Vance declines endorsing Netanyahu for reelection in Israel, splitting with Trump
by Mary McCue Bell · The Washington TimesVice President J.D. Vance passed on endorsing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for reelection on Monday, one day after President Trump endorsed him.
Instead, the second-in-command said he is focused on the midterm elections.
“I’m not getting involved in the Israeli elections,” Mr. Vance said in an interview on Mark Halperin’s show “2WAY Tonight.”
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“I’m not anti-endorsing him; I’m not pro-endorsing him,” he said.
After months of not endorsing the embattled Israeli leader, Mr. Trump threw his weight behind Mr. Netanyahu’s reelection bid on Sunday.
“If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so,” the president wrote on social media.
Mr. Vance cited Mr. Trump’s sway in the elections, saying he has “the most effective endorsement in American or international political history.”
“I endorse American candidates, and that’s where I’m focused on the midterms,” he said while traveling Monday to campaign for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley in North Carolina. “So, I’m not getting involved in Israeli elections.”
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Mr. Vance has campaigned for a foreign leader before, when he traveled to Budapest to stump for then-Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in April, just days before Mr. Orban’s party lost the parliamentary election.
The nonendorsement is set against a backdrop of deep local and international friction.
A weekend of escalating settler violence in the occupied West Bank prompted Secretary of State Marco Rubio to say the administration was “very disturbed” and requested a crackdown on settler violence.
Mr. Netanyahu’s office cast doubt on accounts of an attack on European diplomats, calling it “alleged.”
Beyond the violence in the West Bank, the Israeli leader faces criticism from rights groups over continued Israeli strikes in Gaza a year after a ceasefire took effect, as well as scrutiny over the war with Iran.
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Mr. Netanyahu faces a bloc of opposition parties ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 election. The largest is the Yashar party, led by Gadi Eisenkot, a former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff.
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Mary McCue Bell
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