As election season nears the finish line, leading Jewish political voices across the political spectrum are arguing with each other — often on podcasts — about which presidential candidate will best serve the interests of the American Jewish community.

“Unholy: Two Jews on the News,” a podcast hosted by Israeli news anchor Yonit Levi and British journalist Jonathan Freedland, called the dilemma “the great Jewish debate” over who — former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris — really is. “good for the Jews, to put it bluntly.” Of the program Tuesday’s episode featured Dan Senor, host of the “Call Me Back” podcast and foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, arguing for the Republicans, and Jeremy Bash, who served as CIA chief of staff during the Obama administration, representing the democrats.

Bari Weiss’ “Cinest” podcast featured a similar debate over whether the Democratic or Republican Party would better serve the Jewish community. Popular conservative podcaster Ben Shapiro represented the Republicans, while neuroscientist and bestselling author Sam Harris represented the Democrats.

Harris said that “more than anything,” his approach to the election was that “I just want this ongoing political emergency experience to end. I want this behind us and in my view, Kamala Harris, regardless of her weaknesses as a candidate, would just be a much-needed return to normal politics.”

Meanwhile, Shapiro said, “I’m going to use a slightly different model. I think Sam is coming from the point of view that Trump is preemptively disqualified from the race, just the period from start to finish, I’m done and that ends the calculation for me. The question is, are you better in 2019 or are you better in 2024?”

Harris acknowledged that anti-Semitism existed on both the left and the right, and noted that both men were concerned about the recent rise in anti-Jewish hatred. Still, he said, the “really scary anti-Semitism” that could lead to violence like that of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh “is on the right.” Harris claimed the far right was responsible for “truly scary anti-Semitism”, which he said was “wrapped up in its populist phenomenon of Trumpism”.

Shapiro responded by criticizing Harris’ argument about what can be defined as “truly scary anti-Semitism.”

“There are many forms of truly frightening anti-Semitism. One is the kind of individual antisemite who goes and kills Jews,” Shapiro said. “Then there’s a second kind of anti-Semitism that’s really scary, and that’s a system-wide infusion of anti-Semitic worldviews into an entire party. You see that inside the Democratic Party right now, and that’s very frightening to me as a Jew and as an American, when the intersectional ideology that suggests victimization equals failure, that you’ve failed in life, so you’re a victim. of something.”

“You can see it in a lot of grievance politics, but you see it in intersectional terms on the intersectional left,” Shapiro continued. “And the idea, therefore, that if you’re Jewish means you’re successful, it means you’re an exploiter. This matrix is ​​then applied to international politics in the way that, say, Ta-Nehisi Coates applied it to the Israeli-Palestinian situation, and it becomes a deeply held belief within the Democratic Party.”

Weiss herself praised Trump’s foreign policy record before asking Harris to explain his continued opposition to the former president. “I think probably the strongest case for Trump is his foreign policy legacy, not just because wars weren’t breaking out, but good things happened like the Abraham Accords, like incentivizing European allies to take on more responsibility for their defense. I think the choice sometimes seems like you have stability but weakness on her side and craziness on his side. So sometimes it feels like a choice between crazy and weak,” Weiss said.

Harris responded by suggesting that during Trump’s first term there were “guardrails” that kept him in line on Israel and broader foreign policy matters. He claimed the former president “broke and promised to remove” those railings in his second term.

Harris later acknowledged that the vice president included a caveat about ending the suffering in Gaza, but he explained that he was doing so because he needed the votes of “confused young liberals who believed everything they saw. TikTok on “Gaza genocide by the diabolical IDF”.

Harris also said he would have preferred to see the vice president choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as his running mate over Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, though he rejected the idea that her decision was based on concerns about anti-Semitic speech , amid reports that Shapiro was a contender for the role. Harris later added that he was “a fan of the Abraham Accords and a lot of the things that (Jared) Kushner did and that Trump had him do. I think I have no shame in admitting that.”

On “Unholy,” Bash praised Harris’ support for Israel to shoot down missiles from Iran and “the use of military force, as appropriate, against Iran against Iranian proxies and proxies earlier this year” to defend the vice president against Senor’s argument that he was not a trustworthy person. ally of Israel. He also pointed out that Harris is keeping President Joe Biden’s language on Israel policy in the Democratic National Committee’s 2024 platform amid pressure from anti-Israel factions of the party to make changes.

Senor dismissed this by arguing that it is not Bash’s wing of the party where the core energy lies, suggesting that the future direction of the Democratic Party will be more hostile to the Jewish state.

“I know these words as I quote them precisely because she says them over and over and they are imprinted in my head. She (Harris) says, “Israel has the right to defend itself, but how it defends itself matters.” She then goes on to basically legitimize criticism of “how Israel defends itself.” I find it outrageous…this kind of language matters how Israel defends itself, as if there are legitimate grievances with how Israel has conducted its response to the seven-front war, it’s a signal, it’s sending a signal,” Senor said. .

Bash responded that, arguing that “The idea that she’s somehow signaling that she supports the claim that Israel engaged in genocide — is dead wrong.”

Asked about Trump’s recent remarks about Jews that cost him the election and the language used at his Madison Square Garden rally, which featured Tucker Carlson, despite the conservative commentator’s continued refusal to apologize for the platform and boast to a Holocaust revisionist, Senor condemned both, warning that he did not. I think the rhetoric would translate into policies targeting Israel or the Jewish community.

Bash said Trump’s failure to condemn such anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant language at the rally made him untrustworthy. He also pointed to Trump’s response to the 2017 protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white supremacists chanted, “Jews will not replace us,” as they marched.

Senor pressed Bash on Democratic inaction on domestic anti-Semitism, pointing to Senate Democrats’ refusal to hold hearings on the topic or allow consideration of any relevant legislation. He noted the contrast between the White House and Senate, both controlled by Democrats, and the GOP-led House, where the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act was passed with bipartisan support in early May and numerous high-profile committee hearings have been held on it. topic.

Bash argued that the White House’s National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, a comprehensive policy initiative the Biden administration debuted last May, is evidence of Harris and Democrats’ commitment to the issue.
Bash then asked how anyone could possibly think Trump would stop using his “white nationalist, MAGA foot player, neo-Nazi, Daily Stormer 1939 campaign tropes that resonate once he becomes president,” to which Senor responded, “because he actually had four years as president, and you can’t articulate a single policy on the Jewish community in the U.S. (on) anti-Semitism which I have a problem with the first Trump administration.”