United States President Donald Trump has a well-documented track record of blatant anti-Semitism, both while campaigning and in office.
Open expressions of anti-Semitism have included explicitly stating to a Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) audience that Jews wish to directly control politicians, forgetting to mention Jews in a statement about International Holocaust Remembrance Day, hiring Steve Bannon and Sebastian Gorka (both affiliated with anti-Semitic white nationalist groups), inviting a Messianic “rabbi” to pray for and invoke Jesus for the victims of the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, calling Jewish Democrats disloyal, referring to the Israeli Prime Minister as “your” Prime Minister while speaking to the RJC, and even referring to himself as the second coming and King of Israel.
Trump even referred to the audience at the Israeli American Council (IAC) conference last weekend as “brutal killers” and claimed that they “had no choice but to vote for [him].”
Each of these incidents elicited little to no backlash from the Jewish right – and if there was any backlash, it was depressingly nonaggressive. If we want people to take us seriously when we condemn Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) for tweeting about Benjamins, then we should also condemn President Trump and his apologists for very clearly anti-Jewish statements.
Moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty the Golan Heights cannot and should not erase undeniable expressions of anti-Semitism. In fact, overlooking President Trump’s usage of anti-Semitic tropes and his connections to some very dubious Jew haters causes pro-Israel Jews to be perceived as both hypocrites and easily-pacified enablers.
Many say that President Trump is the most pro-Israel president that the US has ever seen, and that he is truly a friend to the Jews. But realistically speaking, he hasn’t done much for us.
Near the beginning of his presidency, he moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – something that both houses of Congress had called for just months before. President Trump was both lauded and vilified for this action, with both supporters and critics saying that this move would radically change the stage for the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. However, nothing really happened, save a media tour and President Trump’s approval ratings in Israel.
The conditional recognition of Israeli sovereignty – valid only if Washington says it’s valid – actually harms Israel’s reputation in the international sphere and positions us as complicit beneficiaries of US imperialism (as do many of Washington’s actions in our region).
This happened again with Trump’s recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory – nothing happened, save an arrogant imperialistic gesture by Washington and the renaming of a town (and who is Washington anyway to even recognize or not recognize our sovereignty?).
Both of these actions turned out to be crafted and heavily championed by Trump’s son-in-law and senior policy advisor Jared Kushner.
The famed “Jewish protection order” set to be signed this week follows this pattern as well; it does nothing new aside from recommending that all federal departments and agencies must consider the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism.
The language of the executive order promises to continue to enforce Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which protects against discrimination based on race, color, or national origin (which applied to Jews as late as the 1987 Shaare Tefila case).
Since 2009, there has been pressure from Jewish groups to include Jews under the Civil Rights Act’s Title VI, either by expanding the category of protected groups to include “religion” or to more clearly define Jews, who have historically moved in and out of categories Title VI already protects based on how society happens to view Jews at any given time.
It is true that we are not white Americans unified simply by a Jewish religion – we are a diverse, proud, ancient people with many aspects (ethnic, religious, territorial, etc.) to our identity. At times, Jews living in exile under hostile regimes that had to simplify our identities in ways that granted us more inclusion or helped us feel more secure within Western host nations. For fear of being persecuted as Other and to fit within a space afforded to us by system already colonizing our identity a Western, we had to cut down on certain aspects of ourselves so that we could be easily defined.
Decolonization efforts within the Jewish community are certainly important in helping us unpack and make better sense of our own identities but we should be careful not to cheapen these conversation by weaponizing them against Palestinian activism or electoral dissenters. Nor should we be pacified with good tidings from a seemingly benevolent ruler figure that has, in reality, done much to strengthen anti-Semitic sentiments within the US.
We don’t need Trump to explain our identity to us and we certainly shouldn’t look to him for protection. Our identity, our peoplehood, is not some political talking point or some presidential bone thrown to the Jewish community. Considering reactions to the news of Trump’s executive order, it reeks of a deliberate attempt to establish Jews as political pawns ahead of an election cycle.
Objectively speaking, Trump has done more to harm the US Jewish community than save it. Yet American pro-Israel organizations – especially those not shy about identifying with the political right – continue to fall over themselves in affording the president the benefit of the doubt and the consideration of context (context that often doesn’t make the statement or action better, only worse).
How is it that pro-Israel organizations can see anti-Semitism more clearly on the left than on the right? Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and even Jeremy Corbyn have hid their anti-Semitism far better than Trump and his associates have, and yet the Jewish right consistently lets the president off the hook.
By remaining silent in the face of Trump’s anti-Semitic statements, Jews are allowing ourselves to be used as pawns in a grand reelection game. Donald Trump has promoted many anti-Jewish tropes and worked with avowed white nationalists, and yet the Jewish right continues to overlook these actions and accept pacifications while jumping down the throats of public figures on the left.
It’s high time our community call a spade a spade and hold President Trump accountable for his behavior.
Blah blah blah. Typical liberal hogwash. If Trump has caused divisiveness in the American Jewish community, it’s because of the intransigence of those Jews who desperately cling to the myopia of the ‘progressive’ vision they hold that leads them to believe in the melting-pot society in which Jews lose their particularity.
As Jews we have a mission. Our failure to hold to it and be true to it is what encourages antisemitism. Trump recognizes that mission, as do evangelicals. That’s why the orthodox/chassidic community is so supportive of him.
Trump says stupid and insensitive things, as did Truman, Kennedy, Clinton, and especially Carter. But what he DOES to support the American Jewish community and especially for Israel far outweighs the verbal boorishness that so offends that so offends the tender ears of our misguided brethren.