Vance’s Tough Talk On Israel Is Alienating Some Jewish Gop Donors

JD Vance has an Israel problem.

The vice president’s pugnacious defense of a ceasefire agreement with Iran that rattled Israeli diplomats — and his tough talk on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — has damaged his standing with some pro-Israel GOP donors who have backed the party under President Donald Trump.

“It’s hard to find any support for him at all in the Jewish community,” said Eric Levine, a prominent GOP fundraiser and board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, a group aimed at strengthening ties between the Jewish community and party leaders.

Pro-Israel conservatives have cast doubt on Vance’s leadership — pundit Mark Levin blasted the Vance-negotiated memorandum of understanding with Iran, and former Auburn University basketball coach Bruce Pearl said he won’t support Vance in 2028 unless he breaks with Tucker Carlson. Duvi Honig, founder and CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce, penned a Jerusalem Post op-ed criticizing Vance’s stance toward Israel and Iran.

One prominent Jewish GOP donor and bundler, granted anonymity to speak openly, said they see overwhelming “unease” with the vice president in the pro-Israel community.

“There’s angst among a significant majority of pro-Israel Republicans, Christians and Jews alike,” said the donor. “Overwhelmingly, I’m seeing unease, and it could be even worse than that.”

In a statement, White House spokesperson Olivia Wales said, “the President and the Vice President are on the same page: Israel has always been a great ally to the United States, and there has been no greater friend to Israel and a fighter for peace than President Trump.”

Vance is the front-runner to replace Trump at the top of the Republican ticket in 2028. While the president’s ardent pro-Israel views helped lock down the support of key GOP donors in 2024, Vance’s relative dovishness on the Iran war — and recent broadsides against Israeli leadersamid peace negotiations — threaten his ability to hold together Trump’s coalition ahead of what’s expected to be the most expensive presidential campaign in history.

Even so, Vance still has powerful allies in Jewish and pro-Israel circles within the GOP. Sander Gerber, the CEO of the global investment management firm Hudson Bay Capital, said in an interview that his admiration for Vance’s leadership capabilities “has not changed” and that the “president and vice president have shown they appreciate the close relationship between the United States and Israel.”

Republican megadonor Y. David Scharf, the partner and chair of the executive committee of the law firm Morrison Cohen, told POLITICO in an email that the vice president has been a “masterful” finance chair of the Republican National Committee and that he has “demonstrated multiple times a commitment to Israel's security” that “resonates across the Republican Party.”

Another major GOP donor, granted anonymity to discuss conversations with other party supporters, said “the guy is pro-Israel. He’s on our side on all these issues.”

But the unease around Vance underscores how the political fallout from Trump’s war with Iran is shaping a presidential contest that hasn’t even formally begun. And it’s creating political openings that may be exploited by other GOP contenders, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“He’s staking his claim on the anti-Israel, woke right; there’s no question about it,” said the prominent Jewish GOP donor and bundler. “He’s looking around at his political future, and sees that no potentially viable 2028 candidate is in this lane. Vance seems to have that lane locked up.”

In a recent appearance on conservative activist Allie Beth Stuckey’s podcast on BlazeTV, Vance said he takes it “as a given” that Israel — like other countries — tries to influence U.S. policy. But he also sought to draw a distinction between criticism of Israeli policy and antisemitism.

“They’re a good partner in the same way the United Kingdom or France are good partners. That doesn't mean that we're always going to have aligned interests,” Vance said of the Israeli government. “In the same way that sometimes criticism of the Israeli government can be expressed in a way that's antisemitic, it’s just not the case that every criticism of Bibi Netanyahu's policy decisions leads to antisemitism or is antisemitic.”

There’s a danger in “conflating criticism of a particular government with Jew hatred,” he added. “Because if everything is Jew hatred, then nothing is Jew hatred. I actually think Jew hatred is very bad.”

Wales, the White House spokesperson, said, “The Israel Defense Forces were incredible partners throughout Operation Epic Fury, which decimated the Iranian regime’s military capabilities in 38 short days.” She added, “Americans and our allies around the world are already safer for the United States and Israel’s bold actions to deny the Iranian regime the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Republican National Committee press secretary Natalie Baldassarre said Democrats “continue to embrace far-left, antisemitic candidates who hate America,” while Vance “is on the front lines driving resources, energy, and enthusiasm toward our candidates who support America First policies and want stronger national security.”

“He continues to expand our donor base and supercharge our war chest to build momentum ahead of the midterms, and his efforts will surely help protect and expand our Republican majorities in November,” Baldassarre said in a statement.

But some of Vance’s pro-Israel skeptics say their discomfort with the vice president long predates the Iran war. Last fall, after POLITICO reported on a leaked group chat of Young Republicans who praised Hitler and joked about the Holocaust, Vance downplayed the messages, saying “kids do stupid things.” Then, during an October Turning Point USA event in Oxford, Mississippi, Vance took a question from a student who asked why the U.S. supports Israel when “not only does their religion not agree with ours but also openly supports the prosecution [sic] of ours.” Vance made no effort to correct the student’s characterization of the Jewish religion as being hostile to Christianity.

“When I talk to people in the pro-Israel space about Vance, the Turning Point event comes up in almost every conversation,” said one longtime GOP strategist and activist in the pro-Israel camp, granted anonymity to speak openly.

Already, one of the most high-profile GOP donors has reportedly signaled that he’d support Rubio over Vance at a private conference last week. Ken Griffin, the billionaire founder of Citadel, previously opposed Trump’s selection of Vance for vice president and halted donations to Harvard over its handling of antisemitism on campus.

Griffin’s stance underscores the challenges Vance may face courting Wall Street and the broader business world, where pro-Israel sentiment runs high, particularly since the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. Vance, a powerful fundraiser for the GOP, has stronger ties to Silicon Valley heavyweights who are now powerbrokers in the party.

“He was never a prolific fundraiser with traditional Wall Street, but since he’s gone out of his way to needlessly insult Israel from the White House podium, that’s probably slammed that door shut,” said a Republican operative close to the White House.

Many leaders in the financial services world were wary of Vance’s strand of populist, anti-globalist conservatism in 2024. Amplifying those divides is his emergence as the chief defender of an Iran ceasefire agreement that’s been criticized by some Israelis for opening the door to new security risks — coupled with lingering frustrations with how he’s navigated intraparty battles over antisemitism.

Trump himself has seen his relationship with Republican Jews change over time. During his first campaign for president, he was accused of invoking antisemitic stereotypes in a speech to the RJC and a social media post. But upon taking office, he formed a strong relationship with Netanyahu, culminating in the historic Abraham Accords and moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

In the meantime, American Jews — once an overwhelmingly Democratic voting bloc — underwent a political transformation: The RJC celebrated Trump’s 2024 performance among Jewish voters as the best by a Republican since the 1980s, and a Washington Post poll last fall shows the Democratic and Republican parties are now viewed as equally friendly to Jews.

Sam Markstein, political director for the RJC, said Trump has “earned the trust” of American Jews “as he, Vice President Vance, and the team work toward a final agreement with Iran — or, as the President has said, return to finish the job.”

“If you can’t trust the Trump team to continue to support Israel, given the unprecedented and historic level of support the U.S. has provided the Jewish state, then you have lost the plot,” Markstein said. “There are always going to be a panoply of opinions regarding issues of top concern, but at the end of the day, the GOP will be unified in 2028 to defeat whoever the woke, weak, and way too liberal Democrats put up.”

Not all Republicans feel the same way. “A lot of people in finance frankly didn’t feel super comfortable with Trump, even though they were willing to give to or support Trump because of Israel,” said one longtime GOP lobbyist who was granted anonymity to speak openly about the challenges Vance will face in a presidential contest. “But they might not be willing to do that with Vance, because [of the view that] he sucks on my business issues and he sucks on Israel.”

Some Vance allies don’t view that as a political risk.

“We want to win Main Street, not Wall Street,” said Steve Cortes, a campaign adviser to Vance’s 2022 Senate race. “We, of course, welcome the support of Wall Street, but that’s not what will determine the election.”

While the Iran war has been unpopular, Trump’s cooperation with Israel in the conflict was a coup to national security hawks and pro-Israel Republican activists who had called for a more direct confrontation with the Iranian regime. The memorandum of understanding that underpinned the ceasefire marked a reversal in that momentum. The agreement was broadly criticized by Israelis — as well as some Republican allies — for failing to address security concerns that may leave it more vulnerable to future attacks from Iran or its proxies.

Vance was never the administration’s most vocal cheerleader when it came to the war. But he quickly became a key voice in its defense of the peace process, telling its critics in Israel that they needed to “wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.”

Among other Jewish donors and voters, that sparked a “real concern” that Vance is “an isolationist who views America’s role in the world very differently from recent presidents of either party,” said Mark Botnick, a pro-Israel strategist who worked for Michael Bloomberg and now identifies with neither political party.

Support for Israel within the rank-and-file of both parties has eroded in the aftermath of the wars in Iran and Gaza, where Israel’s military response to the deadly terrorist attacks on Oct. 7 killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. That has coincided with a marked increase in antisemitism in the U.S., which has heightened sensitivities when U.S. policymakers directly criticize Israel.

According to Gerber — who served on an advisory board to former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats during Trump’s first term — Vance’s comments highlight a peril in the vice president’s style of communication.

“There's always the risk that when you speak in a very open manner, it will be amplified and magnified into something it’s not,” he said. “We’re not used to that sort of straightforward talk from politicians.”

Megan Messerly contributed to this report.