Trump picks wrong wedge issue

With his comments about Jews and Israel, president sounds like a foe of the Jewish state

President Trump, the self-proclaimed greatest friend Israel has had in the White House, sounds like a foe of the Jewish state and an anti-Semite as he tries to poach votes from Democrats.

This week, Trump claimed that any American Jew who voted for a Democrat next year would show “a total lack of knowledge or serious disloyalty.” A day later, Trump went further, stating that such voters would be “disloyal to Jewish people or very disloyal to Israel.”

Trump’s warmup act to this main event of demagoguery was to fume that four Democratic female members of Congress — all women of color — should go back to their ancestral homelands if they disagreed with his policies. He then goaded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into denying admission to two of those women — Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib — after he’d said they could enter Israel. They are the first Muslim women to serve in Congress.

After bipartisan criticism of his racist taunts at Omar and Talib, Trump said, “My rhetoric brings people together.” On Israel, he’s right. Almost every major Jewish group in the United States has now slammed the president.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which almost always supports the Israeli government, criticized the refusal to admit the two congresswomen because they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The National Council of Jewish Women called the decision “undemocratic and shortsighted.” That hostility, however, pales to the reaction Trump received when he rolled out the anti-Semitic trope about disloyal Jews in America. His comments came as two more white supremacists were arrested for threatening mass shootings.

Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League said, “It’s unclear who (Trump) is claiming Jews would be disloyal to, but claims of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews.” David Harris, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called the comments “outrageous.”

Trump has displayed recklessness so often that it’s hard to keep track. Almost no action has been so dangerous, though, as his attempt to make support for Israel a partisan issue, with Republicans as the heroes.

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, both parties have backed the Middle East’s only democracy. Trump’s attempt to make the country a wedge issue terrifies Israelis who understand how critical that bipartisan support has been.

Trump’s behavior so alarmed Israeli President Reuven Rivlin that he called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — the highestranking Democrat in Washington — “against the backdrop of recent events.” Israeli news outlets report that Rivlin called the U.S.-Israel alliance “a link between peoples,” not parties. He thanked Pelosi for her “unqualified commitment” to Israel and for being “a true friend.”

We know why this is happening. Trump’s favors for Israel — moving the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights — have endeared him to Netanyahu and made him popular in that country. In the 2018 elections, however, 71 percent of American Jewish voters disapproved of Trump’s record.

So like a shock jock with shaky ratings, Trump wants to make Omar and Talib the face of the Democratic Party. He wants to peel off Jewish votes in key states and energize his base of Christian Zionists, who see Israel in very different terms from most Jews in the United States.

Trump’s self-serving tactic, however, threatens the Jewish state he professes to love. A rabbi in Washington, D.C., called the president’s demagoguery “very dangerous” because the natural progression is that “opposition to Trump becomes opposition to Israel.”

Mainstream American Jewish organizations worry that support for Israel is waning among younger members as the country under Netanyahu aligns itself with ultra-Orthodox Israelis. Trump’s use of historic anti-Semitic references exacerbates tensions within American Jews. “It’s dizzying, exhausting and distracting,” said a St. Louis rabbi. “Emotions are raw.”

We disagree with the BDS movement. We believe that Omar and Talib have made anti-Semitic comments to criticize Israeli policy, such as the occupation of the West Bank.

Netanyahu, however, could have used their visit to refute their argument. Instead, as one Israeli columnist said, he “empowered” them. He and Trump consider themselves strong leaders. In this case, they looked weak and desperate, playing to the fringe.

The narcissistic Trump capped his week by retweeting a comment by a radio host/ conspiracy theorist who said Israel considers Trump “the Second Coming of God.” Jews, of course, don’t believe in a Second Coming.

Anti-Semitic hate crimes have hit record levels under Trump, who said that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Harris said that “in places like Florida, the weaponization of Jews and Israel could become totally out of control.”

Trump has shown that there is no line he won’t cross. Invoking anti-Semitism in defense of Israel is just the latest.