Vice-president Pence: Israel’s Ally?

Until recently, few outside the US had ever heard of Donald Trump’s running mate, the man who will soon be US vice-president. Who is Mike Pence? And where does he stand on issues of Jewish interest?

The Indiana governor is “one of the best friends the state of Israel and the Jewish people ever had,” according to a former publisher of Jerusalem Post, Tom Rose.

Messages of support from Pence himself would back that up. Ahead of a recent Jerusalem rally, he said: “Israel’s fight is our fight, her cause is just and her values are our values and her fate is our fate. Israel is our most cherished ally in the world.”

Pence can point to his introduction of laws in Indiana targeting organisations that boycott Israel, but outside  of foreign policy, his social conservatism has riled some.

Indianapolis Rabbi Dennis Sasso, for one, has said that Jews in Pence’s home state “have long been repelled by his anti-LGBT, anti-immigrant, anti-choice stance”.

Regardless, the next four years will give him the chance to fine-tune his Hebrew, after his recent translation of the Trump campaign slogan – “Make America Great Again” – came out as “To Reverse America to Great Once More”.