How will Israel define Nikki Haley’s next act in politics?
As President Donald Trump’s United Nations ambassador, Nikki Haley seized on Israel as her defining issue. It continues to be a political gift as Haley courts her base ahead of a potential 2024 presidential bid.
WASHINGTON
One year since leaving the Trump administration, Nikki Haley’s tenure at the United Nations is already paying back dividends as she plots the next steps in her political career.
The former U.N. ambassador’s embrace of Israel solidified her standing as a star of the right and endeared her to influential constituencies in a powerful political bloc should she seek higher office — like the presidency in 2024.
On the speaker circuit and in private dinners, the former Republican governor of South Carolina is building on a well-established national brand, nurturing a base of supporters and donors that will prove critical in any future political race.
“I’ve taken a break the past several months
from being very public,” Haley said in a recent interview with McClatchy. “But I’ve been spending time talking to people, talking about my views, and you’ll continue to see that ramp up more.”
Haley is now promoting a new memoir, “With All Due Respect,” that tells a story of how she “stumbled” on Israel as the issue that would come to define her career at the United Nations — and which has continued to shape her public persona ever since.
“The issue has resonated because, to people over all in America, they appreciate Israel’s values, they appreciate Israel’s fight,” Haley told McClatchy. “There are a lot of Jewish communities that go out of their way to thank me. I feel bad for that, because all I did was tell the truth.”
But Haley’s support of Israel is also a product of the kind of calculation that has defined other moments in her political ascent — and the result of taking advantage of being at the right place at the right time.
Rob Godfrey, Haley’s longtime spokesman in the governorship, said that Haley has always balanced principle and politics in the causes she has championed.
“While standing up to legislators and standing up for Israel were the right things to do on principle, making those signature issues and getting loud about them was the right thing to do politically,” Godfrey said. “Very few people are as good at making issues work for them as Nikki Haley.”
A VIRAL MOMENT
Haley was groomed for her U.N. post inside a political framework.
When she was selected by newly elected President Donald Trump as U.N. ambassador in the fall of 2016, she had a gaping foreign policy hole in her résumé.
As governor of South Carolina, the extent of her engagement with Israel was when, in 2015, she signed a law — the first of its kind in the country — to counter efforts to boycott, divest and sanction Israel over its policies toward the Palestinians.
In the lead-up to her confirmation hearings, Haley needed a crash course in international affairs. The Trump transition team supplied the tools.
Her briefing materials were culled mainly from experts with conservative points of view. Scholars with right-leaning think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and former Republican administration officials like Elliott Abrams were the tutors who helped inform Haley’s understanding of the global arena, including Israel.
She relied, too, on Jon Lerner, her longtime political consultant with an academic background in foreign relations, who would become her deputy at the United Nations.
When Haley was confirmed in early 2017, she also was aware the new administration wanted to do things differently at the
United Nations than had been done during former President Barack Obama’s tenure. Conditions inside the organization were ripe for her to do that.
She started amid fierce bipartisan anger with the outgoing Democratic administration for its abstention on a U.N. Security Council resolution that declared Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank as illegal activity. That U.S. abstention allowed the resolution to pass.
At one of her first media appearances with international press outside the Security Council, she admonished Obama’s decision and declared the days of “bashing Israel” were over on Trump’s watch.
A video clip of the press conference went viral, surprising even Haley at the fire she had ignited.
“That media drive-by went wild on the internet,” Haley recalled. “It was just like rapid fire, and I remember being so surprised because I didn’t even think it was that good.”
Going forward, Haley doubled down on her defense of Israel against those she called “bullies,” branding herself as the moral arbiter on an issue that has proved to be as emotional as it is divisive in the current political climate.
Israeli ambassador Danny Danon said Haley’s political instincts were what helped guide her forceful and effective rhetoric then and going forward. He described one episode on an early trip to Israel together where Haley directly confronted the general commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, claiming he had misled her about the conditions on the Lebanon border.
“I don’t think another diplomat would say it to his face,” Danon told McClatchy.
WORKING THE SYSTEM
Haley was in many ways the face of the Trump administration’s foreign policy, while other members of the president’s inner circle — primarily Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser — were chiefly responsible for shaping the administration’s vision for Israel policy.
Still, Haley found room to maneuver behind the scenes to make her mark on major decisions.
Privately, she was the most aggressive advocate of slashing Palestinian aid in National Security Council discussions involving the president, while also questioning the viability of an alternative to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Publicly, Haley remained a team player, giving voice to the most popular tenets of Trump’s Mideast policy. That is still the case: speaking of the administration’s pending peace plan, she told McClatchy that serious discussion of a two-state solution “is farther down the road.”
To this day Haley remains in contact with Kushner and Trump, acknowledging that, “certainly, if they ever wanted my opinion, I would be more than happy to talk to them and be helpful in any way that I can.”
“I don’t think any of us — Nikki at the U.N., myself at the White
House — I don’t think we should remain part of the administration if we don’t agree with the issues that we are working on,” said Jason Greenblatt, who served as Trump’s special representative for international negotiations until recently. “I believe that Nikki believes this in her gut, and therefore it was easy for her to work on the administration’s policy and help shape those policies related to Israel.”
The strategies that worked well for Haley at the U.N., though, might not carry over into the next chapter of her political career. Because of the cloistered nature of her ambassadorship, Haley was ultimately able to avoid answering some of the harder questions that she will be pressed on in any future campaign — not only regarding Israel, but on Middle East policy more generally.
Her campaigning will have to go beyond appearances before the appreciative, self-selecting audiences that have filled auditoriums to hear her speak and present her with awards, from the Greater Miami Jewish Federation to B’nai B’rith International.
“Obviously, if she plans to run for president, there’s more to U.S. foreign policy and even more to U.S. policy on the Middle East and Israel than defending Israel at the United Nations,” said Dan Shapiro, former U.S. ambassador to Israel under Obama. “And so there’s much work to be done on her part to articulate that.”
A READY-MADE POLITICAL COALITION
Shapiro, like many in Washington and the diplomatic community, sees clear signs of political maneuvering from Haley toward a bid for the White House in 2024.
“She gave herself time to do the things one does to lay the groundwork: write a book, go on the circuit, build relationships with donors and activists, establish herself across the country,” Shapiro said. Haley left the Trump administration at the end of 2018.
“It’s a well-established path, but she’s traveling it smartly,” he continued. “I don’t think there’s any mystery about it. And because there’s such an appetite for her to talk about Israel policy, it’s become a big part of that path.”
Haley has said repeatedly that, while she won’t rule out a return to politics, she has no current plans to run for any office.
But her steadfastness on the issue of Israel will continue to endear her to supporters. And in the meantime, her Israel-themed tour on the speaker circuit has helped to personally enrich the former ambassador, reportedly earning her up to $200,000 per event.
While she publicly disagreed with Trump on several foreign policy fronts throughout her tenure, she never expressed disagreement over Israel — even when the administration appeared to inch toward policy actions that risked bipartisan support for the state among members of Congress.
At a moment of increasing partisanship around Israel, her embrace of the Jewish state is only helping to elevate her among conservatives.
While 60% of Americans say they sympathize with Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians, only 43% of Democrats share that opinion, and only 3% of self-identified liberals express support for the country.
This decline in Democratic sympathy for Israel and stable Republican support has resulted in the largest partisan gap on Israel policy in 40 years.
The majority of American Jews vote Democratic and are broadly opposed to Trump administration policies, on both domestic and international affairs.
“Whether it’s promoted by Nikki Haley or anyone else who has served prominently in this administration, the far-right agenda and ideology of the Trump White House is abhorrent to the large majority of American Jews,” said Logan Bayroff, a spokesman for J Street, a progressive organization that primarily lobbies for a two-state solution.
“Unquestioning support for the actions of the [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu government might be very popular among evangelical Christians,” Bayroff continued, “but it won’t score any points among the over 75% of our community that is pro-Israel, pro-peace and firmly anti-Trump.”
Haley denied she was part of stoking those partisan flames.
“I don’t think it’s partisan,” Haley told McClatchy. “I think it’s an issue where you can’t be supportive of Israel when it’s convenient, you have to be because it’s right to be.”
But during the same interview, Haley also called out Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders for proposing conditions on U.S. aid to Israel — a position adopted by several fellow members of the current Democratic presidential field — and alleged that Democratic politicians have been unconscionably silent on diplomatic efforts to target the state.
“I would have liked to see them being louder on this,” she said.
Her own policy positions are unlikely to appeal to Democrats, but her stances will continue to energize a well-established coalition of Israel advocates among politically active, conservativeleaning Jewish and Christian communities.
One co-executive director of Christians United for Israel, the largest Israel advocacy group in the nation, said that mere mention of Haley’s name “elicits spontaneous and prolonged applause.”
As Haley was feted with an award from the World Jewish Congress at the Pierre Hotel in New York City last week, Ron Lauder — head of the organization and a major Republican donor — made clear to Haley that her fight for Israel would remain closely watched.
The award “comes with our gratitude, and with our deep appreciation,” Lauder said. “But it also comes at a price. You will not be able to rest because we expect even greater things from you.”