Two weeks after former U.S. president and current presidential candidate Donald Trump selected J.D. Vance as his running mate on the Republican Party's ticket, an influential evangelical Christian from Vance’s home state of Ohio, said in an interview that if Trump is likened to King Cyrus, Vance is akin to David.
“Vance is a rising star with strength and courage like Trump,” said Pastor David Swaggerty, a senior pastor at Charismalife Ministries in Columbus. “His youth, integrity and morals will benefit the country and Israel.”
Many of Trump’s evangelical supporters believe that “God has a hand on him,” meaning that, despite his moral flaws, Trump was chosen by God to serve in the White House. According to Swaggerty, choosing Vance as his running mate could also be divinely inspired – at least for Israel.
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Republican vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, speaks at a campaign rally at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024.
(Photo: Ben Gray/AP)
“If they get elected – and I believe they will – I think you’ll see a quick strengthening of ties between the U.S. and Israel and more support from the top down, which is a good thing,” Swaggerty said.
Vance is a 39-year-old lawyer who has been a U.S. senator representing Ohio since 2022. He studied political science and philosophy at Ohio State University and then earned a law degree from Yale Law School.
As Swaggerty eluded, Vance's pro-Israel stance comes from his Christian faith, although he is not evangelical, but Catholic. The London Jewish Chronicle quoted Vance as saying the fact that Jesus “was born and died and resurrected in that narrow little strip of territory on the Mediterranean” feeds his pro-Israeli ideology. “The idea that there is ever going to be an American foreign policy that doesn’t care a lot about that slice of the world is preposterous,” Vance said.
Despite less than a third of U.S. adults considering Vance the “best” or a “good” choice for Trump’s running mate, according to a series of snap polls conducted last month by YouGov, the Republicans of Ohio – a crucial swing state – seem to support him and his ideology.
According to Pew, 42% of Ohio residents are Republicans or lean Republican, 40% are Democrats or lean Democratic, and 18% are independent. Jews make up less than 1.5% of the Ohio population, according to a report published on Jewish Virtual Library.
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Donald Trump and J.D. Vance at the Republican Party's national convention
(Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)
Swaggerty said, “The people of Ohio rejoiced when they heard” about Vance’s selection. Rabbi Tuly Weisz, an Ohio native now living in Beit Shemesh in Israel, said the Jewish community did the same.
“The Jewish community has very warm feelings for him,” Weisz said – and not just because Vance’s chief of staff, Jacob Reses, is an Orthodox Jew whose grandfather escaped the Holocaust.
Meir Perlmutter, an Orthodox Jew from Columbus, has helped arrange meetings with the Jewish community for Vance. He said that Vance grew up in an area of Ohio with few Jews and probably did not ever see a Jewish person until he entered university. However, in the past decade, he said Vance has come to learn what is essential to his local Jewish constituency and that he gets along well with the people.
“I’ve seen him at many Jewish functions and how he interacts with the Jewish people,” Perlmutter said. “He seems to understand what is important to us. He’s a great candidate for Trump for vice president, and we are excited to have Ohio on the big stage.”
However, this is only one side of the story. Ohio Democrat June Gutterman said that Vance has not been good for Ohio, is not good for America, and won’t be good for Israel or the Jews.
“He is horrible on so many issues,” said Gutterman, a gay Jew from Columbus. “I don’t trust him on Israel or anything to do with the Jews.”
She cited Vance’s constant “changing his mind on so many things,” including shifting stances on gay rights and going from hating Trump to agreeing to be his running mate.
“You cannot trust a word he says,” Gutterman stated. She also expressed concerns that Vance wants America to be based on Christian values, which, while similar, are not the same as Jewish values. Moving too far in that direction could jeopardize religious freedom, she said.
“I am worried about my freedom,” Gutterman concluded.
What is the candidate's track record on Israel? Vance has consistently supported the Jewish state.
The American Jewish Congress (AJC) reported that Vance has said that “Israel is our most important ally, and Trump was right to move the [embassy] to Jerusalem.”
Weisz outlined Vance's foreign policy position as resting on two things: the strength of America’s economy, meaning America must have a strong economy if it wants a robust foreign policy, and what Vance has called middle-class moral instincts. This idea, as it pertains to Israel, is that the American intention is to support Israel because the United States is a country with the largest Christian majority, and Christians support Israel.
“He said that, as a Christian, he will always stand with Israel, and as a country with a Christian majority, America will always stand with Israel,” Weisz explained.
Swaggerty noted that when Trump first ran for election, Vance did not support him. However, he believes that Trump won Vance over in part due to his strong support for Israel.
Since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, and Israel responded with a war against the terror organization that has lasted nearly 10 months, Vance has supported the Jewish state.
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Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, before he got the vice presidential nod
(צילום: Rebecca DROKE / AFP)
On October 7, Vance tweeted: “Praying for our friends in Israel this morning. Just an awful situation.” Later, he posted again: “As we watch this horrible situation in Israel unfold, Americans must face a stark truth: our tax dollars funded this. Money is fungible, and many of the dollars we sent to Iran are being used to now kill innocent people. This must stop. Israel has every right to defend itself. I wish our friends well, but most of all, I wish they weren’t fighting against weapons bought with our money. “
“I’m very supportive of Israel and their war against Hamas,” he explained in a speech at the Quincy Institute in May.
In an interview with CNN in May, he said: “I think that our attitude vis-a-vis the Israelis should be, 'look, we’re not good at micromanaging Middle Eastern wars, the Israelis are our allies, let them prosecute this war the way they see fit.'”
He also blamed Hamas for the high number of civilian casualties and said the only way to stop those deaths was by dismantling Hamas as “a viable military organization.”
“You’re never going to defeat the ideology of Hamas, but you can root out those commanders, those final military-trained battalions, and I think you should empower the Israelis to do it,” Vance said.
During Iran’s missile attack on April 14, he wrote: “Praying for the people of Israel, and especially some very good friends. May God keep them safe.”
Vance is firm in his stance on Iran. He opposed the Iran nuclear deal, calling it “a disaster,” according to the AJC. In an interview with CNN, he stated that “our goal in the Middle East should be to allow the Israelis to get to a good place with the Saudi Arabians and other Gulf Arab states” because this would be “the perfect way of building a counterpoint to the Iranians in the Middle East.”
Some Jews and Christians have expressed concerns about Vance’s approach to combating antisemitism. On the one hand, he has called for defunding universities that fail to address antisemitism adequately and has criticized the presence of pro-Palestine groups on campuses across the U.S.
“I don’t care what your cause is, whether you’re pro- or anti-Israel or anything else,” Vance wrote on social media. “You don’t get to turn our public places into a garbage dump. No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them.”
On the other hand, Vance has been accused of sometimes not adequately condemning antisemitism. He maintains a close relationship with and has received an endorsement from Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has been accused of promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The left-leaning J Street organization also criticized Vance shortly after his nomination. “A Trump-Vance White House would be a disaster for America’s democracy, the Jewish community, and Israel’s long-term future as a proud, safe and democratic homeland for the Jewish people,” the organization said in a statement.
The organization said that Vance had rejected red lines for the Netanyahu government in Gaza and criticized President Biden for seeking to protect Palestinian civilians.
“With Trump and Vance in the White House, the Israeli right would have full U.S. support for their wildest fantasies – a judicial coup, West Bank annexation, settlements in Gaza and military confrontations with both Hezbollah and Iran,” said J Street President Jeremy Ben-Ami. “Vance will enthusiastically help bulldoze the democratic foundations of our union, embed antisemitic conspiracy theories deeper into our society, and hand victory to Putin in Ukraine. We cannot afford to have Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in the White House.”
But at least three Ohio Republicans say Vance is not as J Street describes and they are ready to cast their ballots for Trump and Vance.
“Vance represents the new and young generation of conservative Republicans that are America first and Make America Great Again (MAGA) politicians,” Weisz said. “That is not something that should scare Israelis. That is good for the Jewish people. Only if America is strong can it support Israel sufficiently.”