The man who called neo-Nazis “very
fine people” has no business defining anti-Semitism for the rest of us.
The Trump administration says it’s
anti-Semitic to criticize Israel. That’s the gist of a recent executive order that would treat campus calls to boycott Israel over its treatment of Palestinians as anti-Semitic discrimination on the basis of “national origin.”
Days after the order, the synagogue
I most often attend here in Washington, D.C. became another of the hundreds in
the U.S. to be vandalized with anti-Semitic graffiti. Swastikas and the word
“Jew” were found gouged into its historic doors.
This graffiti isn’t the symbol of
the nonviolent boycott movement. It’s the symbol of the neo-Nazis Trump called
“very fine people.”
Every mainstream headline I saw about Trump’s recent order seemed
to accept that it was designed to combat anti-Semitism. You could almost forget
that Trump himself is one of the single biggest dangers facing the Jewish community
in this country today.
During his presidency, he’s called
rooms full of Jewish people “brutal killers” while making excuses for Nazis after
Charlottesville. His former chief strategist was the head of an
alt-right website.
Trump has backed white supremacist conspiracies that migrant
caravans are secretly funded by Jews, said Jews who vote for Democrats show “great disloyalty,” and — at his Hanukkah party, no less
— gave the floor to a pastor who says that Jews are going to hell. Subtle.
And never mind that categorizing
Jewishness as a “national origin” hearkens back to anti-Semitic trope that,
wherever we go, we’re an “alien people.”
Under Trump, anti-Semitic hate
crimes have skyrocketed to historic levels, and it’s affecting us all.
Every time I’m in a large Jewish gathering, I can’t help but think of the massacres in Pittsburgh and Poway and Jersey City. I find myself looking around the room, wondering: Will it happen here at high holiday services, or at this showing of Fiddler on the Roof with my friends?
The man whose presidency forces me
to ask these questions is clearly not trying to protect me. So why did he pass
this executive action?
The meat of this action is aimed at
Israeli boycott movements on college campuses across the U.S. It threatens to
withhold federal funding from schools where students organize events linked to
the Boycott, Divest, and Sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.
It’s been pushed for years by Trump education official
Kenneth L. Marcus, who equates boycotting Israel with Holocaust denial. It’s
the support of far-right figures like Marcus the president is after.
As Trump recently told the Israeli American Council, “You have to vote for me. You have no choice.”
As Trump recently told the Israeli American Council, “You have to vote for me. You have no choice.”
Aside from the fact that many of
those fighting for their colleges to divest from Israel are Jewish themselves, the BDS movement is one of the
only available ways to protest the U.S.-backed brutalization of Palestinians that’s continued
ceaselessly for decades. This is a human rights issue, no matter your religion.
Shutting down BDS allows Trump to
support Israel’s far-right government in systematically abusing Palestinians,
secure the support of some politically powerful pro-Israel voters, and convince
the public it’s being done in the name of protecting Jews.
It’s not. When Jews and non-Jews
alike speak up for human rights and are crushed into silence, no one is safer.
When congresspeople who speak up against this are slandered as anti-Semitic, while our clearly
anti-Semitic president is not, no one is safer.
As a Jew, I know Trump is not
supporting the people who congregate in synagogues to sing, eat, pray, and
live. He’s emboldening the ones gouging swastikas into the doors.
Sarah Gertler is the Newman
Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.