During the campaign, after the election and now as president, there were claims that President Trump was an anti-Semite. Those claims are what we call in the “mamma loshen” (mother tongue/Yiddish) dreck (which means trash or sh*t, take your pick). Just as important is the fact that the MSM which is projecting the opinion that President Trump has a problem with the Jews, said nothing when President Obama said or did things which can be interpreted as anti-Semitic
I am a Jew who is active in Jewish causes, and has personally had to fight Antisemitism, especially since I started writing. Recognizing the dangers of Antisemitism and the growing problems with anti-Jewish bigotry in the world, IMHO one of the worst things someone can do is make false charges of Antisemitism. Not only does it dilute the effects of real charges of Antisemitism, but it goes against Jewish law regarding how people should talk about each other.
The latest whispers come from the fact the president was criticized for not commenting about the series of anti-Semitic threats to Jewish Community Centers. He finally commented this past Tuesday and did so very appropriately
“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” Trump said after touring the National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
Throughout the campaign Trump faced false charges of Antisemitism
There was the infamous Jewish Star tweet that Trump thought was a sheriff’s badge picture. The picture was insensitive because somebody in the campaign should have known it may have caused problems. But the badge was not in the least anti-Semitic (unless of course one is a liberal). If this Trump picture is anti-Semitic, so is every member of the Sheriff’s department in Suffolk County where I live, whose badges are the same shape (and I can assure you they aren’t). Taos New Mexico and San Francisco sheriffs use the exact same shape to name a few.
There were cases of Antisemitism by some of Trump’s alt-right supporters, I faced them as well as others, but not one of those attacks were condoned by the candidate.
After the election, when Steve Bannon was appointed to the administration, it was another opportunity for the left to label the President as a Jew-hater, after all isn’t Bannon anti-Semitic? No Steve Bannon is not anti-Semitic, nor has he ever been.
Two weeks before the election Peter Drier of the Huffington Post made his false and ridiculous charges of anti-Semitism. Dreier claimed:
Trump’s most recent anti-Semitic remarks were in a speech, and a tweet, last week that included this line: “Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors.” He didn’t need to use the word “Jew.” This imagery of a global banking cabal will be familiar to anyone who has read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the anti-Semitic forgery that has fueled anti-Jewish violence for over a century. These are well-known anti-Semitic code words. The speech — typical of Trump’s paranoid conspiracy theories — was designed to fire up Trump’s white nationalist, anti-Semitic base
PUULEESE! So It was OK when Bernie Sanders campaigned on the basis that Hillary was beholden to the big banks? Guess what? The reason Trump didn’t use the word “Jew” was because he wasn’t talking about Jews. Perhaps he was thinking about Occupy Wall Street which used the anti-Semitic imagery that Dreier referred to. That same Occupy Wall Street was supported by President Obama and other prominent Democrats.
Dreier also pointed to the anti-Semites who support Trump. But if he is going to do that, he have also should pointed to the anti-Semites who support Clinton, people like Al Sharpton who led TWO anti-Semitic pogroms in NYC, or the Center for American Progress which was labeled anti-Semitic by the respected Simon Wiesenthal Center.
Some said that when Jews were left off the press release for Holocaust Memorial day, it was a display of Trump’s Antisemitism. As I wrote at the time, leaving out Jews was insensitive and ignorant, but it wasn’t anti-Semitic.
Last week at the Bibi/Trump press conference the fake anti-Semitism charges were brought up again, with the final question (asked by an Israeli reporter):
Mr. President, since your election campaign and even after your victory, we’ve seen a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents across the United States. And I wonder what you say to those among the Jewish community in the States, and in Israel, and maybe around the world who believe and feel that your administration is playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones.
Trump answered:
I will say that we are going to have peace in this country. We are going to stop crime in this country. We are going to do everything within our power to stop long-simmering racism and every other thing that’s going on, because lot of bad things have been taking place over a long period of time.
I think one of the reasons I won the election is we have a very, very divided nation. Very divided. And, hopefully, I’ll be able to do something about that. And, you know, it was something that was very important to me.
As far as people — Jewish people — so many friends, a daughter who happens to be here right now, a son-in-law, and three beautiful grandchildren. I think that you’re going to see a lot different United States of America over the next three, four, or eight years. I think a lot of good things are happening, and you’re going to see a lot of love. You’re going to see a lot of love. Okay? Thank you.
The very next day in the middle of a press conference where the President was pummeling the press, Jake Turx asked Trump about the Antisemitism in America, which the POTUS mistook as another charge of Antisemitism against him.
Despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren. You are their zayde, (affectionate Yiddish term for Grandfather)
“However, what we are concerned about and what we haven’t really heard being addressed is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it. There’s been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to——”
At that, Mr. Trump interrupted, saying it was “not a fair question…..see video:
Poor Jake asked the wrong question at the worst time. The last question of the Trump/Bibi presser the day before was a question about antisemitism, during the campaign he was unfairly accused of personally being antisemitic, then, in the middle of a press conference where Trump was pounding the press..Jake Turx unintentionally poked the bear.
Putting aside for a moment, that for Trump to be an anti-Semite he would have to hate his daughter Ivanka who is a Shabbos-observant Jew, as is his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and their three children. The president’s son Eric’s wife, Lara Yunaskav, is Jewish, and while they have no children as of yet, if they do, by Jewish law all of them will be considered Jewish.
Trump has been very generous in donating to Jewish Organizations, and that’s how he earned the honor of being grand marshal of the Israel Day parade. In Jewish charities, typically the highest honors go to the biggest donors.
Trump counts Jews among his circle of friends, including Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.
What’s really amazing is the fact that the MSM passes along charges of Antisemitism against President Trump — but they ignored eight years of very real anti-Semitic acts by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Beginning with his first campaign for president, Obama surrounded himself with anti-Semites like General Merrel McPeak, 2008 Obama for President Co-Chair who had an impressive resume of blaming our foreign policy on the “Jewish Lobby.” Perhaps the best example of McPeak’s anti-Semitism was when he was asked during an interview why there isn’t peace in the Middle East and he said, “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote — vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.” (in other words those pesky Jews, who control America’s policy on the Middle East).
One of his first presidential appointments was the anti-Semitic Chas Freeman who blamed his resignation on the evil Israel lobby (a nicer way of saying Jewish lobby). Actually Chas, it was a lot less than an evil Israel lobby, much of it was the work of a few Jewish bloggers — one of whom was named The Lid.
Obama’s first presidential Medal of Freedom honorees were Bishop Desmond Tutu and Mary Robinson. The nicest thing Bishop Desmond Tutu ever said about Jews was “People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful.” He also once said, that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God.”
Tutu’s co-honoree Mary Robinson presided over the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” that turned into a non-stop hate-fest against Jews and Israel. The conference was so anti-Semitic that Colin Powell, the Secretary of State at the time, walked out.
During his presidency Obama has allied himself with Al Sharpton who started the anti-Semitic pogrom in Crown Heights and incited the anti-Semitic fire bombing of Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem. He sent his closest adviser, Valerie Jarrett, to keynote an anti-Semitic ISNA conference whose discussions included: how key Obama aides are “Israeli,” proving Jews “have control of the world,” or how the Holocaust is punishment of Jews for being “serially disobedient to Allah.”
For his second Secretary of Defense Obama appointed Chuck Hagel who believed in the nefarious “world wide Jewish conspiracy.” Hagel was once quoted as saying “The political reality is that…the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”
Of the anti-Semitic Occupy Wall Street movement the President said, “We are on their side.”
Radical Islamists attacked the Kosher supermarket Hyper-Cacher (French for Super Kosher) in Paris on a Friday afternoon. The attack happened just before the Jewish Sabbath when they knew it would be crowded with Jews. Obama first insisted it was a random act and not an anti-Semitic act. And when the world leaders came together to march in Paris as a protest against the Charlie Hebdo shooting and the anti-Semitic Hyper-Cacher attack Obama was conspicuous in his absence.
President Obama’s July 31, 2015 phone call, organized by the anti-Israel group J Street and other progressive Jewish groups, also exposed possible Obama anti-Semitism.
In the 20 minute phone call Obama said over and over that opponents of the Iran deal come from the same “array of forces that got us into the Iraq war,” he said a “bunch of billionaires who happily finance super PACs” are “putting the squeeze on members of Congress.”
The message was clear to the Jewish participants, William Daroff Senior Vice President for Public Policy and Director of the Washington office of The Jewish Federations of North America tweeted during the meeting “Jews are leading effort to kill #Irandeal. ‘Same people opposing the deal led us into Iraq war,’” and followed with “Canard: Jews got us into Iraq War.”
@nathanguttman @ChemiShalev @kampeas Jews are leading effort to kill #Irandeal. "Same people opposing the deal led us into Iraq war."
— William Daroff (@Daroff) July 30, 2015
During the call Lee Rosenberg of AIPAC questioned the President’s statement comparing people who object to the Iran deal to those who supported the invasion of Iraq. He pointed out that many anti-Semites falsely claim the Jews pushed Bush into invading Iraq. Obama explained that Netanyahu supported the Iraq invasion (true). But Bibi wasn’t the premier at the time — he was a private citizen.
The prime minister, Ariel Sharon, strongly urged Bush not to invade Iraq, arguing correctly that if Saddam were removed, “Iran, a far more dangerous player, will be rid of its principal enemy and free to pursue its ambitions of regional hegemony.”
Of course that didn’t matter to President Obama, he needed to find a Jewish scapegoat so he used private-citizen Netanyahu who was strongly for the war. Also for the war was his V.P. Joe Biden, both of his secretaries of state Kerry and Clinton, and his biggest ally in the Senate, Minority Leader Harry Reid, all of whom supported the invasion of Iraq in congress.
During his last month as president, Obama’s State Department condemned Israel for allowing people to build houses on land on the western side of the Jordan River. The land was legally purchased in 2009 by Dr. Irving and Cherna Moskowitz from a US Presbyterian Church. There was no complaints when the Presbyterian Church owned it. Team Obama wasn’t objecting to the fact that houses were being built on that land. If the homes were intended for Christian or Muslim families there would have been no issue. As it is was with so many other cases during the Obama administration, the objection was based on the fact that Jews were going to live in those buildings.
NOT ONCE! Not once in all those (and other) cases where Obama and his team seemed to step over the line into Antisemitism territory were there questions from the media asking Obama if he had an issue with Jews. Not once did any of the mainstream media point out Obama’s possible anti-Semitism.
But Donald Trump, a man with Jewish grandchildren, Jewish friends, and a man who is a huge (or yuge) donor to Jewish causes is accused of Antisemitism despite the fact that he hasn’t done anything anti-Semitic.
Just more proof the bias of the mainstream media.
Addendum: Anna Navarro tried to make the case that Trump’s attacks on the media was feeding anti-Semitism. Gee, that sure sounds like Anna believes the anti-Semitic stereotype that the Jews own the media. Watch the video below.
hhh
