyalists of deposed President Bashar al-Assad against the country’s new Islamist rulers, Syria, March 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Haidar Mustafa
Entire families including women and children were killed in Syria’s coastal region as part of a series of sectarian killings by the army against an insurgency by Bashar al-Assad loyalists, the UN human rights office said on Tuesday.
Pressure has been growing on Syria’s Islamist-led government to investigate after reports by a war monitor of the killing of hundreds of civilians in villages where the majority of the population were members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect.
“In a number of extremely disturbing instances, entire families – including women, children, and individuals hors de combat – were killed, with predominantly Alawite cities and villages targeted in particular,” UN human rights office spokesperson Thameen Al-Kheetan said, using a French term for those incapable of fighting.
So far, the UN human rights office has documented the killing of 111 civilians and expects the real toll to be significantly higher, Al-Kheetan told a Geneva press briefing. Of those, 90 were men; 18 were women; and three were children, he added.
“Many of the cases documented were of summary executions. They appear to have been carried out on a sectarian basis,” Al-Kheetan told reporters. In some cases, men were shot dead in front of their families, he said, citing testimonies from survivors.
UN human rights chief Volker Turk welcomed an announcement by Syria’s Islamist-led government to create an accountability committee and called for those investigations to be prompt, thorough, independent, and impartial, the spokesperson added.
The post Entire Families Killed in Syria’s Military Crackdown, UN Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.