A Jewish Democrat who is suing Harvard over antisemitism on campus following the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel explained to Fox News Digital his decision to endorse former President Donald Trump.
Shabbos Kestenbaum, who's testified before Congress and addressed the Republican National Convention in recent months about antisemitic threats on American college campuses, waited until Sept. 5 to announce that he was endorsing Trump during a speech at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Summit. In an interview with Fox News Digital this week, Kestenbaum, who registered as a Democrat when he turned 18 and has voted for Democratic candidates, including President Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and former Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., said he could not support Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024.
"To sort of paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I don't feel that I've abandoned the Democratic Party. I do feel that the Democratic Party abandoned me," Kestenbaum said, explaining that he still supports progressive polices, including a $15 minimum wage, "reproductive choices for women," and "progressive taxation." "But at the end of the day, when American Jewry is facing an existential crisis, we are faced with a binary choice. And I think in the electoral zero-sum game, the binary choice would be President Trump. I think he would just be better for the core issues that are affecting me, that are affecting the American Jewish community."
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After many months of trying to work with the Harris campaign, the White House and Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate, Kestenbaum said he came to the conclusion that even though he did not vote for Trump in the 2016 or 2020 elections – or even five months ago – he would support him in 2024 because Trump is the "only realistic and viable option for American Jewry."
Kestenbaum argued Trump has outlined specific, "practical policy solutions," including withholding federal funds to universities that violate the civil rights of Jewish students and "giving Israel whatever tools they need to dismantle Hamas and release the hostages," while the Biden-Harris administration and Harris' presidential campaign "have done nothing."
"They haven't earned our vote. They've ignored our questions or they've given us plainly contradictory answers. And they're taking our votes for granted," he said of the Harris campaign. "So American Jewry, listen up. We will be the deciding factor in this election. There are enough of us in Michigan, in Arizona, in Georgia, in Nevada to really sway this election."
Because Biden won states like Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by small margins of between 13,000 to 30,000 votes in the 2020 election, and Jewish Americans make up anywhere from 1 to 3% of the population in those states, Kestenbaum said Jewish voters "will be the crucial deciding factor" in 2024. According to Kestenbaum, Trump is on track to receive the most Jewish votes for any Republican presidential nominee since President Dwight Eisenhower, which he credits to the Trump campaign as having "really been courting the Jewish vote in a way that the Harris campaign just never has."
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"Jewish Americans will be pivotal in this election," Kestenbaum said. "What I would urge the Jewish communities across the country, what I would urge my community, is we know what our issues are."
"And I urge you, if you care about those policy prescriptions, if you care about the releasing of the hostages, you care about the strengthening of the U.S.-Israel relationship, you care about combating antisemitism on our college campuses, just look at the facts. Look at the data," he said. "Harris has not outlined anything she would do specifically to alleviate those concerns. President Trump has. I get we don't like his persona. I get we don't like many of his policies. But at the end of the day, we are facing an existential issue. And I think there's only one viable choice, and that's President Trump."
Kestenbaum said when he spoke to the RNC in July, he ad-libbed significant portions of his speech from the teleprompter to omit the parts explicitly endorsing Trump because he wanted to show he was "bipartisan" and keep an open mind before attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago the next month. It took him two hours to get back to his seat after addressing the RNC because so many people came up to him with messages of support and prayers for the hostages who remained held in Gaza, he said.
Kestenbaum said he told DNC leadership that if they didn't want to amplify him at the convention, then at least consider amplifying other Jewish students "who are fighting for their civil rights on college campuses, who are experiencing unprecedented antisemitism, and we never got a response."
When he first testified before the House Education and the Workforce Committee about his experiences of antisemitism on Harvard's campus after Oct. 7, Kestenbaum said "it was pretty remarkable that the majority of the Democratic leadership didn't even show up, and then the ranking Democratic member, Bobby Scott, he used his opening remarks to criticize Republicans for focusing on antisemitism. ‘We need to be combating Islamophobia. We need to be combatting sexism,’ which is true in theory, but had nothing to do with the reality on the ground and what we were there to testify on."
"And I didn't want to say anything. I want it to be bipartisan or even nonpartisan. But these incidents just kept on happening. And whether it was the House Judiciary Committee ranking member, Democrat Jerry Nadler, falling asleep when I was giving testimony, it was deeply hurtful and offensive," Kestenbaum said. "And again, I didn't want to say these things because I'm a Democrat and I went to the Democratic convention with an open mind and also with a mission to sort of change my party, to steer them into it, into a direction that would be more palpable for me and American Jewry. And it was very clear that at least for this election in 2024, they're either unable or unwilling to make serious inroads with the American Jewish community. And that's a direct result of them taking us for granted for decades."
He said he is still a registered Democrat and "is not ready to throw in the towel yet," but he can't decide why the Democratic Party is increasingly shifting toward more anti-Israel rhetoric.
"The state of Israel is a progressive issue. I mean, this is a place where not only can LGBTQ individuals be full members of society, but they serve in Israeli parliament," he said. "This is a hotbed of democracy in an otherwise volatile, regressive region of the world. Israel is a vital ally that provides intelligence gathering to the United States. So why are we de-legitimizing? Why are we demoting a staunchly progressive ally? And I can't understand why my Democratic Party insist that this is proper politics."
He also took issue with Harris for skipping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress earlier this year, and for what he categorized as inadequate policy proposals on the Israel-Hamas war that the Democratic nominee finally added to her campaign website this week 50 days after entering the race.
"If Kamala Harris is working around the clock to secure a cease-fire deal and the return of the hostages, then I would shudder to think what four more years would do because she is not working around the clock. And if she is, she's doing a pretty crappy job at that," Kestenbaum told Fox News Digital. "She does not deserve our support. She does not deserve our votes. It's also telling that after 50 days of having zero policies, she doesn't outline policy. She outlines aspirations and goals. Nothing. Nothing that she said on her website, in the one interview she has given, talks about the dismantling of Hamas as a terrorist organization."
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"If a cease fire was agreed to, Hamas would still be in power," he continued. "It is laughable to say that she is working around the clock when we know that President Biden has been eating ice cream on the beaches of Delaware for almost the entirety of the summer. And if she is working around the clock, then as I said, she's doing a bad job. And why would we want her to continue to work around the clock for four years when she can't even get the job done now? So we don't need what I like to call the Beatle-Juicing of a cease fire, simply stating it three times and hoping that it'll appear. We need bold action. Under her leadership, under her watch, 45 Americans were killed in the Middle East, eight American hostages are still being held, and she talks nothing about dismantling this terrorist organization to prevent this from ever happening again."
Harris' website mentions Israel under a subsection titled, "Stand With Our Allies, Stand Up to Dictators, and Lead on the World Stage," where the campaign promises Harris "will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to protect U.S. forces and interests from Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups." It goes on to say Harris "will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and she will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself" and she and Biden "are working to end the war in Gaza, such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination." The campaign vows the vice president and Biden "are working around the clock to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done."
