What Donald Trump has done (and is still doing) to fight antisemitism

Donald Trump Netanyahu no antisemitismAmerican Jewish groups (the majority of which ally with the Democrat Party) are once again claiming to be concerned about Donald Trump and antisemitism — that is, they’re implying that Trump is a KKK puppet. Of course they are wrong but, as is often the case with a slur that brings together a world of assumptions in a single false word or sentence, there are a lot of facts and ideas that need to be unpacked to explain precisely why it is a slur — that is, an unsupported insult. This post aims to do that unpacking.

First, a little background about the reason Jewish groups (which are almost invariably Leftist) are again trying to make the “Trump is worrisomely close to Hitler” argument, this time by claiming that he’s doing nothing to stop antisemitism and, worse, that when asked he goes insane. This latest attack started with questions from Israeli and Jewish reporters:

Jewish groups called “worrisome,” “puzzling” and “mind-boggling” President Trump’s answers in two days’ worth of press conferences about rising anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.

During Wednesday’s press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli reporter asked Trump how he planned to address the hike in anti-Semitic incidents, and what he’d say to people around the world “who believe and feel that your administration is playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones.”

[snip]

At his marathon press conference in the East Room on Thursday, an event added to the president’s schedule at the last minute, Trump said he wanted to call on a “friendly” reporter and picked Jake Turx, a reporter for Ami, an orthodox Jewish magazine published in New York and Israel.

“I haven’t seen anyone in my community accuse you or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren, you are their zayde,” Turx said. “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.”

[snip]

Another reporter followed up soon afterward, though, noting that it wasn’t a question about Trump’s personal beliefs but anti-Semitic incidents happening across the country, “some of it by supporters in your name.” The New York Police Department, for instance, reported last week that while the rate for several crimes such as murder have fallen this year, the number of hate crimes in the city had doubled in 2017 compared to the same period last year, with anti-Semitic incidents leading the increase.

Trump, who is narcissistic in the classic sense of the word (extremely self-centered) rather than in the psychiatric sense of the word (a low-grade sociopath), heard the questions as an attack against him. Looking back on the campaign, I have to say that, even if Trump were not a classic narcissist, it would be reasonable for him to respond as he did.

For the entirety of his campaign, despite his beloved Jewish family members and long-standing support for Israel (recently evidenced again in Netanyahu’s rapturous meeting with him), the Progressives and the media (but I repeat myself) attacked Trump non-stop for antisemitism because white nationalist groups fell in behind him. (As an aside, the same media and Progressive organizations were utterly and completely silent about the openly, violently, antisemitic Muslims, blacks, and Leftists who occupied a main car in the Obama train, rather than chasing after the caboose. I’ll explain more about that in this post.)

Touched on a raw spot, Trump did what Trump does — he got defensive and, rather than addressing antisemitism in America, he defended himself personally against the charge that he’s antisemitic. One of those interactions involved him being rude (not antisemitic, but rude) to an orthodox Jewish reporter:

“He said he was gonna ask a very simple, easy question,” Trump interjected. “And it’s not, it’s not, not — not a simple question, not a fair question. OK, sit down, I understand the rest of your question.”

“So here’s the story, folks. Number one, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. Number two, racism, the least racist person. In fact, we did very well relative to other people running as a Republican — quiet, quiet, quiet,” he hushed reporters. “See, he lied about — he was gonna get up and ask a very straight, simple question, so you know, welcome to the world of the media. But let me just tell you something, that I hate the charge, I find it repulsive.”

“I hate even the question because people that know me and you heard the prime minister, you heard Ben Netanyahu yesterday, did you hear him, Bibi? He said, I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time and then he said, forget it. So you should take that instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that.”
Turx tweeted that he believed Trump “clearly misunderstood my question.”

Please that the reporter, rather than castigating Trump for being an antisemite, went with the milder — and completely accurate — statement that Trump misunderstood his question. Nevertheless, the NYT, NPR, the WaPo, and other reliably anti-Trump outlets (check for yourself, I won’t provide links) made hay of that interaction, however, again trying to imply that Trump is antisemitic. (Even a low-rent Arkansas bimbo, whose mother called someone she didn’t like a “f**king Jew bastard” and called Jews “k*kes” got in on the act.)

That’s the background. Now it’s time to unpack all the different issues involved, so that you can fully understand where antisemitism lives in this country and what Trump is trying to do about it.

There are different kinds of antisemitism. Antisemitism is always deeply offensive. Sometimes it’s also deadly.

The fact that antisemitism is not always deadly hints that it comes in different grades. To prove this principle, I’m going to focus primarily on England, not just because it’s the country that has the history I know best, but because it so perfectly demonstrates the degrees of antisemitism I want to show you.

In the early Middle Ages, England was as one with other European countries: Jews were allowed to live in the kingdom but they did so at the King’s sufferance. The monarchy (including attendant courtiers) looked to Jews for ready cash. (The quick answer to why were the Jews money lenders is as follows: Early Christianity barred charging interest on money, something that made loans financially impossible. Jewish law, however, did not prevent charging interest, although the rabbis had rules against usurious interest. Additionally, European laws banned Jews from most other livelihoods.)

As long as the cash was flowing in its direction, the British monarchy allowed the Jews to exist in the country and protected them. When members of the court, the King included, could no longer pay the Jews or when the King decided that he could do better by simply stealing all the gold rather than borrowing it, that protection went out the window.

Some of you may be asking “Protection against what or from whom?” Obviously, some of that protection was from the King himself. Early medieval British Jews always had to deal with the monarch’s philosophy, which was “Do right by me and I won’t kill you.” Doing right meant low-interest loans to begin with; no-interest repayment plans when the monarch demanded a plan change; and, eventually, forgiving the debt entirely when the monarch wouldn’t or couldn’t replay it.

Most of the protection, though, was against the ordinary English people who believed wholeheartedly in what have become the classic Christian antisemitic tropes: Jews used the blood of Christian children for their evil Passover rituals; Jews defiled innocent Christian maidens; Jews killed Christ and their descendents should be punished for eternity. Christ, who was himself a Jew, never taught these things.

If those classic tropes sound familiar, they should. Modern day Muslims, from the Palestinian strongholds, to Egypt, to Saudi Arabia, to Iran, to Dearborn, Michigan currently rely on 1,300 year old Muslim variations : Jews use the blood of Muslim children for their Passover evil rituals; Jews defile innocent Muslim maidens; Jews were disrespectful to Mohamed and their descendents should be punished for eternity. Same song; slightly different words. More on this later.

In 1190, the fevered antisemitism that powered the British people culminated in the York massacre. The Christian citizens’ bloodthirsty hunt for the Jews became so fervid that many Jews opted for a peaceful, immediate death at their own hands, rather than an inevitable, brutal death at the hands of an enraged mob:

Just before Easter 1190 a band of poverty-stricken local lords and their followers under the leadership of one Richard Mallebisse broke into the former home of one of the wealthiest Jews in the city of York, killed his widow and children and burned the house to the ground. When this was discovered many of the Jews of the city took refuge with their valuables in the royal castle. At this point the mob started to pillage the Jewish community and kill all those, who had stayed behind. Raging through the city, the frightened group of Jews in the castle refused to let the constable enter and the Royal Governor ordered an assault on the castle. Although the governor later in the day regretted, the angry mob was not to be stopped. That night the besieged debated their fate. In the end most of the Jews decided to commit “Kiddush-ha-Shem”: martyrdom in the name of God. The men slit the throats of their wives and children, while others burned their valuables. Towards morning only a handful was left, who chose to convert. At dawn they – promised a safe exit – left the castle but were nonetheless killed by the angry mob. All-in-all 150 Jews are said to have died in this most infamous massacre, which soon became emblematic of the horrendous anti-Semitic persecution, which had swept and continued to sweep through Europe in the wake of the Crusades.

Eventually, the combined pressures of violent antisemitism from the masses and greed in the courts led to King Edward I’s Edict of Expulsion in 1290. Jews were driven from the British isles. They returned only in 1657, when Oliver Cromwell, whose Puritanism was informed as much by the Old Testament as the New, allowed them to return.

Let me pause here for a moment and sum up that early antisemitism in British/Jewish history: This was a time when antisemitism was Christian in nature and often genocidal in action. The murderous flair-ups were not constant, but occurred regularly. In continental European countries, these same flair-ups were worse in both frequency and scope.

Upon the Jews’ return to England in 1657, the British embarked upon a different form of antisemitism, one that reached its apex in late 19th and early 20th century Britain and America. To borrow a word from the Leftist academic vocabulary, this phase involved the non-aggressive “othering” of Jews. “They’re not like us” is the operative phrase. People said, “I don’t understand these Jews.” Or maybe, “They’re fine in their place, but I certainly wouldn’t let my daughter marry one.”

In England, which lacked a First Amendment, some of this othering was legislative. Along with Catholics and non-conformists, Jews were not allowed to attend university or hold government offices. The othering also extended to social treatment. Jews were routinely ostracized from British society, both high and low.

Anyone familiar with 19th and 20th century British literature has come across these othering themes. In 1837-1838, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist introduced the world to Fagin, the Jewish crime lord. Dickens almost certainly based Fagin on Ikey Solomon, a well-known Jewish fence in London, leading Dickens to contend that he was attacking a specific (and not uncommon) type of criminal rather than the Jewish faith or Jews themselves:

Dickens, who had extensive knowledge of London street life, wrote that he had made Fagin Jewish because: “it unfortunately was true, of the time to which the story refers, that the class of criminal almost invariably was a Jew”.[6] It is often argued that Fagin was based on a specific Jewish criminal of the era, Ikey Solomon.[7] Dickens also claimed that by calling Fagin “the Jew” he had meant no imputation against the Jewish faith: “I have no feeling towards the Jews but a friendly one. I always speak well of them, whether in public or private, and bear my testimony (as I ought to do) to their perfect good faith in such transactions as I have ever had with them…”[8]

Despite Dickens’ excuses, Fagin is an awful portrayal. Indeed, as Dickens matured and actually got to know Jews, he regretted those early excesses and deliberately changed the book so that it would be less offensive, as well as trying to portray Jews in a positive light in later works:

In later editions of the book, printed during his lifetime, Dickens excised over 180 instances of ‘Jew’ from the text.[9] This occurred after Dickens sold his London home in 1860 to a Jewish banker, James Davis, who objected to the emphasis on Fagin’s Jewishness in the novel. When he sold the house, Dickens allegedly told a friend: “The purchaser of Tavistock House will be a Jew Money-Lender” before later saying: “I must say that in all things the purchaser has behaved thoroughly well, and that I cannot call to mind any occasion when I have had moneydealings with anyone that has been so satisfactory, considerate and trusting.”[5]

Dickens became friendly with Eliza (Davis’ wife), who told him in a letter in 1863 that Jews regarded his portrayal of Fagin a “great wrong” to their people. Dickens then started to revise Oliver Twist, removing all mention of “the Jew” from the last 15 chapters; and later wrote in reply: “There is nothing but good will left between me and a People for whom I have a real regard and to whom I would not willfully have given an offence”. In one of his final public readings in 1869, a year before his death, Dickens cleansed Fagin of all stereotypical caricature. A contemporary report observed: “There is no nasal intonation; a bent back but no shoulder-shrug: the conventional attributes are omitted.”[5][8]

In 1865, in Our Mutual Friend, Dickens created a number of Jewish characters, the most important being Mr Riah, an elderly Jew who finds jobs for downcast young women in Jewish-owned factories. One of the two heroines, Lizzie Hexam, defends her Jewish employers: “The gentleman certainly is a Jew, and the lady, his wife, is a Jewess, and I was brought to their notice by a Jew. But I think there cannot be kinder people in the world.”[8]

Put another way, even as Dickens’ attitude softened and warmed, he never stopped viewing Jews as the “other.” Early in his career, the “other” was a negative stereotype; later in his career, the “other” was a positive stereotype. It was always a stereotype, but it was never grounded in the blood libel that justified killing Jews and he never used his works as a rallying cry for genocide. That pattern shows up again and again and again in British literature: the Jew is the other, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but never deserving of death simply because he is Jewish.

Off the top of my head, the examples I can think of are George Elliot, who wrote an encomium to Jews in Daniel Deronda; Georgette Heyer, who interrupted one of her light, delightful romances to include an unpleasant character directly modeled on Fagin; Agatha Christie, whose early mysteries often have Jewish characters complete with lisps and greed; and Dorothy Sayers, whose very first book (Whose Body) focused intensely on a missing Jewish financier, a plot turn that allowed her simultaneously to tie Jews to money, while at the same time allowing her Jewish character to be a good man, devoted to his Christian wife. In a later book (I can’t remember which one), Sayers had one of her main characters marry the Jewish financier’s daughter, with Lord Peter Wimsey standing as best man at the wedding. In all of these books, the Jew was the other, and could be the subject of derision, but that derision never justified genocide.

In America, the parallel that pops into my mind is Simon Rosedale in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. Wikipedia’s summary of Rosedale’s character nicely summarizes 19th and 20th century Western ambivalence about Jews. He is both a parvenu and a sympathetic character:

A successful and socially astute Jewish businessman—the quintessential parvenu—who has the money but not the social standing to be accepted into the circle of New York’s leisure class. Building his fortune in real estate, Rosedale makes his first appearance in the story when he observes Lily leaving his apartment building after what appears to be a tryst with one of his tenants. Rosedale is interested in Lily because not only is she beautiful, but what is more important, she is also a social asset in gaining him a place in high society. She reflects that she has put herself in his power by her clumsy dress-maker fib and her refusal to allow him to take her to the station which would have given him the prestige of being seen by members of the society with whom he was aspiring to gain acceptance. As his social ascendency continues, he offers Lily marriage which would provide her a way out of her financial dilemma and her precarious social standing; she puts him off. His cleverness and business acumen serve him well to achieve a higher and higher rung on the social ladder. Lily, however, is on her way down to the point that Rosedale is no longer interested in marrying her. Despite the differences in their social standing , Rosedale by the end of the story shows compassion for Lily. He offers her a loan when he runs into her after she has lost her hat-making job—an offer she refuses.

This 19th and 20th century “othering” sometimes meant that Jews made convenient scapegoats, a la France’s Dreyfus affair. Alfred Dreyfus, a stolid French Jewish army officer ended up interned in Devil’s Island for allegedly communicating French military secrets to the Germans. The scandal arose from the fact that everyone involved knew with certainty that a scion of a well-connected French family committed the treason. Dreyfus, the Jewish outsider, was the perfect scapegoat.

The manifest injustice of the charges against Dreyfus divided French society (Zola wrote his famous J’Accuse on Dreyfus’s behalf), and ended with Dreyfus finally being released from prison. Again, although what happened was vile and antisemitic, it was not genocidal.

For 19th century Jewish genocide, you have to travel to Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, and neighboring lands. There, in the same manner as medieval Jews or Muslims of all eras, blood libels saw ordinary people whipped into murderous, genocidal frenzies against the Jews. Indeed, Timothy Snyder, in his unbelievably depressing Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, contends that Hitler got the idea for killing Jews on an industrialized scale when he came into contact with the Russians and Poles, and got an insight into both their pogroms and Stalin’s mass murder techniques. Hitler realized then that it was entirely possible to wipe out an entire despised people and get away with it.

The above, of course, leads me to 20th-century Jewish genocide, which is yet another kind of antisemitism. The Middle Age blood-lusts were driven by a perversion of Christian beliefs. By contrast, mid-20th century Jewish genocide came about when socialists rejected religion entirely.

Hitler was an avowed socialist who rejected Christianity entirely and poured his energies into weird neo-pagan mysticism. He didn’t hate Jews because they were Christ-killers; he hated them because, while most lived in abysmal poverty, a small, but highly visible segment of Jews were connected with capitalism. After all, Karl Marx, himself of Jewish descent, excoriated Jews in dehumanizing terms for their connection to capital. Hitler logically interpreted Marx to mean that genocide was the only way to save the world from the Jews.

The Soviets were no slouches either when it came to using Marx to justify destroying Jews. They, like Hitler, also understood that capitalism wasn’t the only problem when it came to the Jews. In a statist environment, individualism cannot exist — and the Bible, in both its Jewish and Christian parts, is unlike all other religious books because it focuses on the individual.

To summarize — For the last 1,000 years, we’ve seen four different types of antisemitism:

  1. Christian antisemitism. Medieval Christian antisemitism, which was grounded in religious faith and was intermittently genocidal.
  2. Othering” antisemitism. Post-Enlightenment 19th and 20th century British and American (and sort of French) antisemitism, which was based upon cultural “othering” and was not genocidal, although Jews were certainly victimized.
  3. Socialist or Leftist antisemitism. 20th and (sadly) 21st century socialist antisemitism, which draws on all the old hatreds but reconfigured itself as an antipathy to control over capital. When mixed in with a European nationalist fervor (e.g., Germany), a nation’s traditional Christian Antisemitism (i.e., those nations that Nazis conquered that still willingly handed over their Jews), or a leader’s paranoia (e.g., Stalin, who feared the Jews would overthrow him), it can range from ugly insults to unconstrained genocide.
  4. Muslim antisemitism. Like Christian antisemitism, this is tied to faith. Like socialist antisemitism, it’s also tied to control over capital. Like “othering” antisemitism, it’s tied to Jews generally, not just religious Jews. Unlike all the other types of antisemitism, Muslim antisemitism is not tied to a specific century or movement. Muslim Antisemitism has existed unchanged since Mohamed’s time. He is the prophet so his excoriations and incitements to murder are graven in stone and must be obeyed at all times and in all places.

The above list leads to this question: Today, in the 21st century, which is the antisemitism that Jews need to fear.

Neither Christian nor Othering antisemitism should worry Jews today. Serious Christian antisemitism is a thing of the past. Indeed, when it comes to genocide, the sad truth is that, throughout vast swaths of the world — swaths that not-so-coincidentally align perfectly with Muslim-majority or Muslim-controlled regions — Christians are on the receiving end of a massive genocide. In America, I know that there are Christians who don’t like Jews, whether in classical medieval terms or in “othering” terms, but they are not genocidal. One particular individual might be a crazed killer, but the the small cadre of Christian antisemites in America is not worth worrying about.

Othering Antisemitism was never something to fear. It barred Jews from career and social advance, and made them the object of opprobrium, but it did not end with them burned in buildings, dead in the street, or gassed and burned. In America, Jews overcame it by being so damn good at the things Americans needed that the Americans of necessity had to invite them into the bank or law firm or buy their products.

This leaves us with only two types of antisemitism — Socialist and Muslim. Both are present and are really scary.

Socialist or Leftist Antisemitism has been part of Europe for the entire 20th century and is still alive and well in 21st-century Europe, while becoming a growing force in 21st-century America. This is especially true on college campuses, where academics constantly prop up egos far in excess of ability by aping Europe.

Muslim Antisemitism, as noted above, has never gone away and never decreased in venom or deadliness.

In the last 50 years, Muslims and Socialists have joined forces and are creating a situation that’s ripe for genocide. Israel is ground zero. Socialist antisemites try to frame their antipathy to Israel in terms of “two states,” and “imperialism,” and “anti-Arab racism,” but some, surely, must understand that Hamas and its fellow travelers have always been brutally honest about their plans: They intend to kill every Jew they find. Muslims make no effort to hide their goal.

Thanks to the escalating influx of Muslims into Europe, however, violent antisemitism doesn’t just target Israel. Europe’s Muslims are open about their genocidal desires and Europe’s socialists give the Muslims a pass, consoling themselves by muttering about “root causes,” “Jewish imperialism,” and “evil Zionism.”

Thanks to this socialist moral support, Muslims are getting increasingly aggressive against  European Jews. This is especially so in France which, until Frau Merkel’s immigration folly, had a greater percentage of Muslims making up its population than any other European country. It’s not just headline attacks such as the Hyper Cache antisemitic attack (which Obama, when unscripted, carelessly glossed over as “a bunch of folks in a deli in Paris” getting killed).

French Jews, who must disguise their faith on the streets and surround their homes and institutions with armed guards, see the genocidal handwriting on the wall. They are frantic to leave France. They understand that, while Israel may be directly under Iran’s nuclear umbrella, at least Israel’s Jewish government is not largely composed of socialists sympathetic to Muslim antisemitism, anti-Zionism, and genocidal fury.

Conclusion? Jews need to fear Leftist and Muslim antisemitism, both of which are alive and well, and which history demonstrates too often end in genocide. Muslims are explicitly told to practice genocide. Socialism, once it gains critical mass, simply seems to end up in genocide.

America has two different types of antisemitic attacks/violence. Just as there are different antisemites and antisemitism, not all antisemitic attacks are the same.  There are vile taunts and insults, including synagogue and grave desecration, and there are concerted efforts to destroy the Jewish homeland (which means the genocide of the Jews in that homeland) and to justify genocide against the Jews wherever they live.

As a Jew, I find both reprehensible, but I’m infinitely more worried about the second than about the first. Let’s break those two types of American antisemitic attacks down to understand who’s doing them and what risks they create for American Jews and Israel.

Both Trump and Hillary had and have antisemites amongst their supporters. That’s not surprising. In a two-party system, antisemites, just as is true for other voters, have to go somewhere. What’s interesting when looking at the last election is the number and prominence of those antisemites in our two-party system.

The big media inundated Americans with accusations that Trump was a combination of Hitler and the Klan’s Grand Wizard, hiding his swastika and white hood in a secret closet, and preparing his followers to round up the Jews and send them to a big new gas chamber somewhere in flyover country. Facts never stopped these accusations.

The fact that Trump has long supported Israel, both with words and money, was irrelevant. The fact that Netanyahu, while carefully keeping out of the American election (unlike Obama, who spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to influence the Israeli election against Netanyahu), disliked Hillary, and was thrilled when Trump won, was irrelevant. The fact that Trump’s beloved Ivanka married a Jew, converted to Judaism, and is raising her children as Jews was irrelevant. The fact that Trump handed much of his election strategy over to Jared Kushner, a Jew, was irrelevant. The fact that Trump’s chosen ambassador to Israel is completely supportive of the Jewish state was irrelevant.

All that mattered to the Democrat media was that some infinitesimally small percentage of American wackos decided that Trump was the white man’s savior — a decision they reached because Trump refused to abide by the stifling, censorious strictures of political correctness. And yes, I do mean infinitesimally small. This is not 1920s America, with an ascendant KKK strutting down Pennsylvania Avenue. This is 21st-century America, in which a handful of slack-jawed rubes, many of whom still live in their childhood bedrooms, get way more press than they deserve because the media is trying to build them up into something to score political points.

The whole white nationalist attack on Trump got extra mileage because that same small group slack-jawed group of hate-filled morons went on the attack against any journalist, including conservative journalists, who dared to stand against their chosen candidate. Some of those journalists were Jewish (such as the brilliant Ben Shapiro) and some have black family members (such as the brilliant — and very likable — David French).

To a hammer, everything is a nail so, even when attacking conservatives who might be persuaded to support Trump, these white nationalist vermin used their favorite hammers (vile racist imprecations) against their favorite nails (Jews, blacks, and those associated with blacks). These attacks were deeply personal and extraordinarily vile. Trump repeatedly disavowed racist voles, but the mainstream media buried or derided his statements, while the rightly offended and frightened reporters on the receiving end of this antisemitism and racism could not forgive Trump for a connection with racists that existed entirely on the side of the racists, not on Trump’s side.

Even with this pathetic, hate-filled fringe getting more airtime than it could ever deserve, no one connected with or supporting Trump’s campaign demanded Israel’s destruction. Indeed, I suspect that America’s white supremacists would be happy for Israel to exist as a repository for the American Jews they wish would vanish.

Things were a little different in Hillary’s campaign, although the media never even breathed the word “antisemitism” in connection with Hillary or her supporters.  Hillary, as mentioned above, not only was heard to use nasty antisemitic insults, she willingly took money from and offered State Department favors to states aggressively hostile to Israel.

Hillary also got a lot of support from American Muslims — you know, the ones who have a 1,300 year history of religiously-dictated genocidal antisemitism (emphasis mine):

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today released the results of a nationwide survey of Muslim voters on the upcoming presidential election indicating a likely high turnout of Muslims at the polls on November 8 – more than 70 percent of whom say they will vote for Hillary Clinton. . . .

An example who springs to mind is Linda Sarsour, a Muslim Democrat who has a very high profile in Democrat circles. One of my dimmer Jewish friends had a series of Facebook posts supporting Sarsour’s feminism until I pointed out Sarsour’s open antisemitism, at which point those posts dried up:

An outspoken critic of Israel, Sarsour supports the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Hamas-inspired initiative that uses various forms of public protest, economic pressure, and court rulings to advance the Hamas agenda of permanently destroying Israel as a Jewish nation-state.

Vis-a-vis the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, Sarsour favors a one-state solution where an Arab majority and a Jewish minority would live together within the borders of a single country. She made clear her opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state when she tweeted in October 2012 that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

Falsely maintaining that “Palestine existed before the State of Israel,” Sarsour seeks to help “bring back a Palestinian State for the Palestinian people.” To advance this agenda, Sarsour has tweeted images of fraudulent maps claiming to depict the “Palestinian loss of land” that supposedly occurred between 1946 and 2000.

(There’s more here. Indeed, if google Sarsour’s name and “antisemitism,” you’ll find all sorts of interesting stuff.)

So one of the  proud, loud, media-supported central pillars of Hillary’s campaign — and of the post-campaign effort to destroy Trump — is a sizable group of American citizens who subscribe to an openly genocidal antisemitic doctrine and who, even if they don’t voice that doctrine, argue loudly for the destruction of the world’s only Jewish nation. And yet, to the MSM, that’s not newsworthy.

Two other necessary groups for Democrat dominance are blacks and Hispanics. Obama pulled in 93% of the black vote (which makes perfect sense to me) but Hillary managed to wangle a still solid 88%. The same article to which I linked shows that Obama got 71% of the Latino vote, with Hillary trailing a bit at 65%. With those numbers in mind, I’m sad to report that 30% of Blacks and Hispanics hold antisemitic views.

And then of course there’s the garden-variety, yet quite deadly, Leftist antisemitism that permeates America’s increasingly extreme Democrat party. As the radicals successfully pull the Democrat party further to the Left, support for Israel drops and support for the openly genocidal Palestinians increases.

These Progressive apples didn’t fall at all far from the biggest tree in the orchard, President Barack Obama. We’ll never know what he said at the infamous Palestinian celebration in Los Angeles, but we know he placidly sat through 20 years of sermons from his openly antisemitic pastor, Rev. Wright. We know he gave his first major speech to the world’s Muslims and stated that Israel got a state only because of the Holocaust (which most serious Muslims deny happened) and not because of her 3,000 years of unbroken ties to the land. We know that he wanted to break Israel’s strong ties to America.

We know that he gave American money to Iran, fully understanding that Iran would use that money to build nuclear weapons aimed at Israel. Indeed, he kindly gave the Iranians permission to build such weapons, provided that they refrained from building weapons that might reach as far as Europe. And we know that, in practically his last act as president, he worked with the UN to craft a resolution denying Israel’s historic ties to the Holy Land and denying her any right to disputed territories she won defeating yet another genocidal Muslim war of aggression in 1967 — and then he sat back and let the UN Security Council pass that genocidal resolution.

Progressives love Obama. And Obama, true to his Muslim and socialist roots, loves the idea of Jewish genocide. Has he said that? No. But his actions and the people with whom he surrounds himself lead inexorably to that conclusion.

Between Progressives and their American Muslim allies, no wonder that, while the media is moaning about imaginary (and almost invariably faked) anti-Muslim hate crimes, actual antisemitic hate crimes are skyrocketing in America. (It’s even worse in Britain, a country that’s more socialist and more Muslim than America.)

Let me summarize where we are now and explain what Trump will do to help destroy antisemitism in America:

In early 21st-century America,the scary kind of American antisemitism, the genocidal kind that isn’t just about “I don’t like you and don’t marry my daughter,” is a Muslim and Leftist phenomenon. These two groups are the ones that, in the 21st century, engaged in genocide. For the Muslims, it was then, as it is now, a daily religious obligation. For the socialists, it was the inevitable end of their fealty to Karl Marx’s ideas. In the 21st-century, these two groups are drawing together (1) to marginalize Jews in the diaspora (harass them, insult them, kill them one at a time) and (2) to destroy the Jews entirely in their homeland of Israel.

The modern Democrat party is increasingly socialist and Muslims are a major identity group within the party.

To the extent there is a misleading focus on racist nationalists that perverts our perceptions by making us believe that a tiny outlier group (horrible, but definitely tiny) is responsible for a rising tide of antisemitism, that occurs because: (a) the MSM has to focus on this little group both to discredit Trump and to hide the Democrats’ central antisemitism problem and (b) because it’s absolutely true that the more despicable alt-righters hurled horrible antisemitic insults and threats directly at Jewish journalists — and journalists are always their own favorite story.

Put away your misconceptions. The real antisemites in America are the Jews’ perpetual enemies (the Muslims) and the Jews’ 20th century enemies (the socialists).

Now that we’ve finally come to the heart of antisemitism in America, what is Trump doing about it? He’s doing a lot:

  1. Trump is partnering with Israel to abandon the two-state solution, which was always a cover for Palestinians’ genocidal attacks against the Jewish state, and working to find a way to ensure Israel’s future security. Netanyahu’s beaming face shows that this is a huge blow to antisemitism.
  2. With a little help from Obama, Trump has decimated the Democrat party throughout most of the United States. Outside of a few urban Democrat strongholds, America is a not a socialist country. Defeating socialism is key to defeating modern American antisemitism.
  3. Most importantly, Trump is working hard — and the Democrats are pushing back hard — to close the doors to impossible-to-vet immigrants from Muslim countries. While some, maybe many, of these immigrants are decent people looking for a new life, the reality is that their homelands and their religion make it exceedingly likely that genocidal antisemitism is high on their list of things to do.

As a Jew, I could not be more grateful that Trump, not Hillary, is in the White House. There is no doubt in my mind — and I hope I’ve proven to your satisfaction — that Donald Trump is doing everything possible to block both obnoxious and genocidal antisemitism, whether it’s already living in America or trying to cross our borders. He is not antisemitic and he will be the Jews’ best friend in a dangerous world.