Rubio’s Israel stance would change the moment he ran for president, Vance ally Hazony claims

Marco Rubio would distance himself from Israel if he were preparing a presidential run, Yoram Hazony said in an interview in The Jerusalem Post studio.

“If Rubio were running for president right now,” Hazony said, “he would be backing off of Israel.”

Hazony, an Israeli-American political thinker who helped establish the national conservatism movement, has known US Vice President JD Vance since 2019. Vance has credited Hazony’s work with influencing his politics. The difference between the way Rubio and Vance speak about Israel, Hazony argued, has much to do with their presidential ambitions.

He predicted that Rubio would not run against Vance. If Vance lost, Rubio could have an opening later, perhaps with the vice president’s support. He allowed that circumstances could change.

People who still grouped Rubio with Nikki Haley had missed his evolution over the past decade, Hazony said. Rubio had become a contributor to nationalist thinking, writing for publications such as First Things and The American Mind. His staff and Vance’s came from the same circles.

Vance, Rubio staff from 'same talent pool,' share ideology

“They’re the same talent pool,” he said. “They’re the same ideological group as the people who work for Vance.”

Hazony is president of the Herzl Institute in Jerusalem and chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes the National Conservatism conferences. His books include The Virtue of Nationalism and Conservatism: A Rediscovery. In a 2021 interview with Jewish Insider, Vance said: “Yoram’s been quite influential to me.”

NatCon is a series of conferences where conservative politicians and writers debate the ideas behind the nationalist right. The Jerusalem event is scheduled for October 6–8, spanning the third anniversary of the Hamas attacks. Speakers include former Polish president Andrzej Duda, White House counterterrorism official Sebastian Gorka, and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar. The program covers immigration and national sovereignty, alongside the future of the American right and the Middle East after October 7.

Vance attended the first NatCon conference in 2019, Hazony recalled, and joined a debate from the floor. He was still known primarily as an author. Hazony said he also knew members of Vance’s staff and people involved in preparations for a possible presidential campaign.

“I know him, I like him. I think his attitudes are the right attitudes. I think he’ll make a good president,” he said.

Asked about Vance’s repeated insistence that Israel would not dictate American foreign policy, Hazony acknowledged why the language bothered Jewish and Israeli audiences.

“Why do you have to keep on saying that?” I asked.

“It is what a responsible Republican trying to become president needs to say right now,” he replied.

A candidate seeking the White House had to reckon with voters who wanted more distance from Israel, Hazony said. He believed even a small loss of voters sympathetic to Tucker Carlson could be enough to give the Democrats the presidency.

“The polling suggests actually something like 80% of young Republican men have a positive impression of him now,” he said of Carlson. He did not identify the poll, its date, or the age range surveyed.

Hazony was careful about what he thought that figure meant. Carlson’s supporters could value his years in conservative media or his opposition to war with Iran without sharing his views about Jews.

“The fact that people have a positive view of him doesn’t mean that they’re all becoming antisemites,” he said.

Jewish audiences also needed to reconsider what they expected to hear from American politicians, he argued. For years, presidents and candidates had spoken at length about their love for Jews and Israel. Hazony was skeptical about how much those declarations said about the policies that followed.

Vance’s description of Israel as a leading American ally alongside Britain and France struck him as an offer worth taking seriously.

“He’s naming America’s closest allies and putting Israel there,” he said.

Trump, Vance, Rubio vs Haley, Pompeo, Cruz

Younger conservatives could support an alliance with Israel on the basis of shared interests, he believed. They did not necessarily share their parents’ or grandparents’ attachment to the country.

Hazony placed Trump, Vance and Rubio at the center of today’s Republican Party. He grouped Haley, Mike Pompeo and Ted Cruz in a wing more committed to free trade and free markets, and more willing to use American power abroad. The distinctions, he explained, concerned economics and foreign policy as well as social issues.

He saw the alt-right as a relatively small electoral force with a much larger influence on what Republicans discussed. Carlson and a few others had “completely shifted the public debate within the Republican Party,” he said.

“In the last two years,” he said, “his show is the leading clearinghouse for antisemitism on the political right in America.”

Advocating a more distant US relationship with Israel was a legitimate policy position, Hazony said. He accused Carlson of promoting something far more hostile: a view of Jews as “a demonic force in history,” responsible for wars and intent on destroying Western societies.

He questioned how a party that accepted those ideas could retain Jews, Christian Zionists and other supporters of Israel.

Earlier this year, a mutual friend asked whether he would speak with Carlson. Hazony agreed. They spoke for more than an hour and 20 minutes about why he regarded Carlson’s broadcasts as antisemitic.

“I thought maybe he was listening,” he said.

Carlson later pressed for a speaking slot at the NatCon conference in Jerusalem. Hazony refused. With Carlson on the program, he said, speakers and audiences would stay away.

Hazony had made his account public in February, including his written response to Carlson’s request. Asked whether Carlson would attend the Jerusalem conference, he said: “He’s not coming.”

Hazony said Carlson’s sustained treatment of Jews informed that decision. He was wary of accusations based on an isolated remark or a social-media post, particularly when they ignored a person’s wider record or an apology. Such accusations, he said, could drive away people Jewish organizations should be trying to reach.

He agreed that Israel’s problems with American public opinion extended across both parties. Younger Americans often knew few Jews and little Jewish history, he said. He also worried about declining familiarity with the Hebrew Bible among Christians.

“On the left, the Bible’s disappeared, and on the right, the Old Testament is disappearing,” he said.

His daughter had been organizing trips to Israel for influential younger Christians on the American right. Some had antisemitic friends, he said. For many, meeting religious, nationalist Jews was a new experience.

“They have a lot of respect. Some of them are very attracted to it,” he said.

Hazony thought Jews were too quick to keep their distance from people who had yet to become enthusiastic supporters of Israel. He wanted more effort put into meeting them, bringing them to Israel and explaining Jewish life.

The same question arose about European nationalist parties, some of which made Jewish communities in their own countries uncomfortable. Asked about their histories and whether they had confronted past ties to Nazism, Hazony accepted the need to examine what had changed.

That required meeting people and testing their positions, he said. He made no promise that every attempt would succeed.

“You have to meet them. You have to talk to them,” he said. “You have to understand... what is it that they’re actually saying? What is it that they actually want?”