There were various entries in outrageous and actually embarrassing calls for a “‘Israel über alles” policy, made by Republican officials at the Oct. 27-29 Republican Jewish Coalition gathering in Las Vegas. Going into the event, Sen. Lindsey Graham appeared to be in the lead, with his clear advice. As reported by the daily Haaretz, he called for Israel to do in Gaza “whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself—level the place.” Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis (one of the first on the congressional “Temple Mount” tour) came to the event having just banned the Florida campus chapters of Students for Justice for Palestine. He also led the charge against rival candidate Nikki Haley, accusing her of wanting the U.S., as Haaretz put it, “to accept Gazans as refugees—an allegation that deeply offended Haley, who cited her opposition to letting Syrian refugees in while she was UN ambassador.”
Amidst such tough competition, Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential precandidate, appeared not to have a chance. He has repeatedly spoken online with Tucker Carlson to express his skepticism of U.S. support for Israel’s war. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said about giving unconditional U.S. support for Israel, “and we can draw clearer red lines when we’re just honest about the fact that U.S. leaders should act in the U.S. national interest.” Yet, in Las Vegas, he was up to the challenge:
“Now is the moment for Israel to return to its founding premise: the Jewish State has an absolute right to exist. A Divine gift, gifted to a Divine nation, charged with a Divine purpose. Israel has an absolute and unequivocal right and responsibility to defend itself to the fullest, applying the only language its adversaries understand: the language of force. And what would David Ben-Gurion say? Don’t depend on anyone else’s fleeting sympathies or permission to do it. If Israel wants to destroy Hamas, Israel should go ahead and destroy Hamas. If Israel wants to destroy Hezbollah, Israel should go ahead and destroy Hezbollah. If Israel and Mossad wants to pull off Munich 2.0 and take out every last leader of Hamas wherever they may be hiding, from Doha to Dresden, and host a red wedding at the Four Seasons in Qatar the next time Haniyeh and Mashaal show up, they should go ahead and do it.”
A brief video from Las Vegas provides a glimpse into the fury behind the words:
“I would love nothing more than the IDF to put the heads of the top 100 Hamas leaders on stakes and line them up on the Gaza-Israel border as a sign that October 7, 2023 will never happen again, and then to use all of those same resources to build the border defenses of the future.… That is what David ben-Gurion would tell Israel to do.…”
