President Trump has been the most slavish supporter of Israel than any other president in history.
And what does he get for it?
Why, charges of anti-Semitism of course. Every. Single. Time.
By Bess Levin
Since 1916, American Jews have overwhelmingly supported Democratic presidential candidates, with the 2016 election being no exception. Donald Trump would really like to change that trend though, and on Tuesday, he unveiled his strategy for winning over the constituency: 1930s-era anti-Semitism.
President Trump said Tuesday that Jewish people who vote for Democrats are either ignorant or disloyal as he railed against two congresswomen who have been critical of the U.S.-Israel alliance.
————–
“I think Jewish people that vote for a Democrat—I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty,” Trump told reporters during an Oval Office meeting with the president of Romania.
Oh yeah! Nothing like a good anti-Semitic trope about “dual loyalty” to reel in that Jew vote! It’s a bit like when Trump nabbed 8% of the black vote in 2016 by calling African Americans poor, uneducated, and unemployed. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Herr Trump’s latest remark comes as he and his Republican cohort have attempted to persuade Jewish voters to come to the other side by claiming that freshman Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have criticized the right wing Israeli government, are the “face” of the Democratic Party, and that any vote for a Democrat is a vote for individuals who “hate Israel and hate Jewish people.” That plan appears unlikely to work, not only because polls show that the vast majority of American Jews despise Trump, but also because:
He literally just accused millions of Jews of being unintelligent and/or traitors;
He once said there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white supremacist rally in which marchers carried Nazi signs and chanted things like “Jews will not replace us”;
He tweeted a picture of Hillary Clinton’s face, on top of a pile of cash, next to a Star of David containing the phrase “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!”;
He ran a campaign ad that included the images of three Jewish people—George Soros, Janet Yellen, and Lloyd Blankfein—while warning that a secretive “global power structure” is to blame for economic policies that have “robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities”;
(You mean there’s not? –ed.)
He suggested that Soros, a favorite bogeyman among white nationalists and neo-Nazis, was funding last year’s migrant caravans—feeding into one of the most hateful, virulent, and dangerous anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of the moment.
(Can she prove otherwise? –ed.)
Which of course brings us to today, wherein Trump has gone and done the exact same thing that he and other Republicans have accused Reps. Omar and Tlaib of doing. Last year, when Omar implied that some Jewish people are more loyal to Israel than the United States—and subsequently apologized—Trump seized on the comments as evidence that Omar is an enemy of not only Israel but all Jews. Now, he’s saying that Jews are a monolith and should vote exclusively based on their religious interests—which Trump falsely and inaccurately conflates with the interests of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing government.
Shockingly, Tuesday’s little exercise in anti-Semitism didn‘t go over super well with actual Jews. “It’s unclear who @POTUS is claiming Jews would be ‘disloyal’ to, but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League. “As we’ve said before, it’s possible to engage in the democratic process w/o these claims. It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football.”
In a statement, Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, told The Hill: “At a time when anti-Semitic incidents have increased—due to the president’s emboldening of white nationalism—Trump is repeating an anti-Semitic trope. If this is about Israel, then Trump is repeating a dual loyalty claim, which is a form of anti-Semitism. If this is about Jews being ‘loyal’ to him, then Trump needs a reality check.”
Source….
https://www.vanityfairDOTcom/news/2019/08/donald-trump-jews-disloyalty