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Nikki Haley has emerged as a favorite for Jewish Republican donors looking for a credible alternative to Trump
WASHINGTON (JTA) — With just days to go until Republican voters begin casting their presidential primary ballots, Nikki Haley is hoping that she can pull off an unlikely win over Donald Trump.
One thing the former South Carolina governor has in her corner: a growing array of major Jewish donors.
Haley, who also served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is not yet leading in any poll. But she is creeping up steadily in national surveys, has reached a virtual tie for a distant second place and is hoping for an upset win in New Hampshire later this month, bolstered Wednesday when former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who had been focusing on the state, dropped out. Eventually, she hopes to unite the entire anti-Trump vote behind her.
That anti-Trump constituency, according to one person with knowledge of how Republican donors are making decisions, includes many of the party’s most prominent Jewish names, who soured on Trump after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol and are tired of “the chaos and crazy” that accompanies the former president.
“The [Jewish Republican] establishment has been trying to figure out which horse is the best one to try and ride because they don’t want Trump as the nominee,” said the insider, who didn’t want to be named supporting a candidate. With Haley’s recent rise in the polls, he added, “they’re pulling their checkbooks out.”
According to Fred Zeidman, a Houston businessmen who is a leading fundraiser for Haley, Republican Jewish backers have gravitated to Haley because of her relatively moderate stance on abortion and her pro-Israel credentials.
“This woman absolutely, absolutely has been so staunchly pro-Israel,” Zeidman told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“She really understands the politics, she understands what it means for the United States, what it means for world peace,” he said. “The other thing is, one of the biggest issues in the Jewish community is women’s rights. And she has been the first one to address [abortion] appropriately among the Republicans.”
Haley raised $24 million in the most recent quarter, more than double her haul in the previous round. And according to a recent Forbes article, the coalition of billionaires backing her is a who’s who of Jewish pro-Israel money.
Organizers of an upcoming Jan. 30 New York fundraiser for Haley, the magazine reported, include Cliff Asness, the hedge fund manager who took the lead in pulling a donation from his alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, for its administration’s equivocation in condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel; Stanley Druckenmiller, a former hedge funder-turned-full-time philanthropist; Henry Kravis, an investor who has donated extensively to Israeli cultural endeavors; and Leonard Stern, the real estate magnate who has given heavily to Yeshiva University.
The next day, Haley will fly to Miami for another fundraiser, this one organized by Barry Sternlicht, a real estate billionaire who launched a $50 million pro-Israel initiative after Oct. 7, and Dan Och, a major giver to Birthright and the UJA-Federation of New York.
Haaretz reported last summer that Haley had garnered more support from the leadership of the establishment Republican Jewish Coalition than any other candidate. In recent months, as Trump’s lead in the Republican polls has solidified, her support from Jewish donors has soared even more.
She has the support of Jan Koum, the WhatsApp founder who has given $5 million to a super PAC affiliated with the candidate. Koum consults closely with the Jewish pro-Israel donor and GOP kingmaker, Miriam Adelson, who has pledged to remain neutral during this year’s primary. Asness has given $1 million to the same super PAC, the SFA Fund, and Stern has given $175,000.
Also said to be closing in on a decision to back Haley, said the person with knowledge of donors’ thinking, is Paul Singer, the influential Jewish hedge fund manager.
Other top Jewish donors to Haley’s super PAC include Ronald Simon, a California home builder whose family foundation runs a scholarship program for children from low-income families, who gave at least $1 million; Terry Kassel, a Palm Beach philanthropist who promotes Israel’s high-tech sector, who gave at least $250,000; and Elliott Badzin, a Minnesota car supply magnate, who gave at least $100,000.
The donors, often voluble when it comes to Israel and other hot-button political issues, are quiet when it comes to why they’re backing Haley: Asness declined to comment for this story and Kravis, Singer and Druckenmiller did not return requests for comment. A phone number for Koum’s family foundation reaches a law firm where a staffer said they have no way to reach Koum.
Haley gained legions of Republican Jewish fans when she made defending Israel the centerpiece of her 18-month stint at the U.N. She persuaded Trump to cut U.S. funds for UNRWA, the U.N. agency that aids Palestinian refugees and their descendants; she vetoed the appointment of Palestinians to high-ranking jobs; and she snubbed diplomats from nations who voted against Israel.
She debuted one of her trademark phrases, about how she wears heels as weapons, at an American Israel Public Affairs Conference in 2017.
“I wear high heels,” she said. “It’s not for a fashion statement, it’s because if I see something wrong I will kick it every single time.” (Years of deploying that phrase made her ready when another candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, called her “Dick Cheney in heels” at a November debate. “They’re not for a fashion statement; they’re for ammunition,” Haley immediately rejoined.)
Israel has featured prominently in her campaign, especially since Hamas’ Oct. 7 invasion of Israel and the ensuing war. Before the war, she went after Ramaswamy’s proposal to cut defense assistance to Israel, saying at an August debate, “He wants to stop funding Israel. You don’t do that to your friends.”
She’s been hammering home the message on X, formerly Twitter. “Israel is a bright spot in a tough neighborhood,” she posted last week. “It has never [been] that Israel needs America. It has always been that America needs Israel.”
On abortion, Haley has tread a careful line: She has sought to embrace some of the most restrictive bans while not demonizing those on the other side of the issue. Unlike other candidates such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, her rival for second place, Haley has said she will not seek a federal ban, leaving it up to the states.
“As much as I’m pro-life, I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice, and I don’t want them to judge me for being pro-life,” Haley said at the November debate. “So when we’re looking at this, there’re some states that are going more on the pro-life side. I welcome that. There are some states that are going more on the pro-choice side. I wish that wasn’t the case, but the people decided.”
That stance is probably not going to swing any Jewish Democrats, but it stands out for moderate Jewish Republicans who know the party isn’t moving left on abortion anytime soon, but who want a Republican leader who will tamp down what has been, for the Jewish community, a painful culture war.
“The fact is that the Republican Party is a pro-life party and if you’re somebody in the Jewish community who, that’s your top issue, you’re not voting Republican, and that hasn’t changed,” said the Jewish Republican insider. But the insider called Haley the “tip of the spear in terms of the party and where it needs to be to have a more nuanced argument and a nuanced case on dealing with the abortion issue.”
Haley could still stumble: At a town hall in New Hampshire, she recently declined to mention slavery as a cause of the Civil War, widely viewed as a gaffe and as a sharp contrast to her decision in 2015 to remove the Confederate battle flag from the South Carolina statehouse after a white supremacist mass shooting at a Black church in Charleston. (The next day she said slavery was a cause.) She has a reputation for equivocating on an array of critical issues, including Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 riot.
And while Haley stood out for defending Israel at the U.N., it was Trump who made the decisions that substantially shifted U.S. policy to be more aligned with the Israeli right — moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Trump still boasts major pro-Israel backers, including his ambassador to Jerusalem, David Friedman.
But he also remains unpredictable, and the pro-Israel advisers who shaped his presidential policies, including his son-in-law Jared Kushner, are no longer actively advising him.
For months, Trump’s preferred target was DeSantis. But he is turning his rhetorical guns on Haley, a sign that he views her as a threat. In a recent email, he used an epithet that has been a disparaging code for wealthy Jews.
“Nikki Haley Is Funded By Democrats, Wall Street, & Globalists,” his email said.
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The post Nikki Haley has emerged as a favorite for Jewish Republican donors looking for a credible alternative to Trump appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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EU Ministers Reject Proposal to Suspend Dialogue With Israel
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell attends a press conference on the day of EU-Ukraine Association Council in Brussels, Belgium, March 20, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
European Union foreign ministers on Monday did not support a proposal by the bloc’s outgoing foreign policy chief to suspend regular political dialogue with Israel in response to the Jewish state’s ongoing military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.
Top EU diplomat Josep Borrell last week had proposed the suspension of dialogue in a letter to the bloc’s foreign ministers ahead of their meeting on Monday in Brussels, citing “serious concerns about possible breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza,” the Palestinian enclave ruled by Hamas. He also wrote, “Thus far, these concerns have not been sufficiently addressed by Israel.”
The proposal was met with widespread resistance, with several ministers either expressing support for Israel’s position or arguing that severing dialogue with the Jewish state would be counterproductive.
“We know that there are tragic events in Gaza, huge civilian casualties, but we do not forget who started the current cycle of violence,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters after Monday’s meeting in Brussels, seemingly referring to the fact that Hamas began the conflict with its invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. “And I can tell you that there was no agreement on the idea of suspending negotiations with Israel.”
The regular dialogues that Borrell sought to break off were enshrined in a broader agreement on relations between the EU and Israel, including extensive trade ties, that was implemented in 2000.
“In light of the above considerations, I will be tabling a proposal that the EU should invoke the human rights clause to suspend the political dialogue with Israel,” Borrell wrote last week.
A suspension needed the approval of all 27 EU countries, an unlikely outcome from the beginning.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock publicly rejected the proposal last Thursday.
“We are always in favor of keeping channels of dialogue open. Of course, this also applies to Israel,” the German Foreign Office said of Borrell’s plans.
The Foreign Office added that, while the political conversations under the EU-Israel Association Council provide a regular opportunity to strengthen relations and, in recent months, discuss the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, severing that mechanism would make little sense.
“Breaking off dialogue, however, will not help anyone, neither the suffering people in Gaza, nor the hostages who are still being held by Hamas, nor all those in Israel who are committed to dialogue,” the statement continued.
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp similarly said that he disagreed with the proposal and that the EU needed to continue its diplomatic dialogue with Israel.
“Apparently, the high rep [Borrell] takes a 180-degree turn. I don’t fully grasp that,” Veldkamp told reporters in Brussels. “In the view of the Netherlands, this door should be kept open, and we should start a discussion with the Israeli ministers. There will soon be a new high rep. Let’s use these opportunities to get a dialogue running, because there’s a lot to discuss, including the catastrophic humanitarian situation the Gaza Strip.”
Borrel, whose formal title is the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, is set to leave his position, with his five-year term as the EU’s foreign policy chief coming to an end next month. His successor is former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas.
The EU has been divided over how to address the war in Gaza. While some member countries, such as Spain and Ireland, have been fiercely critical of Israel since the outbreak of the conflict, calling on the bloc to review and even suspend its free trade agreement with Israel, others have been more supportive. For example, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic have so far largely backed Israel’s military efforts.
“Most of the member states considered that it was much better to continue having a diplomatic and political relationship with Israel,” Borrell told a press conference after the meeting on Monday.
“But at least I put on the table all the information produced by United Nations organizations and every international organization working in Gaza and the West Bank and in Lebanon in order to judge the way the war is being waged,” he added.
Earlier, Borrell said he had “no more words” to describe the situation in the Middle East, before chairing his last planned meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers.
“I exhausted the words to explain what’s happening in the Middle East,” he said, citing the death toll and humanitarian crisis in Gaza. “There [are] no more words.”
Hamas launched the ongoing conflict with its invasion of southern Israel last Oct. 7. During the onslaught, Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and kidnapped over 250 hostages while perpetrating mass sexual violence and other atrocities.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli military.
Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations, direct attacks, and store weapons.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon said last month that Israel has delivered over 1 million tons of aid, including 700,000 tons of food, to Gaza since it launched its military operation a year ago. He also noted that Hamas terrorists often hijack and steal aid shipments while fellow Palestinians suffer.
The Israeli government has ramped up the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza in recent weeks under pressure from the United States, which has expressed concern about the plight of civilians in the war-torn enclave.
Nonetheless, Borrell said ahead of the meeting that his proposal was meant to put pressure on the Israeli government after it had, in his view, ignored several pleas to adhere to international law in the Gaza war.
“Many people tried to stop the war in Gaza … this has not happened yet. And I don’t see a hope for this to happen. That’s why we have to put pressure on the Israeli government, and also, obviously on the Hamas side,” Borrell said, without mentioning Hamas’s rejection of recent ceasefire proposals.
Borrell has been one of the EU’s most outspoken critics of Israel over the past year. Just six weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, he drew a moral equivalence between Israel and the terrorist group while speaking to the European Parliament, accusing both of having carried out “massacres” while insisting that it is possible to criticize Israeli actions “without being accused of not liking the Jews.”
Borrell’s speech followed a visit to the Middle East the prior week. While in Israel, he delivered what the Spanish daily El Pais described as the “most critical message heard so far from a representative of the European Union regarding Israel’s response to the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.”
“Not far from here is Gaza. One horror does not justify another,” Borrell said at a joint press conference alongside then-Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. “I understand your rage. But let me ask you not to let yourself be consumed by rage. I think that is what the best friends of Israel can tell you, because what makes the difference between a civilized society and a terrorist group is the respect for human life. All human lives have the same value.”
Months later, in March of this year, Borrell claimed that Israel was imposing a famine on Palestinian civilians in Gaza and using starvation as a weapon of war. His comments came a few months before the United Nations Famine Review Committee (FRC), a panel of experts in international food security and nutrition, rejected the assertion that northern Gaza was experiencing famine, citing a lack of evidence. Borrell’s comments prompted outrage from Israel.
In August, Borrell pushed EU member states to impose sanctions on some Israeli ministers.
On Monday, beyond his push to suspend EU-Israel dialogue, Borrell also sought to introduce a ban on the import of products from Israeli settlements in “occupied Palestinian territories according with the rules of the International Court of Justice.”
The post EU Ministers Reject Proposal to Suspend Dialogue With Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it
The group said members were going to be volunteering on an urgent food security issue instead.
The post Mississauga vigil for Hamas leader was called off, but the Jewish community says the mayor should apologize for defending it appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans
Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are guarded by police after violence targeting Israeli football fans broke out in Amsterdam overnight, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ami Shooman/Israel Hayom
Dutch police said on Sunday that they have identified and are investigating 45 suspects of whom they have images in connection to the violent attacks targeting Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam earlier this month.
“Because of the seriousness of the crimes, but also because of the social impact, we immediately scaled up to a special investigation team,” Dutch police chief Janny Knol said in a statement.
All 45 suspects are being probed for serious violent crimes, according to Dutch media. Nine of them have been arrested so far and remain in police custody, authorities said on Sunday, including a suspect who reported to police on Saturday night after his unblurred photo was released to the public.
On Friday, police said they were investigating 29 more suspects, including two who ultimately turned themselves in and have been arrested. Unblurred photos of the some of the other suspects have been online since Friday night and more images of suspects will be released soon, according to a police spokesperson cited by the NL Times.
Following a match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Dutch team Ajax in Amsterdam on Nov. 7, anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian gangs violently attacked Israelis who attended the soccer game. The premeditated and coordinated attack took place in various parts of the city late that night and into the early hours of Nov. 8. Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were chased, run over by cars, assaulted, and taunted with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans such as “Free Palestine.” Five people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries.
Police are “looking at all crimes committed in the run-up to the game and in its aftermath,” Knol said after the violence erupted in the Dutch capital.
A Dutch court last week arraigned eight suspects, including minors, who were arrested in connection to the violent attack in Amsterdam, the NL Times reported. Those suspects include a 21-year-old man from Almelo, a city in eastern Netherlands; a 37-year-old man from Amsterdam suspected of pulling someone off his bicycle; two men, ages 19 and 21, who were arrested over the weekend; and two 26-year-old men, one from Amsterdam and one from Utrecht, who are suspected of publishing posts on social media that incited violence against the Israeli soccer fans.
The post Amsterdam Police Identify 45 Suspects Linked to Violent, Antisemitic Attack Targeting Israeli Soccer Fans first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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