The American Jewish Committee (AJC) will be hosting events alongside both the Republican and Democratic national conventions this year, amid increasingly heightened political vitriol and divisiveness that reached an inflection point over the weekend. On Saturday, a man tried to assassinate former president Donald Trump by firing multiple rounds at him during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
After the Republican National Convention officially kicked off Monday afternoon in Milwaukee, the entire world held its breath, waiting to see Trump make his first appearance since he was rushed off stage with blood dripping down his face.
The AJC will be one of the only nonpartisan Jewish groups participating in conjunction with the convention, including a panel on Tuesday called Israel and the Path to Peace, where Eliav Benjamin, deputy chief of the Mission at the Embassy of Israel, will be delivering remarks, as well as hosting a diplomatic reception on Wednesday.
“In every political cycle, we’re looking not just toward what the parties are doing and what’s going to be on their platform, like how they talk about Israel, antisemitism, and other issues of importance to the Jewish community,” Julie Fishman Rayman, the AJC’s managing director of Policy and Political Affairs, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.
“We also prioritize actually physically being in the space to drive the conversations,” she added.
Rayman said that this campaign cycle, the AJC decided to host one panel focusing on Israel and its path to peace alongside each convention to hear diverse viewpoints from both parties.
Conventions are political spectacles
While much of the world’s focus will be on Trump’s recovery and the investigation surrounding what led to the assassination attempt, the AJC will be focusing on policy issues.
“Whenever there’s something that pulls the public consciousness away for a moment, to try to go back to the grounding of policy is really important,” Rayman stressed, noting that while the conventions are political spectacles, they are also where platform statements are endorsed by the party.
It is less about what is on each party’s platform and more about what will come from it, Rayman said, describing the differences between the Republicans’ brief document and the Democrats’ more detailed policy proposals.
The Republican platform doubles down on its support for Israel and for revoking visas of foreign nationals who “support terrorism and jihadism.”
“The question then becomes: What does that look like in terms of implementation? So, if Trump is reelected as president, how is he going to translate those concepts into policy?” she asked. “Who is going to be doing the implementing, and what is it really going to look like?”
Rayman is looking for policies that acknowledge antisemitism and its uniqueness, given that 87% of American Jews have said that antisemitism has risen since October 7 and is a serious problem in the United States.
She wants to know how federal agencies under a potential Trump administration will address antisemitism, as she said there has been a ton of “really amazing, interdepartmental, interagency work because of the US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.”
“Will that kind of innovative collaboration between agencies continue? Is there room for that?” she asked.
Specifically, Rayman referenced Trump’s desire to eliminate the Department of Education, the federal agency overseeing Title VI or shared ancestry discrimination in schools. The department opened investigations regarding allegations of antisemitism concerning dozens of public k-12 school districts as well as colleges and universities that receive federal funding.
“If that enforcement agency goes away, what are we doing on campus?” Rayman punctuated.
That is where the devil, or opportunity, is in the details, she added.
In terms of Israel policy, Rayman said that at the end of the day, the AJC wants to see a cessation of fighting in a way that allows Gaza not to be ruled by Hamas and for the hostages to be brought back home.
Then, in the “day after,” the focus can go back to the progress seen in both the Trump and Biden administrations of regional integration and normalization, and all of the work in relation to the Abraham Accords continues to grow.
American Jews typically go to the ballot box and vote on issues that look like the same kitchen table issues all Americans are voting on, like education, healthcare, and the economy, according to Rayman.
She thinks that as Jews at this moment are realizing that their place in America is starting to feel more vulnerable, the issue of antisemitism and how Jews “fit into the American fabric” can also be on that list, no matter what their other priorities are.
Rayman hopes American Jews are looking at what candidates have said and are saying about American pluralism, hate crimes, civility, and specifically, antisemitism.
“You already have a Jewish community that is increasingly feeling vulnerable and feeling sort of this existential threat,” she said. “This is really jarring for a lot of people and that’s the zeitgeist of this conversation – that there is this concern and it’s only exacerbated when there’s political upheaval.”
The AJC will be holding the same events at the Democratic National Convention in August.