[rad-green] Trump’s Judaism Order Has Nothing t o Do With Fighting Anti-Semitism

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/12/18/trumps-judaism-order-has-nothing-do-fighting-anti-semitism
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/12/18/trumps-judaism-order-has-nothing-do-fighting-anti-semitism>OtherWords
        December 18, 2019*





*Trump’s Judaism Order Has Nothing to Do With Fighting Anti-SemitismThe man
who called neo-Nazis "very fine people" has no business defining
anti-Semitism for the rest of us.by Sarah Gertler*

[image: Memorials outside the Tree of Life synagogue, Pittsburgh. (Photo:
Shutterstock)]

*Memorials outside the Tree of Life synagogue, Pittsburgh. (Photo:
Shutterstock)*

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
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2019/12/02/anti-semitic-graffiti-reported-sixth-i-synagogue/>
.

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
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/10/us/politics/trump-antisemitism-executive-order.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage>
 mainstream
<https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-signs-executive-order-targeting-ant-semitism-on-college-campuses-11576105977>
 headline <https://apnews.com/a082e791f52ce5759e801df94150eb59> 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
<https://theweek.com/articles/835714/what-donald-trump-said-about-jews> facing
the Jewish community in this country today.

During his presidency, he’s called rooms full of Jewish people “brutal
killers
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/12/donald-trump-anti-semitic-remarks>”
while making excuses for Nazis after Charlottesville. His former chief
strategist
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/09/steve-bannon-has-a-nazi-problem> was
the head of an alt-right website.

Trump has backed white supremacist conspiracies
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/donald-trump-george-soros-caravan>
that
migrant caravans are secretly funded by Jews, said Jews who vote for
Democrats show “great disloyalty
<https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/08/opinions/donald-trump-dangerous-anti-semitic-tropes-obeidallah/index.html>,”
and — at his Hanukkah party, no less — gave the floor to a pastor who says
that Jews are going to hell
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/robert-jeffress-white-house-hanukkah_n_5df1b1a1e4b01e0f2959c43d>.
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
<https://www.google.com/books/edition/Socialism_of_Fools/X8V1CwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=bonald%20alien>
.”

Under Trump, anti-Semitic hate crimes have skyrocketed to historic levels
<https://www.adl.org/news/press-releases/anti-semitic-incidents-remained-at-near-historic-levels-in-2018-assaults>,
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
<https://www.wpxi.com/news/synagogue-shooting/70-year-old-synagogue-shooting-victim-released-from-hospital-1-officer-still-being-treated/860969031/>
 and Poway
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/5/1/18524103/poway-synagogue-shooting-anti-semitism>
 and Jersey City
<https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/12/11/jersey-city-shooting-suspects-targeted-kosher-bodega/4396182002/>.
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.

As a Jewish activist, let me assure you: Boycotting Israel is not
anti-Semitic.

It’s been pushed for years
<https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/politics/trump-anti-semitism-judaism-nationality.html>
by
Trump education official Kenneth L. Marcus, who equates boycotting Israel
with Holocaust denial
<https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1152&context=wmborj>.
It’s the support of far-right figures like Marcus the president is after.
As Trump recently told
<https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/12/donald-trump-anti-semitic-remarks> the
Israeli American Council, “You have to vote for me. You have no choice.”

As a Jewish activist, let me assure you: Boycotting Israel is not
anti-Semitic
<https://otherwords.org/criticizing-israel-isnt-anti-semitic-heres-what-is/>
.

Aside from the fact that many of those fighting for their colleges to
divest from Israel are Jewish themselves
<https://theconversation.com/as-israel-turns-70-many-young-american-jews-turn-away-95271>,
the BDS movement is one of the only available ways to protest the
U.S.-backed brutalization of Palestinians
<https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/06/cloneoffifty-years-israeli-occupation-1706080912-170608180555863.html>
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
<https://theintercept.com/2019/08/28/when-ilhan-omar-is-accused-of-anti-semitism-its-news-when-a-republican-smears-muslims-theres-silence/>,
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 <https://www.commondreams.org/author/sarah-gertler> is the
Newman Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.*

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