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Supermajority of US Jews Plan to Vote for Harris Over Trump, Poll Finds

Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris waves from the stage on Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago, Illinois, US, Aug. 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Wurm

The vast majority of Jewish voters in the US are planning to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris over her Republican opponent Donald Trump in the 2024 election, according to a new poll commissioned by the Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA). 

The poll found that 72 percent of Jewish Americans plan on casting a ballot for incumbent US Vice President Harris and 25 percent are poised to do the same for former President Trump. 

The poll, conducted by a group aligned with the Democratic Party, indicates that Harris holds stronger support with Jewish voters than President Joe Biden. Jewish voters prefer Biden over Trump by a 67-25 percent margin, according to a JDCA poll conducted in April. Harris also enjoys a favorability rating of +38 with Jewish voters, compared to Biden’s +25. 

Jewish voters still maintain negative views of Trump and the Republican Party writ large, the poll found. Seventy-six percent of Jews hold an “unfavorable” opinion of Trump and the GOP, while Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, does not fare much better among Jews, with 73 percent holding a negative opinion of the Ohio senator, according to the poll.

Most American Jews do not consider policy regarding Israel as a major factor in determining their vote, the poll found. Jewish voters rank Israel policy as being less important than “the future of democracy,” the economy, and abortion. On a list of 11 potential policy priorities, Israel ranks ninth, according to the poll. 

Jewish voters are broadly supportive of Harris’s approach to resolving the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, the poll found. A whopping 87 percent of Jewish American voters support Biden and Harris’s attempts to “reach an agreement for a ceasefire and hostage release” to stop the fighting in Gaza, the poll claimed. Among the respondents, 40 percent indicate that “Biden-Harris policies toward the war make no difference in how they will vote.” Moreover, 36 percent of respondents claim that Harris’s Israel policies “make them more likely to vote for” the current vice president. 

American Jews have significantly more confidence in Harris than Trump to tackle rising antisemitism in the country, the poll indicated. Harris walloped Trump by 37 points on the issue. Democrats enjoy a 28-point lead over Republicans on antisemitism. Ninety-one percent of American Jews are worried about rising antisemitism in the country, the poll found. 

The data compiled by the JDCA contradicts prevailing sentiment that more Jewish voters than ever before would depart the Democratic {arty en masse due to frustrations over the Biden administration’s handling of the ongoing Israel Hamas war and surging antisemitism across the country. Moreover, earlier polls have suggested that Jewish voters are warming up to Trump. 

A July poll conducted by Richard Baris showed that Jewish voters prefer Harris over Trump by a margin of 52.7 percent to 45.9 percent. 

Jews are a traditionally Democratic-leaning voting bloc. Since 1968, American Jews have supported the Democratic presidential nominee over the Republican nominee on average by a staggering margin of 71 percent to 26 percent, according to Jewish Virtual Library. Jewish voters supported Biden over Trump by a margin of 68 percent to 30 percent in 2020. In 2016, 71 percent of Jewish voters supported Hillary Clinton and only 24 percent supported Trump. 

Dwight Eisenhower was the last Republican to receive at least 40 percent of the Jewish vote in 1956.

“You gotta remember that even though a lot of the Jewish vote in this country is secular liberal, they still identify as Jewish. That vote is not going as well for Harris as it did for Joe Biden,” Baris stated.

The post Supermajority of US Jews Plan to Vote for Harris Over Trump, Poll Finds first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ to Convene at WH on Feb. 19, One Day After Trump’s Meeting with Netanyahu

US President Donald Trump speaks to the media during the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo

i24 NewsA senior official from one of the member states confirms to i24NEWS that an invitation has been received for a gathering of President Trump’s Board of Peace at the White House on February 19, just one day after the president’s planned meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The meeting comes amid efforts to advance the implementation of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, following the limited reopening of the Rafah crossing, the expected announcement on the composition and mandate of the International Stabilization Force, and anticipation of a Trump declaration setting a deadline for Hamas to disarm.

In Israel officials assess that the announcement is expected very soon but has been delayed in part due to ongoing talks with the Americans over Israel’s demands for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Trump reiterated on Thursday his promise that Hamas will indeed be disarmed.

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If US Attacks, Iran Says It Will Strike US Bases in the Region

FILE PHOTO: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi meets with Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi in Muscat, Oman, February 6, 2026. Photo: Omani Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Iran will strike US bases in the Middle East if it is attacked by US forces that have massed in the region, its foreign minister said on Saturday, insisting that this should not be seen as an attack on the countries hosting them.

Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke to Qatari Al Jazeera TV a day after Tehran and Washington pledged to continue indirect nuclear talks following what both sides described as positive discussions on Friday in Oman.

While Araqchi said no date had yet been set for the next round of negotiations, US President Donald Trump said they could take place early next week. “We and Washington believe it should be held soon,” Araqchi said.

Trump has threatened to strike Iran after a US naval buildup in the region, demanding that it renounce uranium enrichment, a possible pathway to nuclear bombs, as well as stopping ballistic missile development and support for armed groups around the region. Tehran has long denied any intent to weaponize nuclear fuel production.

While both sides have indicated readiness to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s long-running nuclear dispute with the West, Araqchi balked at widening the talks out.

“Any dialogue requires refraining from threats and pressure. (Tehran) only discusses its nuclear issue … We do not discuss any other issue with the US,” he said.

Last June, the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, joining in the final stages of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Tehran has since said it has halted uranium enrichment activity.

Its response at the time included a missile attack on a US base in Qatar, which maintains good relations with both Tehran and Washington.

In the event of a new US attack, Araqchi said the consequences could be similar.

“It would not be possible to attack American soil, but we will target their bases in the region,” he said.

“We will not attack neighboring countries; rather, we will target US bases stationed in them. There is a big difference between the two.”

Iran says it wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium, and that putting its missile program on the negotiating table would leave it vulnerable to Israeli attacks.

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My university wants me to sign a loyalty oath — am I in America or Vichy France?

As a historian of modern France, I have rarely seen a connection between my everyday life in my adopted state of Texas and my work on my adopted specialization: the period we call Vichy France. Apart from the Texan boast that the Lone Star Republic is bigger than the French Republic, and the small town of Paris, Texas, which boasts its own Eiffel Tower, I had no reason to compare the two places where I have spent more than half of my life.

Until now.

Last week, professors and instructors at the University of Houston received an unsettling memo from the administration, which asked us to sign a statement that we teach rather than “indoctrinate” our students.

Though the administration did not define “indoctrinate,” it hardly takes a PhD in English to read between the lines. Indoctrination is precisely what our state government has already forbidden us from doing in our classes. There must not be the slightest sign in our courses and curricula of references to diversity, identity and inclusion. The catch-all word used is “ideology,” a term Governor Greg Abbott recently invoked when he warned that “Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation. We must end indoctrination.”

This is not the first time in the past several months that I have been reminded of what occurred in France during the four years that it was ruled by its German occupiers and Vichy collaborators.

French Marshal and Vichy leader Henri-Philippe Petain (left) and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler (right) share the famous ‘handshake at Montoire’ while interpreter Colonel Schmidt watches, October 1940. Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Very briefly, with Germany’s rapid and complete defeat of France in 1940, an authoritarian, antisemitic and collaborationist regime assumed power. Among its first acts was to purge French Jews from all the professions, including high school and university faculties, and to impose an “oath of loyalty” to the person of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the elderly but ramrod straight and clear-headed hero of World War I.

The purpose of the oath was simple and straightforward: By demanding the fealty of all state employees to the person of Pétain, it also demanded their hostility to the secular and democratic values of the French republican tradition. Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of teachers signed the oath —even the novelist and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, who needed her salary as a lycée teacher, as did the writer Jean Guéhenno, a visceral anti-Pétainist who continued to teach at the prestigious Paris lycée Henri IV until he was fired in 1943.

Vichy’s ministers of education understood the vital importance that schools and universities played in shaping citizens. Determined to replace the revolutionary values of liberty, equality and fraternity with the reactionary goals of family, work and homeland, they sought to eliminate “godless schools” and instill a “moral order” based on submission to state and church authorities. This radical experiment, powered by a reactionary ideology, to return France to the golden age of kings, cardinals and social castes came to an inglorious end with the Allied liberation of the country and collapse of Vichy scarcely four years after it had begun.

The French Jewish historian Marc Bloch — who joined the Resistance and sacrificed his life on behalf of a very different ideology we can call humanism — always insisted on the importance of comparative history. But comparison was important not because it identified similarities but because it illuminated differences. Clearly, the situation of professors at UH is very different from that of their French peers in Vichy France. We are not risking our jobs, much less our lives, by resisting this ham-handed effort to demand our loyalty to an anti-indoctrination memo.

But the two situations are not entirely dissimilar, either. Historians of fascism like Robert Paxton remind us that such movements begin slowly, then suddenly assume terrifying proportions. This was certainly the case in interwar France, where highly polarized politics, frequent political violence and a long history of antisemitism and anti-republicanism prepared the ground for Vichy. In France, Paxton writes, this slow, then sudden transformation “changed the practice of citizenship from the enjoyment of constitutional rights and duties to participation in mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity.”

As an historian of France, I always thought its lurch into authoritarianism was shocking, but not surprising. After all, many of the elements for this change had existed well before 1940. But as a citizen of America, I am not just shocked, but also surprised by official demands for affirmation and conformity. One day I will find the time to think hard about my naiveté. But the time is now to think about how we should respond to these demands.

The post My university wants me to sign a loyalty oath — am I in America or Vichy France? appeared first on The Forward.

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