Mitchell Barak, an expert pollster and veteran political analyst, spoke with Rabbi Pesach Wolicki, as part of the Arutz Sheva and Israel365 US election coverage of the US election.
Mitchell Barak says that during the election campaigns, “I don't think Kamala Harris really told people what she wanted to do, meaning we never really got the impression what Kamala Harris is all about. What she plans to do from January 20th, for the first 90 days, for the first year. What her plan was. We didn't understand where she differed from the Joe Biden administration and she didn't communicate very much about herself."
He says that "she had a lot of momentum in the beginning when she was switched as the presidential candidate. Now one should of course ask if that was such a wise move. We don't know, but she had a lot of momentum in the beginning, including a massive amount of donations, money and people really coming out of the woodwork to support her, but she was never successful at articulating what she is all about.
“She turned at some point and spent most of her campaign attacking Trump. Guess what, everyone knows everything there is about Donald Trump, so the people that voted for him know all that stuff, so it wasn't going to turn anyone off,” explains Barak.
During the transition period between the election today and January 20th, when the Trump Administration will come in, Barak feels that the US policy towards Israel during this critical transition period, “is not going to change very much. I'm not sure I agree with that assessment that she was campaigning on a pro-Israel message in Pennsylvania and other places. I don't think it was an anti-Israel message anywhere. She and President Biden have very serious frustration dealing with Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is not the easiest person to deal with, according to many world leaders.”
He added that “with the images coming out of Gaza, and even Lebanon, the Democratic party people are questioning what is the role of the US in this and how much more does Israel need to do in Gaza. It was not against Israeli objectives, which she reiterated a number of times, including in the debate that she was solidly behind Israel's right to defend itself, solidly condemning the attack of October 7th from the Islamic resistance Hamas movement. She and many other people in the administration and among Democrats, and even many Israelis, say it's time to end the war and move to a ceasefire that's in Israel's best interest and the United States’ best interest.”
On the rise of the Jewish vote in the US for Donald Trump, quoting a Pew research in 2020 which said that about 28% of Jews in America voted for Trump, Barak believes that, “there is significant growth but I'm not convinced that it is really that significant in long term. The vast majority of Jews are not as religious as you and I and they prefer a kind of liberal democratic values, which are not seen as being embodied by the Republican party or republican candidates.”
He thinks “Israel was an issue in this campaign, but at the same time many in Israel and the US would agree that history will judge President Biden as having saved Israel after October 7th, meaning we have two B-52 bombers in the region, we have aircraft carriers that have been back and forth and we've gotten $18 billion worth of additional military assistance, above the two billion we get every year. We can't really afford our defense without the United States. The US has been very generous and we have been a good ally, but certainly, under President Biden, he really stepped up to save Israel.”
“I think that the issue of antisemitism was serious in the United States and a lot of people there don't feel safe and don't feel comfortable; they feel that they're under attack. They're under attack on universities and the universities are not doing anything to protect them. They're under attack in their synagogues and their streets and they just don't feel protected.”
US Jewry seems to be moving left and Israelis right, according to a Channel 12 News poll, with a majority of Israelis preferring Donald Trump. Barak does not believe that “the numbers are that high, but it does seem to be that the Republicans are better from the Israeli point of view, certainly the issue of Palestinians and the settlements are important to many Israelis. Many Israelis are not looking for a short or even a long-term solution to that problem. They don't think it's a problem. They just want the pressure off from the United States. When it comes to communities in Judea and Samaria and when it comes to Palestinians, not even in Gaza, just in Judea and Samaria, the Republican administrations have tended to be more willing to let Israel do what they want to do.”
Barak says that “the Trump Administration the first time around was very, very favorable on many, many issues, including the Golan Heights, including Jerusalem as the capital. Whether it was wise to cancel the international agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran remains to be seen, because it was canceled and nothing was done since then. But certainly Trump is seen as giving Israel a lot of leeway and not putting pressure on Israel and the fact that, which is kind of ironic, he's really almost like one of us.”
On Trump’s Jewish family ties, Barak says that "he's like one of our family and he really likes Jewish people, due to his daughter and son-in-law who are Jewish. Ironically we've had three presidential candidates in this election and all three of them have Jews in their family tree. Obviously, Vice President Harris is married to a Jewish man and Biden has Jewish grandchildren and he has a son who married a Jewish woman certainly Biden for everyone who knows him in the decades that he's been in the Senate is a Zionist through and through and he is as comfortable at a Shabbat dinner as he is anywhere else in the world.”
Barak thinks “that a lot of Jews in America do not necessarily agree with Israeli policy. Israeli policy has been for the last pretty much 14 years the right-wing Netanyahu government and this government being the most right-wing of all. For a lot of Jews, it doesn't sit well. You also have the issue of yeshiva students and whether they do or do not go to the army. A lot of people can't identify with that even in the modern Orthodox communities in America, certainly the Conservative and Reform. Those issues are important to Americans and we don't necessarily represent some of those liberal and open views here in Israel. At least the government in the last number of years because it's headed by Netanyahu.”
In conclusion, Barak says: “We didn't take Diaspora Jewry so seriously. For us it was a relationship like ‘we do what we want, don't tell us what to do.’ After October 7th we found that Diaspora Jewry has our back and the amount of money that they raise and the way that they stepped up to pay for things, like your kids probably told you, they don't have enough equipment in their army units, how is that and who's paying for that. A lot of Diaspora Jewish communities stepped up in support, in their local communities and absolutely in financial support and getting the equipment and whatever was needed to be shipped to Israel, and that's an amazing thing.”