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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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Drexel University Professor Stole Signs From Synagogue, Police Say
Illustrative: People pass a cluster of signs outside a pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. on April 28, 2024. Photo: Max Herman via Reuters Connect
A Drexel University professor allegedly participated in a mass theft of items from a synagogue in a suburb outside Philadelphia, a local NBC affiliate reported on Tuesday.
Mariana Chilton, 56, a professor of health management and policy at Drexel, has been accused of stealing pro-Israel signs from the Main Line Reform Temple in Lower Merion Township, traveling there from her neighborhood of residency, Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. Chilton allegedly drove the getaway car while two other accomplices, Sarah Prickett and Sam Penn — who is from New York — trespassed the synagogue and absconded with the loot.
“We are just taking them because we feel like it is a representative of genocide,” Chilton told law enforcement after being caught in the act, the report stated. She then, after offering to “just put them back,” refused to identify herself and comply with other lawful orders.
Video evidence provided by a local resident placed Chilton and her accomplices at the scene of the crime, and a Main Line Reform Temple official identified the signs recovered from her car as the temple’s property. That was enough for law enforcement to charge her with several offenses, including conspiracy and theft. She is also charged with driving without a license and not registering her vehicle.
Drexel University has not responded to The Algemeiner‘s request for comment for this story.
Experts have told The Algemeiner in the past academic year that while the conduct of anti-Zionist students should be reported on, the role of faculty in fostering and engaging in antisemitic acts should be closely scrutinized. Last semester, anti-Zionist faculty attached themselves to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas demonstrations, sometimes breaking the law by preventing officers from dispersing unauthorized demonstrations and detaining lawbreakers.
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers, and at Columbia University, anti-Zionist faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who violated school rules.
Chilton’s case is unlike any other reported in the past year, however. While dozens of professors have been accused of abusing their Jewish students and encouraging their classmates to bully and shame them, none are alleged to have resorted to stealing from a Jewish house of worship to make their point.
Mass participation of faculty in pro-Hamas demonstrations marks an inflection point in American history, Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner in April.
Since the 1960s, he explained, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education. This system, he concluded, must be challenged.
“The cost of trading scholarship for political propagandizing has been a zeal and pride among faculty who esteem and cheer terrorism, a historical development which is quite telling and indicative of the evolution of the Marxist ideology which has been seeping into the academy since the 1960s,” Romirowsky said. “The message is very clear to all of us who are looking on from the outside at this, and institutions have to begin drawing a red line. The protests are not about free speech. They are about supporting terrorism, about calling for a genocide of Jews.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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White House Cites Biden Clash With Netanyahu Over Iran as Proof of President’s Mental Fitness
US President Joe Biden hosts the 2023 Teacher of the Year event at the White House in Washington, US, April 24, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
Amid growing concerns over US President Joe Biden’s mental fitness, key White House officials are suggesting his foreign policy discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including a clash over how to respond to Iran’s unprecedented military attack on the Israeli homeland earlier this year, serve as evidence that he is still capable of leading from the Oval Office.
Biden and Netanyahu engaged in a heated back-and-forth in the immediate aftermath of Iran launching a massive missile and drone salvo at Israel in April, according to a new report by the New York Times. The US and other allies helped Israel shoot down nearly every drone and missile. The attack caused only one injury.
However, the Times revealed that while Netanyahu initially wanted to respond to Iran in a forceful way, Biden threatened to withhold US support in the event of a major Israeli retaliatory strike, arguing it would risk sparking a regional conflict in the Middle East.
“Aides present in the Situation Room the night that Iran hurled a barrage of missiles and drones at Israel portrayed a president in commanding form, lecturing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by phone to avoid a retaliatory escalation that would have inflamed the Middle East,” the Times reported. “‘Let me be crystal clear,’ Mr. Biden said. ‘If you launch a big attack on Iran, you’re on your own.’”
“Mr. Netanyahu pushed back hard, citing the need to respond in kind to deter future attacks,” the report continued. “‘You do this,’ Mr. Biden said forcefully, ‘and I’m out.’ Ultimately, the aides noted, Mr. Netanyahu scaled back his response.”
Israel’s military response was small and appeared aimed at minimizing the risk of escalation.
The Times report, headlined “Biden’s Lapses Are Said to Be Increasingly Common and Worrisome,” came on the heels of Biden delivering a widely-panned presidential debate performance last Thursday against former US President Donald Trump. Biden’s performance, which oftentimes appeared incoherent and muddled, set off alarm bells in Democratic circles, sending the president’s allies scrambling to extinguish concerns over his age and mental acuity.
While highlighting rising concerns, the news story also noted instances in which, according to aides, Biden appeared coherent and capable, citing the exchange with Netanyahu and his handling of the Iranian missile attack more broadly as one such example.
However, an anonymous Biden administration official told the Times that they are unsure whether Biden could hold his own against adversarial foreign leaders such as Vladimir Putin of Russia.
On Wednesday, the White House directly attributed quotes to Netanyahu in which the Israeli premier reportedly said he found Biden “very clear and very focused” during his visit to Israel following the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas. According to a White House spokesperson, Netanyahu also reportedly cited the “more than a dozen phone conversations, extended conversations with President Biden” as evidence of the commander-in-chief’s vitality.
“Some White House officials adamantly rejected the suggestion of a president not up to handling tough foreign counterparts and told the story of the night Iran attacked Israel in April,” the New York Times reported. “Mr. Biden and his top national security officials were in the Situation Room for hours, bracing for the attack, which came around midnight. Biden was updated in real time as the forces he ordered into the region began shooting down Iranian missiles and drones. He peppered leaders with questions throughout the response.”
During its first direct attack on Israeli territory, Iran in April launched roughly 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state.
Leading up to the attack, Iranian officials had promised revenge for an airstrike on Iran’s consulate in Damascus, Syria that they attributed to Israel. The strike killed seven members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), a widely designated terrorist organization, including two senior commanders. One of the commanders allegedly helped plan the Hamas terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the incident.
“After it was over, and almost all of the missiles and drones had been shot down, Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu to persuade him not to escalate. ‘Take the win,’” Mr. Biden told the prime minister, without reading from a script or extensive notes, according to two people in the room. In the end, Mr. Netanyahu opted for a much smaller and proportionate response that effectively ended the hostilities,” the article added.
Days later, Israel responded to the Iranian aggression by launching a modest missile attack on an airbase near Isfahan. The Jewish state sought to show that it could effectively target key strategic locations in Iran while not escalating the conflict any further. Netanyahu insisted on launching a retaliatory attack against Iran, arguing that ignoring the Iranian strikes would incentivize more attacks against the Jewish state.
IRGC Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh said that Iran is waiting for “the opportunity” to launch a new round of strikes against Israel, Iranian media reported on Tuesday, potentially boosting Netanyahu’s argument that a smaller response would invite further attacks.
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Journalist at US-Based Nonprofit Promoted Stabbing Israelis, Depicted Rescued Hostage as Pig Drinking Blood: Report
Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot
A journalist at a US-based nonprofit posted tutorials on how to commit stabbing attacks and depicted a rescued Israeli hostage as a pig drinking blood, according to newly surfaced social media posts.
Eitan Fischberger, a communications analyst and former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) staff sergeant who first broke the story on X/Twitter, alleged that Mahmoud Ajjour, a correspondent for The Palestine Chronicle, posted disturbing images and videos to his Instagram page.
Fischberger posted screenshots and screen recordings of the posts.
According to The Chronicle‘s website, Ajjour is a photojournalist and correspondent for the outlet, which is a US-based 501c3, or nonprofit organization.
One of the posted images depicted Noa Argamani — an Israeli who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, and then rescued in an IDF special operation last month — as a pig drinking blood from a Coca-Cola bottle.
Here, for example, Ajjour posted a picture of Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, portrayed as a pig drinking the blood of Palestinians.
Noa, as you recall, was freed by Israeli forces in the same rescue operation in which Ajjour’s terrorist colleague was killed pic.twitter.com/oiLCqekxbl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
In Oct. 2015, Ajjour posted a picture of a masked Palestinian holding up a knife, with the caption, “I declare it a revolution.”
That time — from approximately Sept. 2015 to June 2016 — was referred to as the “knife intifada,” as there was an uptick in Palestinian terrorist attacks, particularly using knives, against Israelis in Jerusalem, along with other parts of Israel and the West Bank.
Ajjour also seems mighty fine endorsing stabbing attacks pic.twitter.com/xi2MnZVddl
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
During that same month, Ajjour also reportedly posted a two-part tutorial on how to carry out stabbings with the caption, “May Allah protect them,” likely referring to those who were engaging in such attacks.
So much, in fact, that he uploaded a two-part instruction video showing off some best practices for stabbing Israelis pic.twitter.com/Z12rVo4Enx
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
Then, in 2023, after the son of a Hamas preacher was killed when a device he was trying to launch at Israel exploded, Ajjour mourned his death on Instagram. “Your father’s legacy is proud of you,” he wrote alongside a picture that included what appeared to be a Hamas flag.
And here, Ajjour mourns the death of Bara’a al-Zard, son of Hamas preacher Wael al-Zard.
Silly Bara’a died in an explosion caused by a device he was trying to launch at Israeli forces near the Gaza security fencehttps://t.co/vZR6IW0shF pic.twitter.com/ipQw55BYd7
— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) June 30, 2024
This is not the first time a journalist from The Palestine Chronicle was alleged to have either supported or partaken in terrorism.
Abdallah Aljamal, who was a correspondent for The Chronicle, allegedly held three Israeli hostages in his home, according to the Israeli government. He was killed during a raid that rescued four hostages, including Argamani. After the allegations came to light, The Chronicle changed Aljamal’s status on its website from a correspondent to a contributor.
The Palestine Chronicle did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Fichberger wrote that he wants the US House Ways and Means Committee to investigate The Chronicle for what seems to have become a pattern.
“If The Chronicle is let off the hook for employing an actual terrorist hostage-taker, it would prove that the American counter-terror legal apparatus really is irreparably broken,” he wrote.
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