Anyone who was involved in last year’s protests against Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza and is not a US citizen should be worried. The Trump administration has begun scooping up leaders in the name of fighting antisemitism and terrorism and flying them off to secret detention centers. Immigration officials insist they are targeting those who support foreign terrorists and say they must be deported regardless of their immigration status. But the motives of those orchestrating these deportations and the lack of transparency should have the American Jewish community very worried.
For the moment, the only thing keeping those people in the country are some lawyers and judges willing to stand up to a president who is targeting them with invective and reprisals.
The courts will be sorting this out for months and possibly years. The administration brushes aside claims of First Amendment rights, citing national security threats.
To be fair, some may really be bad guys and deserve to be arrested or deported, but according to the rule of law, not on the whim of a would-be autocrat.
President Donald Trump and his followers have broadly painted the protesters as antisemites, possibly even the Jews who also opposed the Netanyahu government’s war policies. Trump has proclaimed that his mission is protecting Israel and the Jews from those who oppose the Jewish state. That may resonate with many of his MAGA evangelical followers and Republican Jewish supporters but it can also be read by those he has singled out for punishment as “You can blame the Jews for your problems.” And the frantic effort to deport in the name of Israel raises the question of whether the Jews are really being helped or scapegoated by the president’s crusade.
Why Trump administration policies still make US Jews wary
Is Trump an antisemite? Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) insists he is not, but says this president gives the haters “safe harbor.” The two men differ on supporting Israel’s handling of the Israel-Hamas War, leading the president to say that the highest Jewish elected official in the country’s history has “become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore.”
Amy Spitalnick, head of Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said Trump’s slur “only makes Jews less safe.”
Few Jewish leaders came to Schumer’s defense, likely fearful that the president would turn on them as well. Using charges of antisemitism to attack those who don’t share Trump’s views has been called pro-Israel antisemitism, which Vox.com described as “a simultaneous embrace of the Jewish state and attack on American Jews’ place in American life.”
PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTORS are not, by definition, antisemitic or anti-American. Nor is opposition to the current Israeli government, something polls show most American Jews and most Israelis share. Using charges of antisemitism to silence opponents of the Jewish state or to restrict First Amendment rights should be unacceptable, and it is definitely dangerous.
For all his rhetoric about fighting antisemitism, no president in the past century has more closely embraced it by his affinity for white supremacists, Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, Holocaust deniers, militant extremists like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, Islamophobes, assorted sordid hate groups, and other antisemites. Several who fit these categories have been picked for posts in the new administration. Some have podcasts, websites, MAGA followings, and other outreach that give platforms for spreading hate. Let’s be clear, having a Jewish spouse, child, in-law, grandchild, lover, employee, or one’s best friends does not grant absolution.
Trump has a history of accusing American Jews – at least those who don’t support him – of dual loyalty, referring to Israel and its leader as “your country” and “your prime minister.” That includes tropes in campaign ads, social media postings, dog-whistle remarks, scapegoating Jewish figures, and embracing vile bigots.
Trump has used charges of antisemitism to discredit Democrats and progressives but has been blind to it on the Right. Neither party has a monopoly on antisemitism. It is more disturbing on the Right, however, because it permeates white supremacism, Christian nationalism, isolationism, and nativism, which are part of the MAGA movement. And it is increasingly tolerated and even encouraged by one of the two major political parties.THE GOP and MAGA have a Jewish problem. All their declarations of love for Israel and opposition to antisemitism are not enough to overcome the discomfort many Jews feel with an increasingly authoritarian and anti-democratic right-wing administration.
The crusade against DEI – diversity, equity, and inclusion programs – is billed as support for “meritocracy” but is really SWCM – straight white Christian male – culture. It is an extension of the xenophobic, racist Great Replacement Theory.
Trump’s closest adviser and benefactor, Elon Musk, recently told a rally of an extremist right-wing, neo-fascist German party that there is “too much focus on [Germany’s] past guilt,” which was seen as a rebuke of the Jewish insistence that we should “never forget” the Holocaust. Musk even tried to absolve mass murderers and affix blame for the Holocaust on “deep state” players. “Stalin, Mao, and Hitler didn’t murder millions of people. Their public sector employees did,” he said.
Kenneth Stern, director of the Center for the Study of Hate at Bard College, said that the Trump administration is “absolutely weaponizing antisemitism” to silence critics of Israel and administration policies, and it makes Jewish students feel less safe. “It puts pro-Israel Jewish students in a situation where they may be seen as trying to suppress speech rather than answer it,” he told NPR.
Trump has used the antisemitism weapon to pressure and intimidate his critics. He canceled $400 million in federal grants for Columbia University, ostensibly in response to its failure to address campus antisemitism, in reality as the first step in imposing MAGA ideological requirements on all federal funding. That is “the absolute wrong approach,” Rep. Laura Friedman (D-California) told Jewish Insider. “In fact, it’s going to make Jews responsible for the defunding of programs to deal with cancer research, with science, [and] has nothing to do with antisemitism.” The Jewish lawmaker said Trump’s action is “a way to punish schools that this administration thinks ideologically are not in lockstep with MAGA.”
Other colleges, law firms, and even federal judges have also been targeted by the wrath of Trump. Additionally, he has also turned his anger abroad on allies like Canada, Mexico, Panama, Denmark, and NATO. If he is willing to abandon them, Israel should take heed in the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller about complacency, inscribed at the entrance of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.
“Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
“Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
“Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.
The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and a former legislative director at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.