Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
Attorney Mark Zell, chairman of the Republican Party in Israel, shared with Arutz 7 his thoughts on the recent debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, as well as the upcoming US election on November 5.
Debate results: Draw
According to Tsel, the debate ended in a draw: “Kamala Harris exceeded all our expectations; she was well prepared, at least from her point of view. But the moderators really caught Donald Trump off guard. It was obvious from the beginning. They fact-checked Trump on a number of issues, but never once bothered to fact-check Harris. It wasn’t a surprise. For example, ABC conducted a pre-debate poll that found that of all their campaign coverage, Kamala Harris was covered 100% positively, while Donald Trump was covered 93% negatively. You always hope that the moderators will do their job honestly, but in this case they had no shame at all. They just did what they did.”
Results of polls: Equal result
Tzel also noted poll results: “The first was a CNN poll that showed 63% thought Harris won the debate. But there were two other polls with very large samples — one of 86,000 respondents and the other of over 100,000 — that showed Trump winning 60% to Harris’ 40%. So, roughly speaking, the public did not see Harris as the clear winner of this debate. That’s why I say the result was pretty close, and like most debate results, it will have relatively little effect on the final outcome of the election,” predicted Celz.
Harris as an alter ego of Biden and Obama
Tzel added that Trump should make it clear to the public that Kamala Harris is just an alter ego of Biden and Obama: “Kamala is not a new face. It’s even worse than the old one because Kamala Harris is a conscious progressive. She did not abandon her radical leftist views; she’s just trying to hide them. Bernie Sanders recently said: ‘Kamala Harris’ politics have not changed. She’s just being pragmatic.'”
A blow to US-Israel relations: Target’s forecast
Regarding US-Israeli relations, Tzel said: “I’m not sure about Trump’s final predictions for Israel if Kamala Harris wins, but it’s bad news for Israel. You can see it in the way she treated Netanyahu when he came to a joint session of Congress and in the way she addressed him after she neglected him on Capitol Hill. I understand that he learned a real lesson during that meeting. What’s more, you can hear her and Tim Walz talk about US relations with Israel. On the one hand, she says that Israel has the right to defend itself – and that’s very nice of her. Every sovereign country has this right. Israel does not need permission from the US to defend itself, but it always balances this against the so-called suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza. For example, she sternly warned Israel against entering Rafah, saying there was no room for a million refugees and it would be a humanitarian disaster. After the IDF moved in, after delaying too long, the hostages were found, but they were killed. This is what we can expect from the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz administration.”
Biden Administration Sanctions: Negative Impact on Israel
Tzel also commented on the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration: “Sanctions are a decree issued by the Biden White House on February 1 of this year. It was announced as a way to deal with extremist settlers in Judea and Samaria, but when you read the decree, you see that it had relatively little to do with extremist settlers and everything to do with people who oppose the administration’s two-state solution policy . So, the presidential decree allows sanctions to be imposed on anyone who objects and actively opposes the ‘two states’ (including me). For us Israelis, this means that the Israeli banks will immediately step in and stop all our banking activities in Israel. This is a real blow. It also prohibits anyone under sanctions from obtaining a visa to enter the United States, which is why we have filed a lawsuit in federal court in Texas to challenge the constitutionality and legality of this executive order.”
Protest against humanitarian aid: The response of the Biden administration
Tzel also cited the example of the Tsav 9 organization, whose activists protested against the so-called “humanitarian aid” to Gaza: “This protest was unacceptable to the Biden administration, and it imposed sanctions on the leader, a mother of eight children from Netivot. It has nothing to do with Judea and Samaria, and the protest has nothing to do with Judea and Samaria. But this is only the beginning. The White House recently sanctioned an IDF soldier who was just doing his peacekeeping job, and while they impose these very tough sanctions on Israelis and dual Israeli-American citizens, they have never sanctioned actual terrorists.”
