US Vice President JD Vance said Thursday that President Donald Trump was able to secure the current Gaza deal because he used “leverage” over Israel.
The assertion was a relatively rare boast by a Trump official of the power imbalance between the US and Israel and appeared to undercut efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to push back on criticism that Washington is dictating the manner in which Israel can uphold the ceasefire in Gaza.
It also came in response to a question that accused Israel and the Jews of working to undermine the US and Christianity, highlighting a growing animosity to the Jewish state by young US conservatives.
“The most recent Gaza peace plan that all of us have been working on very hard for the past few weeks — the president of the United States could only get that peace deal done by actually being willing to apply leverage to the State of Israel,” Vance told students at the University of Mississippi where he was participating in a campus tour organized by the recently killed, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point organization.
Vance’s framing of the dynamic between the US and Israel came in response to a question by a Christian-identifying member of the audience who wanted to know why there is the “notion that we might have owe Israel something.”
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The student incorrectly quoted Kirk as having accused Israel of “ethnically cleansing Gaza” and said he didn’t understand why the US should be providing foreign aid to Israel, “considering the fact that not only does their religion not agree with ours, but also openly supports the prosecution of ours.”
The question was met with applause from the packed student hall at the University of Mississippi, highlighting the existence of a small but growing number of younger conservatives in the US who hold animosities toward both Israel and Jews — something Vance notably avoided calling out directly.
Calmly responding to the question, Vance began by saying, “First of all, when the President United States says ‘America first,’ that means that he pursues the interest of Americans first. That is our entire foreign policy.”
JD Vance gets asked about j*wish control in America and disagreements with Christians ????
“J*ws do not believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah” pic.twitter.com/7g1WiG8HVv
— Charging… (@RedPillSayian) October 30, 2025
“That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have alliances, that you’re not going to work with other countries from time to time,” the vice president said. “That is what the president believes — that Israel sometimes they have similar interests to the United States, and we’re going to work with them in that case. Sometimes they don’t have similar interests the United States.”
He then used the example of Trump’s plan for ending the Gaza war and suggested that Israel needed to be pressured to get on board with the plan. Netanyahu publicly endorsed Trump’s 20-point plan during a White House visit in September, which also featured a US-orchestrated apology call to his Qatari counterpart for Israel’s botched strike targeting Hamas’s leaders in Doha.
But Israel and Hamas only ended up signing an agreement that focused on roughly the first half of those 20 points, which have to do with the initial ceasefire, IDF pull-back, hostage-prisoner swap and humanitarian provisions.
Vance said Wednesday that “when people say that Israel is somehow manipulating or controlling the President of the United States — they’re not controlling this president in the United States, which is one of the reasons why we’ve been able to have some of the success that we’ve had in the Middle East.”
US Vice President JD Vance speaks during a Turning Point USA event at the University of Mississippi, on October 29, 2025. (JONATHAN ERNST / POOL / AFP)
Ironically, Netanyahu has been facing the opposite accusation — that the US is the one controlling every move Israel makes, with the former’s establishment of a civil-military cooperation center on Israeli soil from which the US is heading the implementation of the Gaza ceasefire.
Vance went on to respond to the students’ claims regarding Judaism, acknowledging that members of the faith don’t view Jesus as the Messiah as Christians do.
“My attitude is, let’s have those conversations. Let’s have those disagreements when we have them. But if there are shared areas of interest, we ought to be willing to do that too,” he said.
US Vice President JD Vance tours the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem on October 23, 2025. (Nathan HOWARD / POOL / AFP)
“One thing I really, really care about is the preservation of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Christians believe that is the site where Jesus Christ was crucified and also that his tomb is right there as well. My attitude is, if we can work with our friends in Israel to make sure that Christians have safe access to that site, that’s an obvious area of common interest,” said Vance, who paid a visit to that church when he was in Israel last week.
At the end of that visit, Vance lashed out over the Knesset’s advancement of legislation aimed at annexing parts of the West Bank, calling it a personal insult, after Trump had said last month that he would not allow the move.
US Vice President JD Vance speaks to the media as U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner stand next to him, in Kiryat Gat, Israel, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Vance has long presented himself as an ally of Israel but is seen as part of the more isolationist, MAGA wing of the Republican party.
“What I am not okay with is any country coming before the interest of American citizens,” Vance told the students, who applauded his answer.
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