Jews to Trump: Leave us alone

President Donald J. Trump is calling on four freshmen Democratic members of Congress to apologize to the U.S. and Israel. And Israel? How did the Jewish state become so fortunate as to appear on the forefront of an American president’s agenda?

Trump accuses the four — Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts — of hating America, based on their vocal criticism of this administration’s policies. A great deal of the wrath is rightfully directed toward Ilhan Omar, born in Somalia, for her anti-Semitic utterances against Israel and American Jews.

I understand that our super “sensitive” president demands an apology, but why drag Jews into this conundrum? Compared to the anti-Semitism we have become accustomed to throughout history, this is bobkes — nothing.

The president’s initial gambit of singling out the foursome continued at his recent rally in North Carolina, where he accused Omar of “anti-Semitic screeds,” working a mob of supporters into such a frenzy that they burst into chants of “Send her back!” There he stood, the leader of the free world, basking in the hateful chant for a now-infamous 13 seconds.

For me, “Send her back” and “Let them go back to where they came from” sound eerily familiar.

In 1946, at age 10, I lived in an orphanage in Lodz, a Polish industrial city. Two years earlier, in 1944, the 200,000 Jews of Lodz were transported to Auschwitz and gassed. Only 877 survived. By 1946, after liberation, several thousand Jews returned from Siberia and from the forests where they had fought the Nazis. I was one of the returnees, a small child with pigtails and ribbons, cute and dark.

Each morning, a group of us, ages 8 to 11, navigated the street to get to school unbloodied. Even on the days we remained untouched, we were subjected to shrill chants of “Jews, go back to Palestine!” When beatings became too frequent, the orphanage enlisted the help of a couple of former ghetto fighters to escort us. The attacks stopped, but from afar, we could still hear it: “Jews, go back to Palestine!”

I made it to Palestine, by then the state of Israel, in the middle of the War of Independence, the most epic Jewish struggle in the past 2000 years. We were thrilled that President Harry Truman recognized us, but were appalled when he followed with a total arms embargo. Not a rifle, not a bullet. Zero. As Jews fought for their lives, the United States was a benevolent spectator.

After Israel won, we were showered with American love, and economic and military assistance steadily increased. Yet in 1973, after President Richard Nixon supplied Israel with arms during the Yom Kippur war, Iran and OPEC retaliated by imposing an oil embargo. Who can forget the long lines of cars in front of gas stations? And before long, posters and bumper stickers appeared, saying “Oil yes, Jews no.” (Send them back?)

In the past three years, we as Jews have been singled out for Donald Trump’s unwanted love. Does anyone believe in the purity of his affection? Of course not. He is using us in plotting his re-election. This must stop, not only because it’s humiliating, but because it’s dangerous. We, a historically persecuted minority, are cynically enlisted in a high stakes political game with no benefit to us.

Trump mistakenly believes that American Jews are single-issue voters, the issue being Israel. There’s no need for that now. Today, Israel is rich and strong, with most of its citizens resentful of President Trump’s insistence that Benjamin Netanyahu be re-elected. American Jews are diverse in their opinions and can legitimately criticize Israeli policies, and Trump’s one-sided favoritism eliminates any possibility of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

I call on American Jews not to allow President Trump take advantage of us. We don’t want to be a vessel for his hate, a cudgel for his divisions or a conduit for his malice. Leave us alone!

Rachel Patron is an author who has written for the Sun Sentinel and other publications. She lives in Boca Raton.