It was supposed to be an event on fighting antisemitism, but like so many things in Trumpworld, it quickly turned into Donald Trump just engaging in antisemitism. “I’m not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion,” he said, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I’m at 40%.” Trump went on to say that, despite being the “most popular person in Israel,” he has not been “treated right” by Jewish people.
Trump has lobbed antisemitic tropes before. He’s openly pushed the popular “dual loyalty” trope—for which the Anti-Defamation League has an entire section of its website—saying in 2019, “If you vote for a Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you are being very disloyal to Israel.” And in May 2024, outside his criminal trial, Trump called Biden’s policy on Israel “disgraceful” and said that “any Jewish person” who had voted for Biden “should be ashamed of themselves.” And let’s not forget, the guy previously entertained noted Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.
This latest invective is mostly just Trump being Trump, indulging in bigotry and antisemitism, wildly tossing out threats and accusations. But Trump is using a tactic that conservatives have long used against liberal Jews. “The dual loyalty canard that has plagued Jews is the fertile soil in which centuries of these stereotypes have taken root and grown,” Deborah E. Lipstadt, a professor of modern Jewish history and Holocaust studies, told The New York Times in 2019. In fact, accusing Jews of dual loyalty dates all the way back to ancient Rome.
Trump has implied—and perhaps hoped—that his support for Benjamin Netanyahu somehow makes him more palatable to liberal Jews. That’s because, in his warped view, Jews must be loyal to Israel first, which in itself is an antisemtic trope. Nevermind that Israeli Jews are protesting Netanyahu regularly. Because if Trump thinks he can use Israel as a wedge issue to put himself back in the White House, he’ll undoubtedly do all he can to drive this message on the campaign trail.
Growing up as a Jew, I always knew Israel was an important place for the community. And while the existence of Israel didn’t influence much of my life as a reform Jew with two Jewish parents and three Jewish children, I know there is also a certain contingent of conservative Jews who essentially move like a monolith on Israel. Some of them use the “bad Jew” trope against liberal Jews to get them to follow suit. Trump, for his part, is putting a MAGA spin on that trope, implying that it is somehow the responsibility of American Jews to vote purely on the basis of Israel. To do this, he needs Jews to believe that he is better for Israel.
But let’s unpack that for a minute: One of Trump’s crowning achievements on the issue, as he sees it, was moving the United States embassy to Jerusalem in 2018—a move that drew immense criticism because it further inflamed the peace process between Israel and Palestine. “The US is supposed to be acting like the fireman,” as Ilan Goldenberg, a Middle East expert with the Center for a New American Security told Vox at the time. “Instead, we’re acting like the arsonist.” Worse yet, we later learned that the embassy relocation wasn’t entirely for Israel; it may have been part of a quid pro quo with Sheldon Adelson, who invested millions in Trump’s 2016 campaign. Throughout the rest of his presidency, Trump went on to “[ignore] concerns about treating Palestinians as if they were on equal footing with Israel in pursuing peace,” journalist Maggie Haberman argued in her 2022 book Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America, writing that he pushed through “a string of measures, such as slashing financial aid to Palestinians, forcing the Palestine Liberation Organization from its Washington offices.”
Ultimately, I don’t think people like Trump are good for Jews. I don’t think racism, othering, and picking on minority groups—say, by spreading lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio—is good for Jews or for anyone. As a liberal Jew from a family of liberal Jews, I am so proud of the work that Jews have done fighting for civil rights in this country. I am proud of people like Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner (and James Chaney), who were all murdered in Mississippi in 1964 for trying to help Black voters register to vote. I say this coming from a family that fought for civil rights themselves; in September 1949, my grandfather, Howard Fast, and singer and activist Paul Robeson held a concert for peace in Peekskill, New York. Robeson’s biographer later wrote that “Peekskill bears the same relationship to the Civil Rights Movement as Fort Sumter does to the Civil War.” Like many racial justice demonstrations at the time, it ended in a riot. “Police who were supposed to protect us,” my grandpa and Robeson said, “attacked and assaulted us.”
My great grandparents came to this country in the 1800s from Ukraine, where Jews were being murdered in pogroms. Fundamentally, they were not all that different from the Haitian immigrants in Springfield: hardworking people fleeing to America for a better, safer life. My great grandparents stayed and had children and jobs and paid taxes and grew the economy and added to the fabric of America, just like Haitian migrants have. Trumpism is driven by the idea that immigrants are doing the opposite—that they’re taking your stuff and that there isn’t enough for everyone. But that couldn’t be further from the truth: America’s culture and economy is strong precisely because of immigrants—not in spite of them.
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Publish date : 2024-09-24 08:00:00
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