Jeff Ballabon, a prominent Orthodox Jewish political strategist who has worked with Presidents Donald Trump and George W. Bush, has revealed details of his involvement in major American political and diplomatic developments, including his efforts to reshape the Republican Party’s position on Israel, influence the Orthodox Jewish vote and prevent negotiations over the division of Yerushalayim.
In an extensive interview with journalist Eli Gotthelf on Kikar HaShabbat’s Kikar FM podcast, Ballabon, a Yale-trained attorney with longstanding connections to Republican political circles, also issued warnings about Iran’s potential threat to the United States and criticized Israel’s political system for what he described as its failure to prioritize the country’s long-term survival.
The interview, conducted approximately one week before Israel’s October 27 elections, covered Ballabon’s relationships with senior American officials, his involvement in the 2016 Republican Party platform, the political influence of chareidi voters in New York and his concerns about divisions within Israeli society.
One of Ballabon’s central claims was that Orthodox Jewish voters played a decisive role in helping Republicans secure control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections, an outcome he believes had far-reaching consequences for American support of Israel following the October 7 massacre.
Ballabon recalled developing a political strategy in the early 2000s that focused on the Orthodox community as a distinct voting constituency, rather than treating Jewish voters as a single political bloc.
He explained that chareidi communities across the United States share religious, educational and cultural interests that often transcend geographical boundaries.
“In America, politics is organized by states, but the chareidi community crosses geographical boundaries,” Ballabon explained. “An avreich in New York and an avreich in Los Angeles read the same Yated Ne’eman or Hamodia and listen to the same rabbonim.”
At the time, he said, Democrats generally assumed that Jewish voters would support them, while Republicans frequently considered the Jewish electorate beyond their reach.
Ballabon sought to challenge those assumptions by arranging meetings between Orthodox Jewish communities and conservative Christian lawmakers, emphasizing areas of shared concern such as religious education, family values and belief in the Bible.
Rather than focusing exclusively on Israel, he believed that Orthodox voters and Republican officials could establish stronger relationships through discussions about issues affecting their daily lives.
According to Ballabon, that strategy became especially consequential during the 2022 congressional elections, when disputes over government oversight of yeshiva education in New York helped mobilize Orthodox voters against Democratic candidates.
“The entire difference between Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives came down to four seats,” Ballabon said. “In New York, there are historically Democratic districts, ‘deep blue’ districts, with enormous chareidi populations. Suddenly, just weeks before the election, New York Democrats began threatening chareidi institutions and demanding intervention in secular studies. In response, the chareidim simply turned red, to the Republicans. They flipped four districts. The Republican majority in Congress is thanks to them.”
Ballabon argued that the Republican majority subsequently played an important role in supporting Israel after October 7, including congressional opposition to restrictions on weapons transfers and hearings examining antisemitism on American college campuses.
He suggested that the political environment would have been substantially different had Democrats controlled the White House and both chambers of Congress following the massacre.
“Think what would have happened if the Democrats had controlled the White House with Biden and both houses of Congress after the massacre,” he said. “We would have had no other side. There would have been no one to stop them.”
Ballabon also recounted an early encounter with President George W. Bush in Texas, which he described as an important moment in establishing his relationships with Republican leadership.
According to Ballabon, Bush noticed his yarmulke during their first meeting, approached him and made a personal commitment regarding his administration’s treatment of Jews and Israel.
“I promise you, I will not make the mistakes with the Jews and Israel that my father made,” Bush told him, according to Ballabon’s account.
Ballabon said he recognized Bush as a deeply religious Christian and believed that Orthodox Jewish leaders could establish a meaningful relationship with him through discussions about faith and morality.
Ahead of a White House Chanukah celebration, Ballabon arranged for a group of prominent Orthodox rabbonim to meet privately with the president before the larger event.
He explained that he wanted the meeting to challenge the perception that Orthodox Jewish representatives approached Washington primarily to request financial assistance for yeshivos and religious institutions.
“The left and the Reform movement always tried to portray us as people who come to Washington only to ask for budgets and money for yeshivos, while they supposedly speak about ‘values’ and Judaism,” Ballabon said. “I wanted the president to hear directly from the rabbonim a deep discussion about morality, family and covenant.”
He recalled that the participating rabbonim were deeply impressed by the president’s interest in their religious perspectives.
“When the rabbonim came out, they were stunned. They understood that if such a person sits in the White House waiting to hear a spiritual message from us, we have a historic responsibility that we are missing.”
Another episode Ballabon discussed involved efforts in 2006 to prevent then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert from advancing negotiations that could have resulted in the division of Yerushalayim.
According to Ballabon, Olmert and then-Justice Minister Chaim Ramon were pursuing discussions about the city’s future with the backing of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
Ballabon said he responded by contacting Israeli Knesset members and preparing a letter challenging the government’s authority to negotiate over Yerushalayim without parliamentary approval.
“I understood that Olmert was trying to establish facts on the ground. I called members of Knesset in Israel and told them, ‘Give me 36 hours,'” Ballabon recalled.
He said the letter cited Israel’s Basic Law concerning Yerushalayim and argued that the government lacked a mandate to negotiate over the city’s future without authorization from the Knesset.
“I drafted a letter in English explaining that under the Basic Law: Jerusalem, the government had no mandate to negotiate over the future of the city without Knesset approval. Within a day and a half, one of the Knesset members, who still serves today, obtained 72 signatures.”
Ballabon claimed that Olmert reacted angrily to the intervention but ultimately abandoned the initiative after seeing the opposition from lawmakers and municipal leaders.
“Olmert was furious and asked, ‘Who is this American interfering with me?’ But when he saw the 72 signatures, together with the opposition of mayors and council heads, he was forced to apologize and drop the matter.”
Turning to his relationship with Trump, Ballabon described his involvement in the president’s first election campaign and his work on the Republican Party’s official platform in 2016.
He said he served as an authorized campaign surrogate, regularly appearing on major television networks to defend Trump’s candidacy and present Republican positions.
“Already in 2016, I worked as a surrogate for Trump,” Ballabon said. “I would sit in the CNN and MSNBC studios as the Republican voice opposite entire panels of leftists.”
His most significant contribution, he maintained, came during the drafting of the Republican Party platform, when he worked with other activists to revise the party’s language concerning Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ballabon said the group removed explicit support for a two-state solution, rejected the characterization of Israel as an occupying power and sought to replace terminology commonly used in diplomatic discussions with language emphasizing the Jewish historical connection to Yehuda and Shomron.
“A few friends and I drafted that historic platform,” he said. “First, we completely removed the idea of ‘two states.’ We determined that we support Israel, and what Israel decides to do is its own business.”
He continued by explaining the changes concerning Israel’s territorial claims.
“Second, we inserted a clause explicitly stating that we reject the lie that calls Israel an ‘occupier.’ And finally, we removed the term ‘West Bank’ and used the term ‘Judea and Samaria.'”
Ballabon argued that the terminology carried considerable political and historical significance, saying that the term West Bank had emerged during the period of Jordanian control and obscured the Jewish connection to the territory.
“People here in Israel do not understand how critical this is,” he said. “‘West Bank’ is a fictitious term from the 19 years of Jordanian occupation, intended to sever our historical connection.”
According to Ballabon, Trump enthusiastically embraced the revised platform, publicly describing it as the most pro-Israel platform ever adopted by the Republican Party and indicating that it would guide his administration’s policies.
The conversation also turned to the Oslo Accords and their long-term consequences for Israel’s international standing.
Ballabon argued that the Israeli government’s decision to negotiate with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s fundamentally changed the way Israel’s conflict with Palestinian Arabs was understood internationally.
He recalled that American lawmakers, particularly those influenced by biblical teachings, had traditionally regarded the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisroel as an established historical and religious reality.
“Until Oslo, the world, and especially the Christian world educated on the Bible, knew that the Land of Israel belonged to the Jews,” Ballabon said. “The PLO was perceived as a murderous terrorist organization.”
He said American colleagues expressed bewilderment when Israel began negotiating directly with the organization.
“When Israel sat down with them for negotiations, my colleagues in the Senate did not understand what we were doing. They asked me, ‘Why are you giving legitimacy to murderers?'”
Ballabon further argued that the emphasis on Zionism as a political ideology, rather than Jewish peoplehood and historical identity, had weakened Israel’s ability to defend itself against accusations from its opponents.
“We took an ancient historical people and turned its connection to its land into ‘Zionism,’ which is essentially a political idea,” he said.
He contended that this shift made it easier for critics of Israel to present their opposition as a rejection of a political movement rather than hostility toward Jews.
“In the Western world, it is completely acceptable to hate a political idea. So when we are only ‘Zionists’ and they are a ‘people,’ it becomes very easy for antisemites to hide behind the claim that they are merely ‘anti-Zionists.'”
Ballabon also claimed that the Palestinian national identity had been strengthened by Israel’s own diplomatic decisions, while Jewish historical identity had been pushed aside in favor of political terminology.
“We are the ones who gave the PLO its national identity and threw our own peoplehood and Judaism into the garbage,” he asserted.
A particularly serious warning in the interview concerned Iran and the possibility of an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, attack against the United States.
Ballabon argued that Americans who view the confrontation with Iran primarily through the lens of rising gasoline prices fail to appreciate what he considers a direct threat to American national security.
“Many Americans complain today that they are paying more for gasoline because of ‘Israel’s war with Iran,'” Ballabon said. “They do not understand that Iran is an immediate existential threat to the United States, no less than to Israel.”
He claimed that congressional discussions dating back to 2008 had examined Iranian plans involving electromagnetic weapons capable of disrupting American infrastructure.
“Already in 2008, when Israel began sounding the alarm about Iran’s nuclear program, concrete Iranian plans to destroy the United States using an EMP weapon were revealed in Congress,” he said.
Ballabon described a scenario in which a nuclear device detonated high above the United States could produce an electromagnetic pulse affecting electrical systems and other critical infrastructure.
“Iran has the capability to launch a satellite and detonate a single nuclear bomb in the atmosphere above the United States,” he claimed. “Such an explosion would disable America’s electricity, communications and water systems for years.”
He further asserted that official studies had warned of catastrophic casualties, potentially reaching 90 percent of the American population, in the event of a prolonged nationwide infrastructure collapse. That figure is a disputed worst-case estimate, however, rather than an established government prediction, and his claims about Iran’s present ability to carry out such an attack have not been independently established.
Ballabon maintained that the danger underscores the strategic importance of the American-Israeli relationship, arguing that Israeli military and intelligence operations against Iran protect American interests as well as Israel’s security.
“When people ask me who helps whom more in the Middle East, I tell Americans: Israel is saving you,” he said.
The discussion then shifted to Israel’s approaching elections and the differences Ballabon sees between American and Israeli political campaigns.
He argued that American elections generally center on economic conditions and quality-of-life concerns, while Israeli elections involve questions of national security and the country’s continued existence.
“You cannot compare them,” Ballabon said. “In America, 90 percent of the public does not even follow the news until election time, and we have a primary system that forces a candidate to be extreme at the beginning and then move toward the center.”
He continued, “But the fundamental difference is that in America, elections are about the economy and quality of life. In Israel, elections are about life itself. About survival.”
Ballabon also criticized Israel’s parliamentary system and the absence of a single formal constitution, arguing that governments are frequently forced to prioritize short-term political survival over difficult strategic decisions.
“Democracy in America is based on a constitution that protects a supreme value — liberty,” he said. “Israel has no constitution, but your supreme value must be the survival of the Jewish people.”
He contended that democratic institutions lose their legitimacy when political decisions threaten what he regards as the country’s fundamental security interests.
“When a judicial or political system allows democratic decisions that harm your survival as a Jewish state, democracy loses its justification,” Ballabon argued.
He also criticized the influence of smaller parties in coalition governments, claiming that the constant possibility of a government collapse discourages prime ministers from making difficult long-term decisions.
“Your parliamentary system, in which every small party can bring down a government, causes prime ministers to run away from strategic decisions, like dealing with Gaza for 20 years, just to survive politically for another year,” he said.
Toward the conclusion of the interview, Ballabon turned from politics and national security to a message about Jewish unity and responsibility.
He recalled a meeting in Yerushalayim with several Christian groups supportive of Israel that had become embroiled in disagreements with one another.
Ballabon said he urged them to consider the Jewish understanding of the relationship between Hashem and His children, emphasizing the importance of people treating one another with love and respect.
“We Jews have a message for the world, and we have lived it for thousands of years,” he recalled telling the participants. “The Ribono Shel Olam is infinite, but He asks us to look at Him as a father.”
He explained that a father’s love for his children remains constant even when they make mistakes, but that a particularly important source of happiness is seeing his children care for one another.
“What makes a father happiest? When his children love one another,” Ballabon said. “If you want to be part of this great story, start by loving one another.”
Reflecting on the aftermath of the October 7 massacre, Ballabon described the powerful sense of unity he witnessed among Israelis during the first months of the war.
He said that whenever he leaves Israel, he ordinarily looks out of the airplane window at the landscape below. But on his first flight out of the country following the massacre, his attention was drawn instead to the people.
“Whenever I leave Israel, my eyes drink in this beautiful land,” he recalled. “But on my first flight out after the massacre, I did not look at the land. I looked at the people. The unity that existed here during those first months was the holiest and most special thing in the world.”
With Israel approaching another election amid intense political divisions, Ballabon urged the public not to abandon the solidarity that emerged after October 7.
“Now, just before elections, everyone is once again pointing accusing fingers and fighting with one another,” he said.
He concluded with an appeal for Israelis to recognize the dangers of internal division, invoking a familiar expression associated with America’s founding era.
“Our realpolitik, as the founding fathers in America said, is that if we do not hang together, we will hang separately. Our enemies watched the fighting in the streets before the massacre. I beg you, do not lose that unity. If we are not together, the world will be very happy to sit on the sidelines and watch us destroy ourselves.”
{Matzav.com}
