LAS VEGAS (JTA) — For Republican Jews looking for an alternative to Donald Trump in 2024’s presidential race, Ted Cruz presented a tantalizing choice on Saturday — at least for a few minutes.
“When I arrived in the Senate 10 years ago, I set a goal to be the leading defender of Israel in the United States,” the Texas senator said during his chance to address the Republican Jewish Coalition conference last weekend.
The crowd packed into a ballroom deep in the gold lame reaches of the Venetian casino complex lapped it up in what some of them refer to as the “kosher cattle call,” auditions for some of the GOP’s biggest campaign donors.
Cruz applied his folksy bellow to phrases already rendered stale by the speakers who preceded him, making them seem fresh. “Nancy Pelosi is out of a job,” he said of the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, eliciting more cheers from a crowd relishing a fragile majority in the House, one of few GOP wins during midterm elections earlier this month.
But the onetime constitutional lawyer lost the crowd when he asked everyone to take out their cell phones and text a number associated with his podcast, “Verdict.” As the murmurs graduated into grumbles it became clear: About a third of the 800 or so people in the room were Shabbat-observant Jews, taking texting off the table for them.
Cruz never really recovered his rapport with the audience, which included deep-pocketed donors looking to pick a candidate and rally support for him or her. That made his speech an extreme example of the trajectory of just about every address by prospective presidential hopefuls at the RJC conference — excitement tempered by two nagging questions: Does this candidate have what it takes to beat Trump, whose obsession with litigating the 2020 election helped fuel this year’s electoral losses? And is Trump inevitable whoever challenges him?
The former president was at the center of every presentation and of conversations in the corridors during breaks. On the stage, some folks named him, some did not, but — except for Trump himself during a video address from his Florida home — few did so enthusiastically.
Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who was the first of Trump’s primary opponents in 2016 to drop out and endorse him, and then among the first to repudiate him during his presidency, repeated the admonition he made a year ago to move beyond Trump.
Say his name, Christie urged the crowd. “It is time to stop whispering,” he said. “It is time to stop doing the knowing nod, the ‘we can’t talk.’ It’s time to stop being afraid of any one person. It is time to stand up for the principles and the beliefs that we have founded this party on, this country on.” He got big cheers.
Trump was the first candidate to announce for 2024, last week, and so far the only one. But others among the half dozen or so likelys in Las Vegas were clearly signaling a run. Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations who is a star among right-wing pro-Israel groups for her successes at the United Nations in marginalizing the Palestinians, all but told the group she was ready.
“A lot of people have asked if I’m going to run for president,” Haley said. “Now that the midterms are over I’ll look at it in a serious way and I’ll have more to say soon.”
The biggest cheers were reserved for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who was a bright spot for Republicans on Nov. 8, winning reelection in a landslide. DeSantis listed his pro-Israel bona fides (boycotting Israel boycotters) and his culture wars (taking on Disney after the company protested his “Parents Rights in Education” bill, known among its critics as “Don’t Say Gay”).
The crowd loved it. “The state of Florida is where woke goes to die!” he said to ecstatic cheers.
DeSantis did not once mention Trump; the former president has already targeted him saying whatever success he has he owes to Trump’s endorsement of his 2018 gubernatorial bid and dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.’
Getting the nickname was a clear sign that DeSantis was a formidable opponent, said Fred Zeidman, an RJC board member who has yet to endorse a candidate. “It’s a badge of honor, in that Trump has identified you as a legitimate contender for the presidency,” he said in an interview.
Yet even DeSantis was not a clear Trump successor. The RJC usually heads into campaign-year conferences with a clear idea of which of its board members back which candidates, and then relays the word to Jewish Republicans whom to contact to join a prospective campaign.
That didn’t happen this year, and Trump was the reason. Jewish Republicans are still “shopping” for candidates, Ari Fleischer, the former George W. Bush administration spokesman who is an RJC board member and who also has not endorsed a candidate, said in a gaggle with reporters.
Trump was the elephant in the RJC room, Fleischer said, using the Hebrew word for the animal.
“Donald Trump is the pil in the room. There’s no question about it,” Fleischer said right after Trump spoke. “And he is a former president. He has tremendous strength and you could hear it and feel it with this group, particularly on policy, particularly on the substantive issues that he was able to accomplish in the Middle East. It resonates with many people.”
Trump had earned cheers during his speech as he reviewed the hard-right turn his administration took on Israel policy, moving the embassy to Jerusalem and quitting the Iran nuclear deal, among other measures.
“There are other people, they’re going to look at his style and look at things he’s said, and question if he is too hot to handle,” Fleischer continued.
Trump in his talk at first stuck to a forward-looking script but toward the end of it could not resist repeating his lies about winning the 2020 election. Asked by RJC chairman Norm Coleman how he would expand the Abraham Accords, the normalization agreements he brokered between Israel and four Arab countries, should he be reelected, Trump instead bemoaned the election.
“Well, we had a very disgraceful election,” he said. “We got many millions of votes more than we had in 2016, as you all know, and the result was a disgrace in my opinion, absolute sham and a disgrace.”
It was one of many only-in-Vegas moments at an event that brings together disparate groups, including young secular Jews from university campuses gawking at the glitter, Orthodox Jews lurking at elevators waiting for someone else to push the button so they can get to their rooms, and Christian politicos and their staffers encountering an intensely Jewish environment for the first time.
“Shabbat starts on Friday night and ends on Saturday night,” one young staffer explained to another as they contemplated a “Shabbat Toilet” sign taped to a urinal. “But doesn’t it flush automatically anyway?” asked the other.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, another presumed 2020 hopeful, was the only speaker to decry violent attacks on Jews.
“When I think about my brothers and sisters in the Jewish community, in New York City being attacked on the streets of New York, it is time to rise up on behalf of those citizens,” he said. “Rise up against those folks spreading antisemitism, hate and racism.” He was also the only speaker to praise a Democrat, Nevada Sen. Jacky Rosen, with whom he has launched an African-American Jewish coalition in the Senate.
A couple of contenders who have separated themselves from Trump said his name out loud — but with disdain.
“Trump was saying that we’d be winning so much we’d get tired of winning,” said Larry Hogan, who is ending a second term as the governor of a Democratic state, Maryland, with high ratings. “Well, I’m sick and tired of our party losing. This election last week, I’m even more sick and tired than I was before. This is the third election in a row that we lost and should have won. I say three strikes and you’re out.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence peppered his speech with fond references to Trump and his refusal to heed experienced personnel who counseled an even-handed Middle East policy, a move that Pence and the RJC both believe paid off.
Yet Pence also appeared to condemn Trump’s boldest rejection of norms, his effort to overturn his 2020 loss, which spurred an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in which Pence’s life was threatened. “The American people must know that our party keeps our oath to the Constitution even when political expediency may suggest that we do otherwise,” Pence said.
One contradiction for those in attendance was the longing for Trump’s combativeness while wanting to shuck themselves of Trump’s baggage.
Typical was Alan Kruglak, a Maryland security systems contractor who said he appreciated the pro-business measures Hogan had introduced in his state but was more interested in a fighter like DeSantis.
“Trump did great things, but I think Trump’s past his time, we need younger blood that is less controversial,” said Kruglak, 68. “Trump needs to hand the baton to somebody younger, and who doesn’t have any baggage associated with them but has the same message of being independent.”
The problem is that insiders said Trump still commands the loyalty of about 30% of the party, and that could be insurmountable in a crowded primary.
Trump, Fleischer said, was inevitable as a finalist but he didn’t have to be inevitable as the nominee.
“If there’s five, six, seven real conservative outsider candidates, Donald Trump will win with a plurality because nobody else will come close,” he said. “If there’s only one or two, it’s a fair fight.”
Who would those one or two be? Fleischer would not say. Among the Republican Jews gathered in Las Vegas, no one would.
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Dueling pro-Israel and anti-Israel demonstrations at McGill University in Montreal, Canada; May 2, 2024. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
McGill University’s law school in Montreal, Canada lost the chair of its advisory board on Sunday, when he resigned from the position over what he described in a letter notifying the administration of his decision as an “escalating pattern of hostility toward Jewish students, faculty, and alumni.”
The immediate cause, wrote Jonathan Amiel, was the Law Students Association’s passing an academic boycott of Israel through a student referendum held on Saturday. If adopted as university policy, the measure would shutter partnerships with Israeli institutions, bar individual Israelis or known Zionists from holding teaching positions, and allow professors to refuse writing letters of recommendation for students applying to study abroad in Israel.
A majority, 57 percent, of students who participated in the referendum voted to approve it, with 67 percent of the student body casting ballots, indicating high turnout. It accused Israel of being an “apartheid” state and of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinians, despite that the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics reports that the Palestinian population has “doubled about ten times since” Israel’s founding in 1948.
While a Jewish student is challenging the vote in court, as reported by the Montreal Gazette, its approval by the student body has, according to activists, left an impression on the Jewish community there while achieving a reverberant political victory for the student anti-Zionist movement.
“We are deeply concerned by the ongoing developments within student governance at McGill University Faculty of Law,” the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), a Canadian Jewish advocacy group, said in a statement.
According to Amiel, last week’s endorsement of a boycott of the world’s lone Jewish state was part of a broader, troubling trend.
“The referendum is not an isolated event,” Amiel wrote in his resignation letter, which he since made available for public viewing. “An institution once defined by intellectual rigor and principled debate has, in too many instances, become an environment where being Jewish, identifying as a Zionist, or maintaining any association with the State of Israel carries professional and personal risk.”
He added, “This includes the normalization and, at times, glorification, of events marking acts of mass violence, the obstruction of students’ access to classrooms and university facilities, and the use of academic platforms to legitimize or advance extremist ideologies.”
Amiel also charged that the institution failed to discipline “conduct involving harassment or intimidation.”
McGill University was one of hundreds of schools where anti-Zionists organized to celebrate Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, in which the terrorist group’s fighters slaughtered, kidnapped, and raped Israeli civilians during their invasion of the Jewish state.
Their activities culminated in an anti-Israel encampment which spanned across four months and did not disband until long after the end of the 2023-2024 academic year. While McGill officials took steps to limit the freedom of action of the group which staged the demonstration, such as bringing the issue before a court and denouncing the “obvious antisemitism” of its members, Amiel’s letter suggests that the university has not done nearly enough to combat anti-Jewish harassment and discrimination on campus.
“The defining feature of this period has been an absence of decisive leadership at moments when clarity and resolve were required,” Amiel continued. “In that absence, direction has effectively been ceded to actors whose objectives are fundamentally misaligned with the university’s core academic mission.”
McGill University has denounced the outcome of the referendum, with president Deep Saini saying, “The effects here are antisemitic, and that plain fact must guide McGill’s response.”
Amiel’s resignation comes amid an ongoing crisis of pervasive antisemitism on campuses across the Western world.
Earlier this month, the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) released survey results showing that Jewish campus life in Great Britain is rapidly deteriorating. The group found that 47 percent of Jewish students report having heard their classmates justify the Oct. 7 massacre in which Hamas slaughtered civilians and committed mass rape; 23 percent have witnessed Jewish students persecuted over their identity; as many as 36 percent have either lost friends in this new milieu or know someone who has; and a shocking 40 percent report “having changed their journey through campus” to avoid anti-Zionist protests occurring every week at some universities.
Some of the report’s most concerning findings focused on anti-Jewish sentiments expressed by non-Jewish students. Twenty percent said they prefer not be roommates with a Jewish person, while a quarter of students surveyed believe that arguing that “Zionists control the media/government” does not constitute antisemitism. Responding to a separate question, 16 percent expressed approval of saying outright that “Jews control the media/government.”
“This report demonstrates that antisemitism on campus is not isolated but normalized,” Union of Jewish Students president Louis Danker said in a statement. “No Jewish student should have to face social ostracism, abusive language, or physical violence — there is a right to protest but not harass. If we are serious about combating extremism in Britain, we have to start on campus, where half of students have seen glorification of Hamas or Hezbollah. Concerned sentiments and piecemeal progress are not enough.”
The issue is no less severe in the US.
In February, the American Jewish Committee (AJC) and Hillel International reported that a striking 42 percent of Jewish students reported experiencing antisemitism during their time on campus. Of that group, 55 percent said they felt that being Jewish at a campus event threatened their safety. Meanwhile, 34 percent of Jewish students avoid being detected as Jews, hiding their Jewish identity due to fear of antisemitism.
According to the data, 38 percent of Jewish students said they decline to utter pro-Israel viewpoints on campus, including in class, for fear of being targeted by anti-Zionists. The rate of self-censorship is significantly higher for Jewish students who have already been subjected to antisemitism, registering at 68 percent.
“No Jewish student should have to hide their identity out of fear of antisemitism, yet that’s the reality for too many students today,” Hillel International chief executive officer Adam Lehman said in a statement released with the survey results. “Our work on the ground every day is focused on changing that reality by creating environments where all Jewish students can find welcoming communities and can fully and proudly express their Jewish identities without fear or concern.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
Eden Golan, Israel’s representative at the Eurovision Song Contest, reacts during a press conference following the official unveiling of Israel’s song submission, in Tel Aviv, Israel, March 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins
Eden Golan, who represented Israel in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest, talked in a new interview about still experiencing anxiety, fear, and nightmares of threats against her life two years after the competition ended.
“I’m always afraid. I look in every direction like a security guard,” the 22-year-old Israeli singer said in an interview published on Friday in the “7 Nights” supplement of Yedioth Ahronoth. “I’ve had recurring anxiety since Eurovision: I walk into a place, a restaurant, or a show, and someone shoots me from behind. I have recurring nightmares of people chasing me and killing me. But I’m learning to live with it. No one will silence me anymore.”
Golan told Yedioth Ahronoth that she also still faces antisemitism almost everywhere she goes.
“Quite a few of my performances abroad had protests,” she explained. “In Switzerland they threw red paint at the entrance to the venue, supposedly to say the blood is on our hands. There was one protest with signs against [Israeli Prime Minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] and against me. After all the threats I received, there’s definitely fear for my life, but what could be worse than what I went through at Eurovision?”
Golan participated in the 2024 Eurovision in Malmo, Sweden, with the song “Hurricane” and finished in fifth place. The song was originally titled “October Rain,” but the name and its original lyrics were disqualified by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the Eurovision competition, for being too political since it referenced the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack in southern Israel.
Golan made it to the top five of the competition even after being booed on stage by anti-Israel audience members, facing death threats, and having a Eurovision jury member refuse to give her points because of his personal feelings against Israel’s military actions during its war against Hamas in Gaza.
Golan has also said she had to conceal her identity outside her hotel room in Malmo during the Eurovision contest because of the threats she received from anti-Israel activists, who were angry about the Jewish state’s participation in the international competition. At the time, the deputy director general of the EBU condemned the harassment that participating singers had experienced.
Noam Bettan is Israel’s representative in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place in Vienna, Austria, in May. He is competing with a trilingual song titled “Michelle.”
A map showing the Strait of Hormuz is seen in this illustration taken June 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
In the war between Iran and the joint force of the US and Israel, the Islamic Republic’s strongest tactic is to obstruct shipping in its coastal Strait of Hormuz.
The regime has strangled the world’s supply of oil and natural gas by attacking several commercial vessels as they transited the Persian Gulf channel. Some of Iran’s naval weapons have killed members of the ships’ crews.
As a political matter, Iran hopes that creating a global energy crisis will generate opposition to the US-Israeli military campaign. But as a legal matter, Iran’s targeting of civilian ships is a flagrant violation of international law.
Article 16(4) of the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Territorial Sea prohibits “the suspension of the innocent passage of foreign ships through straits” such as the Strait of Hormuz. Iran signed the 1958 document, as well as an updated version of the treaty, the 1982 United Nations Convention for the Law of the Sea.
The regime never “ratified” either treaty because it did not incorporate the international laws into its domestic law. That means Iran never became a formal party to the two pacts. However, the “innocent passage” framework of at least the 1958 convention is considered legally binding on Iran through customary international law, a consequence of widespread maritime practice.
The United Nations Security Council applied the principle of innocent passage during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. The council rebuked both combatants for firing on commercial oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
In the current war, the UN Security Council likewise chided Iran’s lethal interference with civilian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. A coalition of 22 countries including two Arab Gulf states recently signed a joint statement that condemned Iran’s violent closure of the strait and warned of “appropriate efforts” to reopen it. A US military contingent is now headed to the strait, presumably to clear the key coastal terrain.
Iran attempts to evade its maritime obligations with two legal arguments.
First, it asserts self-styled “maritime claims,” in which every commercial ship’s right of innocent passage through the Strait of Hormuz is subject to the regime’s “prior approval.” Iran accordingly grants safe passage to vessels from “friendly” states like China and Pakistan but not ships that could “benefit the aggressors.”
Assuming an additional power of prior approval, Iran has threatened to impose toll charges on ships passing through the waterway. International maritime organizations such as the United Kingdom Maritime Operations Center have confirmed that Iran’s self-serving legal concoction is unfounded. In fact, most of the shipping lanes in the strait run through the territorial waters of Oman, which lie beyond Iran’s legal reach.
Iran alternately contends that its anti-shipping terrorism in the strait is a “tool of pressure” to combat the US and Israel, implying a right of military self-defense. But the laws of naval warfare do not permit attacks on ordinary civilian vessels as a means of self-defense.
Finding Iran in breach of maritime law is easy. Enforcing the law is another matter.
The International Court of Justice cannot assert jurisdiction over a state without that state’s consent. The International Criminal Court lacks authority over Iran because the state never signed the court’s enabling treaty. The Security Council could vote on Bahrain’s proposed March 23, 2026, resolution authorizing “all necessary means” to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. But the measure would probably be vetoed by Russia and/or China, states that oppose the use of force against Iran.
At stake is nothing less than freedom of navigation, which is vital to global trade and security. If Iran can paralyze the Strait of Hormuz, other nations may block similar chokepoints such as the Strait of Taiwan, the Turkish Straits, the Panama Canal, or the Suez Canal. The resulting chaos could render maritime law a dead letter.
It may be difficult for American-Israeli warfare to release Iran’s illegal grip on the Strait of Hormuz. Nevertheless, military action may be the only way to restore the rule of law in the waterway and deter future maritime aggressions.
Joel M. Margolis is the legal commentator of the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists, US Affiliate of the International Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists. He is the author of The Israeli-Palestinian Legal War.