Rabbi Aryeh Spero blesses RNC and President Trump

(JTA) – On the third night of the Republican convention, Aryeh Spero, an Orthodox rabbi with a long track record of right-wing Republican involvement, asked God to bless President Donald Trump. Spero, who bills himself as the first rabbi to have endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1979, said Trump “has stood up fearlessly against those who are corrupting the term social justice.”

Spero has long been involved in far-right politics, serving as one of four chairs of Pat Buchanan’s third-party 2000 presidential bid and heading a series of organizations aimed at advancing a “Judeo-Christian outlook.” The website of the latest, the Conference of Jewish Affairs, showcases videos of Spero’s appearances on Fox News and lists an advisory council that includes a number of right-wing Jews, such as a Massachusetts rabbi who was decried for inviting anti-Muslim advocates to speak at his synagogue and an Israeli professor who said only the threat of having their mother raped would deter anti-Israel terrorists.

During his speech Wednesday night, Spero invoked “our Judeo-Christian tradition.” He also offered a prayer that exalted Trump.

“Father, we pray that this outlook in mindset, this form of government continues as has been our history, especially now, when to our horror, it is being challenged,” he said in the opening blessing. “And so we pray that God gives strength and health to our president, who has splendidly demonstrated daily determination to defend and maintain the God-given rights of our citizens as enshrined in our Constitution.”

Spero said Trump “has stood up fearlessly against those who are corrupting the term social justice, so as to deny Americans their birthright,” adding, “May God protect him.” He appeared to be referring to protests across the U.S. against police violence and for racial equity that have at times turned violent; his speech came the day after a 17 year old allegedly shot and killed two people protesting the police shooting of a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

“We are compelled to resurrect and give rebirth, to our providential beginning to renew our present days with the exuberance of those founding days, perhaps, that is what is meant when we say, Make America Great Again,” he said, using the Trump campaign’s slogan. “We plan to vigilantly protect and tend the garden, so as to imbibe its blessing.”

In its broadcast, the Republican convention misidentified Spero, who runs a website called “Caucus for America,” as Shubert Spero, a 96-year-old Orthodox rabbi and professor of Jewish thought at Bar Ilan University in Israel.

Speakers on the third night, as on the two nights previous, celebrated Trump’s Israel policies. Vice President Mike Pence referred to a recent breakthrough in the normalization of ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, brokered by the Trump administration.

“We’ve stood with our allies, like when President Trump kept his word and move the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the State of Israel, setting the stage for the first Arab country to recognize Israel in 26 years,” Pence said in the night’s closing speech.

Kamala Harris to Jewish donors: Biden won’t make aid to Israel conditional

(JTA) – Kamala Harris, the California senator who is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, told Jewish supporters that Joe Biden, the presidential nominee, would not place any conditions on US aid to Israel.

“Joe has made it clear he will not tie security assistance to any political decisions that Israel makes and I couldn’t agree more,” Harris said Wednesday, August 26, in a call arranged by the Biden campaign for Jewish donors. “The Biden Harris administration will sustain our unbreakable commitment to Israel’s security, including the unprecedented military and intelligence cooperation pioneered during the Obama-Biden administration and the guarantee that Israel will always maintain its qualitative military edge.”

The question about conditioning assistance came after a primary season in which a number of Democratic candidates for the nomination said they were prepared to condition aid, which would represent a major change in U.S. policy. A number of these, including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg, are now advising Biden.

Harris, who spoke via Zoom to the donors alongside her Jewish husband Douglas Emhoff, also repeated a pledge Biden has made not just to reenter the Iran nuclear deal, but also to improve it. She faulted President Donald Trump for exiting the deal, which she said accelerated Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon, but she acknowledged the merit of some of Trump’s objections with the deal: that it allowed nuclear restrictions to lapse too soon, and that it did not address Iran’s militarism and regional adventurism.

“Our administration will hold Iran’s government accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement if Iran comes back into compliance,” she said.

Emhoff described his Jewish upbringing and sounded one of the main themes of the Biden campaign, calling out the leeway that he Democrats content Trump has given to white supremacists. “We need more than ever reassurance that our political leaders have our back,” Emhoff said. “They have a comprehensive plan to tackle the violence that stems from anti-Semitism and the hateful and dangerous lies that drive it.”

Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene shares antisemitic video

(JTA) – Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congressional nominee in Georgia, shared a video in 2018 repeating the antisemitic claim that “Zionist supremacists” are conspiring to flood Europe with migrants in order to replace the white populations there.

Greene, who has received support from President Donald Trump, has advanced the conspiracy theory QAnon, which includes antisemitic tropes. She wrote in one post that the Rothschild family and the Jewish financier George Soros are involved in a plot against Trump.

The 2018 video, which was uncovered by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters for America and which Greene shared on Facebook, repeats an antisemitic conspiracy theory called the “Great Replacement,” which alleges that Jews are orchestrating the mass migration of nonwhite immigrants into predominantly white countries in order to wipe out the populations there. It says those supporting the refugees are using “immigrant pawns” to commit “the biggest genocide in human history.”

“[A]n unholy alliance of leftists, capitalists and Zionist supremacists has schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation, with the deliberate aim of breeding us out of existence in our own homelands,” a voiceover on the video says.

The video also repeats claims, without citing evidence, that Muslims refugees are “flooding” Europe, endangering locals and seeking to replace the continent’s legal systems with traditional Islamic law, or sharia.

Nikki Haley cites Trump’s Israel policies in RNC speech

(JTA) – Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, highlighted President Donald Trump’s Israel policies to make the case he has advanced a robust foreign policy. 

Haley depicted Joe Biden, the former vice president, and President Barack Obama as practicing a foreign policy of “weakness,” including their administration’s dealings with Iran. 

“Obama and Biden let Iran get away with murder and literally sent them a plane full of cash,” Haley said. “President Trump did the right thing and ripped up the Iran nuclear deal. Obama and Biden led the United Nations to denounce our friend and ally, Israel,” she added, referring to the Obama administration in its final days allowing to pass a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s West Bank settlements. Obama administration alumni say they were not involved in initiating the resolution and worked to temper it. The Obama administration did not vote for the resolution but withheld the U.S. veto, allowing it to pass.

“President Trump moved our embassy to Jerusalem – and when the U.N. tried to condemn us, I was proud to cast the American veto,” she said.

Haley, the former South Carolina governor, is seen as a leading contender for the GOP nomination in 2024. She has become popular on the centrist and right-wing pro-Israel speaker’s circuit.

At RNC, father of Parkland victim blames shooting on “far-left democrats”

(JTA) – Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow was among the victims of a gunman who attacked a high school in Parkland, Florida, delivered remarks at the opening night of the Republican convention. Pollack, who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, has praised the president in the past for emphasizing school safety instead of gun control.

“The president did what he said he would do,” Pollack, who is Jewish, said Monday, August 24. “He took action. He formed the School Safety Commission that issued dozens of recommendations to make schools safe.”

Pollack faulted “far-left Democrats in our school district” for overlooking signs that the gunman was planning violence. “Gun control laws didn’t fail my daughter,” Pollack said. “People did.” He added, “I truly believe the safety of our kids depends on whether this man is reelected,” Pollack said. “I hope you’ll join me in helping to make that happen.”

Pollack seemed to mock Joe Biden’s mental facilities, repeatedly referencing the time in 2019 when the Democratic candidate incorrectly stated that he had been vice president when the Parkland shooting took place.

Another Jewish father of a Parkland victim, Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was murdered, has become a leading gun-control activist. He appeared twice the previous week during the Democratic convention.