JD Vance Sits Out Israel’s Election

Has Vice President Vance been reading Herman Melville? We ask because the mantra of Melville’s Bartleby, “I would prefer not to,” captures Mr. Vance’s reluctance toward endorsing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I’m not getting involved in Israeli elections” is how Mr. Vance put it to Mark Halperin. The vice president adds that “I’m not anti-endorsing him. I’m not pro-endorsing him.” Has Mr. Vance confused himself with the Melvillian scrivener?Mr. Vance’s reticence is all the stranger given President Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Netanyahu on Truth Social on Sunday as a “Great Warrior Prime Minister” and “Strong, Brave, and Brilliant in the face of tremendous opposition.” The 47th president told the Israeli people that the incumbent “WILL NEVER LET YOU DOWN!” Mr. Netanyahu thanked his “friend Donald” and insists that “Israel has never had a greater friend in the White House.”Mr. Vance told Mr. Halperin that “I endorse American candidates, and that’s where I’m focused on in the midterms.” What then to make of a trip the vice president took in April to Budapest to campaign on the hustings alongside Prime Minister Viktor Orban? After Mr. Orban’s loss, Mr. Vance reasoned that he lent his support because “it was the right thing to do to stand behind a person who had stood by us for a very long time.”No less can be said about the Jewish state, which fought side by side with Americans in Operations Midnight Hammer and Epic Fury. For Mr. Vance, though, that could be less a recommendation than a demerit. He was reportedly against the war with Iran, and in a June press conference sniped that “Anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the president of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”During that same press conference Mr. Vance insisted that “Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment. If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.” One Israeli official told Politico that those comments amounted to a “low point” in relations between Washington and Jerusalem.Could Mr. Vance, reckoned to be a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028, be going mum on Israel with one eye on that race? A source close to the vice president tells Politico that the “vice president sees that the ground is shifting against Israel among voters, including with younger Republicans.” Tying himself to Mr. Netanyahu’s mast could amount to a liability in the contest to become the 48th president. Then there is Mr. Vance’s friendship with the podcaster Tucker Carlson, who has called Mr. Netanyahu “completely evil and completely destructive.” Mr. Carlson’s slander that Israel was behind the murder of Charlie Kirk prompted Mr. Netanyahu to issue a video denying the absurdity. The Israeli premier, the son of a historian, has declared that Mr. Carlson has “no idea — not just about Jewish history but of history.”Mr. Vance has hardly been mum on the world stage. In addition to his hustle to Hungary, he also made a point of meeting with the leader of the Alternative for Germany, Alice Weidel. While Mr. Vance did not endorse that ascendant hard right party, an ally of the administration, Elon Musk, has been a booster. In respect of Israel, though, Mr. Vance, like Melville’s Bartleby, echoes in “some ruined temple … standing mute and solitary.”

JD Vance Sits Out Israel’s Election

JD Vance Sits Out Israel’s Election

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