Trump’s Pro-Israel/Anti-Hamas Attorney General
Pam Bondi, whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to be his attorney general, is yet another pro-Jewish/ pro-Israel pick by the 47th president.
On Thursday, Trump named Bondi, who served as Florida attorney general from 2011 to 2019. The nomination came after his first pick, former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew following meetings with Republican senators, who believed that allegations of sexual predation and drug use, which he has denied, would prevent his approval.
In contrast, Bondi’s confirmation process is expected to face fewer hurdles.
Bondi has been vocal about taking a hard line against antisemitism. She said last year that campus protesters who express support for Hamas should face FBI questioning. On Friday, Jewish Insider uncovered an interview Bondi gave Newsmax, the conservative news outlet, last year about the spike in anti-Israel protests on American campuses following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack. In the interview with news host Chris Salcedo, Bondi said, “The students who protest against our Jewish friends and support Hamas – they should be deported from our country; they are ignorant children.”
In the weeks after the attacks, many protesters praised the attacks. The more ‘moderate’ protesters focused on condemning Israel’s counterattacks, blaming Israel for the war.
“The thing that really was troubling to me, these students in universities in our country — whether they’re here as Americans or if they’re here on student visas — and they’re out there saying, ‘I support Hamas,’” she said in the Oct. 23, 2023, interview. “Frankly, they need to be taken out of our country, or the FBI needs to be interviewing them right away when they’re saying, ‘I support Hamas. I am Hamas.’ That’s not saying I support all these poor Palestinians who are trapped in Gaza.”
The Republican Party platform, released in July, calls for the deportation of noncitizens who back Hamas and terrorism. The Republican party pledged to “make our college campuses safe and patriotic again.” Trump and his advisers have also called for deporting foreign students who organize pro-Hamas protests.
Bondi is also vocally pro-Israel. In 2018, while serving as Florida’s Attorney-General, she was interviewed by Fox News and was asked about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“Israel is one of our greatest allies in the world, if not the greatest,” Bondi said as part of an interview about concerns of escalation in the Middle East. “I visited Israel twice as Attorney-General, and Jerusalem is Israel’s capital.”
“One of the concerns is that Palestinians, of course, expect their own homeland. Whether that will ever happen, the key would be making East Jerusalem its capital,” said program host Neil Cavuto.
“President Trump has always said Jerusalem is the capital. And now it’s officially the capital. And we didn’t wait years. We didn’t spend a billion dollars to do it. The President said it would happen, and it happened. So he’s not giving up on other things. We’re saying it will be negotiated. Nothing else has been finalized regarding borders or other issues. But this is a very important step for the Israeli people,” Bondi declared.
In that interview, she also took a hard line concerning the nuclear deal with Iran.
“We’re alone, but we’re brave. And this shows strength. And leaving the nuclear deal was probably one of the smartest things we could do. Iran lied to us for years about their nuclear weapons. There were no inspections. And this must stop. And the United States, President Trump knows how to hit them. We saw it with China. He knows what to do, how to hit them in trade, in the financial market, in the economy, everything he can do to influence them to stop producing these nuclear weapons and providing tools to Hamas and Hezbollah.”
A member of the Republican Party, Bondi served as Florida attorney general from 2011 to 2019, the first woman elected to the office. In 2020, Bondi was one of President Donald Trump’s defense lawyers during his first impeachment trial.
She has a record of pro-Israel statements, lining her up with most of Trump’s other cabinet picks, though she has also lobbied for Qatar’s government, according to Semafor.
Some Jewish Republicans were wary of Gaetz because he voted earlier this year against emergency defense assistance for Israel and also opposed a bill that would codify an official definition of antisemitism and invited a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union address.
Bondi has been a vocal critic of the criminal cases against Trump. In one radio appearance, she blasted Jack Smith and other prosecutors who have charged Trump as “horrible” people she said were trying to make names for themselves by “going after Donald Trump and weaponizing our legal system.”
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