J.D. Vance Wants the Jews to Keep Quiet

Peloni:  I would ask that we recall VP Vance‘s outrageous statement at the end of his visit to Jerusalem last year.  Indeed, one day after describing Israel as not being a vassal or client state of the US, he fumed about a vote taken by the Israeli Knesset which demonstrated nothing more than support for Israeli sovereignty over Israeli lands.  While using the pejorative term West Bank, Vance announced firmly,

“The West Bank is not going to be annexed by Israel. The policy of the Trump administration is that the West Bank will not be annexed by Israel. That will continue to be our policy. And if people want to take symbolic votes, they can do that.”

Note that Vance emphasizes the use of the pejorative term West Bank to describe Judea and Samaria, something which is common in the US, but he follows this asserting that no annexation of these lands will take place as if he were in fact issuing a veto over some legislation in the US Congress.  While he has no such authority even in the US, he certainly has no such authority in Israel to do the same.  More specifically, Vance went on to assail the Israeli Knesset for any attempt to annex their lands describing it as “a very stupid political stunt”.  Note that Vance employs a straw man tactic of describing a symbolic statement on extending sovereignty over Judea and Samaria as being the act of “annexation” over these lands.  The use of distorted facts seems to be a ongoing theme with Vance as he also misrepresented the objections raised by Israeli ministers as some form of “attack” on President Trump.  Geopolitical partnerships, such as exists between the US and Israel, require mutual respect reflective in any public commentary between the partners, rather than the condescending and dishonest portrayals which Vance appears to prefer instead.  This pattern of using straw men arguments of annexation and abusive ministers is diminishing to the partnership which Vance once claimed he valued, and it also belies the reality that partnerships are based on mutual respect and consideration for the ties between them if for no other reason than to preserve the relationship in question.  Indeed, it would appear that the relationship between these two great nations is the real target of Vance’s use of manufactured straw man tactics assailing the Israeli govt as being both “stupid” and “ungrateful”, something which would be better expected from an anti Israel pundit such as Vance’s good friend Tucker Carlson, than from the official representative of one half of the US-Israeli alliance in the comments of the Vice President himself. 

by Rafael Medoff

Vance describing Israel as a partner rather than as a vassal to the US. October 22, 2026. Screengrab via Youtube.

Vice President J.D. Vance wants the Jews to keep quiet.

At his June 18 press conference, Vance was asked whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has criticized the Trump administration’s agreement with Iran.

The vice president could have simply said “No.” Instead, he seized the opportunity to blast several Israeli cabinet ministers who have expressed concern about America’s surprising concessions to Iran.

“Anybody in Israel” who doubts President Trump’s support for the Jewish state “needs to wake up,” the vice president said. He warned the cabinet ministers that they “should not be attacking” the Iran deal, since the U.S. is “the only powerful ally” that Israel has “anywhere left in the entire world.”

Vance is not the first political leader to lose his temper because somebody, somewhere, criticized a policy of his. And it’s not the first time the vice president has tried to bully an American ally through the tactic of public shaming.

Recall how he tried to humiliate Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky last year by haranguing him in front of the news media, falsely accusing the Ukrainians of “not being grateful” for the assistance America has given them.

Israeli leaders have been the targets of such diplomatic ambushes on more than one occasion. In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger tried to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to make risky concessions to Egypt, by telling reporters (as “a senior American official”) that Rabin was being “intransigent” and therefore the U.S. had no choice but to “reassess” its relationship with Israel. That included suspending American arms shipments to Israel for several months.

In 1990, Secretary of State James Baker—acting on a suggestion made by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman—sarcastically recited the White House telephone number in front of the news media and declared that Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir should call “when he is serious about peace.”

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush tried to intimidate American Jews who were seeking U.S. loan guarantees for Israel. He complained to reporters that he was “one lonely little guy” who was surrounded by “something like a thousand lobbyists.”

In 2010, President Barack Obama abruptly left a meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu and kept him waiting for hours while he went to dine with the First Lady and their children. Obama’s aides then leaked the snub to reporters to show how the president had put the Israeli leader in his place.

Seven years ago, I wrote a book called The Jews Should Keep Quiet (published by the Jewish Publication Society and University of Nebraska Press). The title was a close paraphrase of something that President Franklin D. Roosevelt said to the era’s foremost American Jewish leader, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, on multiple occasions when he wanted to prevent the Jewish community from criticizing his policies regarding Jewish refugees or Zionism.

In one instance, President Roosevelt spoke to Wise about “the necessity of Jews lying low.” On another occasion, FDR warned Wise that if Jewish leaders were too vocal, it would “enable Americans to say that the fellows who wrote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion had some justification.”

Roosevelt’s strategy of intimidation was successful. Rabbi Wise refrained from publicly challenging the administration’s abandonment of European Jewry, and even declined to support several pro-Jewish and pro-Zionist congressional resolutions because FDR opposed them.

It sounds as if Vice President Vance is hoping for a similar outcome today. If so, he’s likely to be disappointed. Today’s American Jewish community is not the same as that of the 1930s and 1940s. The U.S. Jewish protest movements for Israel and Soviet Jewry demonstrated that this is a generation committed to not repeating the mistakes of earlier times.

Israeli cabinet ministers and American friends of Israel alike understand that speaking their minds is part and parcel of a democratic society. Given the dire threats facing Israel and world Jewry today, keeping quiet is not an option.

Dr. Medoff is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the author of more than 20 books about Jewish history, Zionism, and the Holocaust. Follow him on Facebook to read his daily commentaries on the news.

***As published by the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles – June 22, 2026

https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/389368/vance-wants-the-jews-to-keep-quiet/