Showing posts with label anti-Semitism in the United States. Show all posts

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Trump Accuses Most American Jews of “Disloyalty” to Israel, Deploying Anti-Semitic Trope

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP revealed again on Tuesday that he subscribes to the anti-Semitic belief that American Jews harbor a secret dual loyalty to Israel.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, the president first accused Democratic lawmakers of insufficient support for the state of Israel before adding, “I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

That Trump was accusing the vast majority of American Jews who vote for Democrats in election after election of being disloyal to Israel was clear in the context of his full answer to the question he was asked: Should U.S. aid to Israel be suspended following the Israeli government’s decision to prevent two Democratic congresswomen, Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, from visiting the Palestinian territories it occupies?

Trump, who pressed Israel to block the visit by the two Muslim Democrats, responded by falsely smearing Tlaib and Omar as “two people that hate Israel and hate Jewish people,” before calling any Jews who vote for their party ignorant or disloyal. In recent months, the president has repeatedly mischaracterized as anti-Semitic the two lawmakers’ criticism of Israel’s far-right government, and their support for the Palestinian-led campaign of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against companies that enable the occupation to continue.

On Wednesday, Trump was even more explicit. “In my opinion, the Democrats have gone very far away from Israel,” he told reporters. “In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you’re being very disloyal to Jewish people and you’re being very disloyal to Israel.”

“I have been responsible for a lot of great things, for Israel,” Trump also said. “One of them was moving the embassy to Jerusalem, making Jerusalem the capital of Israel.” This was not the first time he has spoken of moving the United States Embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalemas if it made the designation of the city as Israel’s capital official. Trump also mentioned his decision to recognize Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and his undermining of Iran by withdrawing from the nuclear deal and imposing sanctions. Weakening Iran has been a longterm foreign policy objective of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Just one in four American Jews voted for Trump in the 2016 election, with 71 percent voting for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, according to exit polls. In the 2018 midterm elections, 79 percent of American Jews voted for Democratic candidates, with just 17 percent voting for Trump’s Republican party.

Trump also took time out of his meeting on Tuesday with Romania’s president, Klaus Iohannis, to mock Tlaib for crying on Monday as she described her disappointment at not being allowed to visit her Palestinian grandmother in the Israeli-occupied West Bank without surrendering her right to free speech during the trip.

The Romanian president, who comes from the country’s ethnic German minority, made no comment on Trump’s remark, but his presence was a silent reminder of the horrific violence that has resulted from the idea of Jewish dual loyalty. At least 380,000 Romanian Jews were slaughtered between 1940 and 1944 by a fascist government that was allied with Nazi Germany.

Romania has also struggled to respond to a recent surge in anti-Semitic incidents, targeting the small Jewish population that survived the war. Last year, anti-Semitic vandals defaced the childhood home of Elie Wiesel, a Romanian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz and documented the Holocaust. “Nazi Jew lying in hell with Hitler,” was painted on the outside of the house, which is now a museum in Sighetu Marmatiei, Romania.

This was at least the second time this year that Trump invoked the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty. Speaking to a group of Jewish Republicans in April, the president referred to Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, as “your prime minister.”

That group, the Republican Jewish Coalition, defended Trump on Tuesday, accusing the 79 percent of American Jews who voted for Democratic candidates in the 2018 midterms of defending “a party that protects/emboldens people that hate you for your religion.”

A far larger number of Jewish Americans were appalled by what they saw as the clear anti-Semitic undertone of Trump’s logic.

“This is it, Trump’s antisemitic philosophy exposed,” the progressive Orthodox activist Elad Nehorai wrote. “If Jews don’t agree with him, they aren’t good Jews. This is how he gets us killed. Sides with the ‘good ones’ and spouts hate at the rest, coded or not. Thus the Soros caravan conspiracy that led to the Pittsburgh massacre.”

“This is an explicit dual loyalty charge wielded by the President of the United States against 80% of American Jews who voted against him,” Emily Mayer, a spokesperson for the anti-occupation group IfNotNow said in a statement. “It is not merely an antisemitic dog whistle — it’s a bullhorn to his white nationalist base.”

As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg explained last year, the ancient dual loyalty charge is what lies beneath Trump’s use of the phrase “globalist” to describe people he sees as insufficiently American. “Globalist — one of Trump’s favorite dogwhistles — implies that someone is not of-this-nation, they’re not tied here, their loyalty is not to *us* of this country but to *each other* internationally,” Ruttenberg wrote. “The idea the Jews’ loyalty is not to France or Germany or Poland or etc. because they are infiltrators, outsiders—that’s one of the oldest tropes in the book. They’re out to get us, to undermine us, not one of us. It’s being used to great effect these days.”

“This is outrageous,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, wrote on Twitter. “So US Jews’ ‘loyalty’ is mainly to Israel? Or it is supposedly in Israel’s interest to back Netanyahu’s right-wing agenda of creating a discriminatory, repressive one-state reality?”

“Trump is a vile white supremacist,” author and activist Josh Ruebner tweeted. “But every organization, politician (including Dems), and talking head who decided it was a good idea to weaponize anti-semitism by conflating advocacy for Palestinian rights with hatred of Jewish people owns a tiny little piece of his comments.”

Edo Konrad of the Israeli magazine +972 observed: “The Jewish American right has, for the last three years, enabled and supported Donald Trump’s anti-Semitism — not because it particularly loves Trump, but because he is the perfect vessel to realize the right’s hyper-Zionist, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant vision.”

Omar, who was accused by the Anti-Defamation League of using “a vile anti-Semitic slur” after she wrote that she “should not be expected to have allegiance/pledge support to a foreign country in order to serve my country in Congress,” had a simpler response to Trump’s dual loyalty comment.

The response to Trump’s remarks on Tuesday made it plain that even some conservative American Jewish organizations have had enough. “Enough, Mr. President,” the American Jewish Committee said in a statement. “American Jews — like all Americans — have a range of political views. Your assessment of their knowledge or loyalty, based on their party preference, is divisive, disrespectful, and unwelcome. Please stop.”

As Bobby Lewis of Media Matters for America noted, Trump’s remark came just hours after one of the hosts of his favorite morning news show, Brian Kilmeade of “Fox and Friends,” complained on-air that “President Trump only got 24 percent” of the Jewish vote in 2016 even though “Barack Obama was in single digits for approval rating inside Israel by Israelis.”

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Noam Chomsky: Hopes and Anxieties in the Age of Trump

By Saul Isaacson

Noam Chomsky offers insights on issues ranging from Iran to Latin America and the risk of nuclear war under Trump.

For over half a century, Noam Chomsky, celebrated linguist and current Laureate Professor of Linguistics and Agnese Nelms Haury Chair at the University of Arizona, has provided intellectual and moral leadership to critics of American foreign policy. In the interview below, conducted in his office at the University of Arizona on August 7, 2018, Chomsky discusses the American obsession with Iran, and why the Trump administration seems ready for a confrontation. He also addresses the disappointing trends in two Latin American nations, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Above all, Chomsky expresses his concerns over nuclear weapons, especially in the unpredictable hands of Donald Trump. Reprinted below is the entire text of the interview

In the larger sense, do you believe that there is still a reservoir of untapped anti-Semitism in the United States?

It’s not even untapped. Take the strongest supporters of Israel, the Christian evangelicals. That’s the most anti-Semitic group in history. I mean, even Hitler didn’t say that all Jews should go to eternal perdition. Can you be any more anti-Semitic than that?

But what about mainstream American society? Less so?

I mean, it was true up until, I’d say, about mid-1950s. So, I was a student at Harvard in the 1950s. I mean, you could cut the anti-Semitism with a knife. It wasn’t—one of the reasons MIT became a great institution is because people like Norbert Wiener couldn’t get jobs at Harvard, literally. Paul Samuelson, Bob Solow, so they came down to the engineering school down the street. Didn’t care. But, so there was plenty of it. But it’s pretty much—I mean, it could easily—it could be an upsurge. These things are always right below the surface. But right now, I think there isn’t much, except for groups like Christian evangelicals or white nationalists, you know, they don’t like anybody.

Can you see Democrats taking a less pugnacious stance toward Iran in 2020? It seems that they’re showing a little bit less sympathy for Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Perhaps that will be replicated in other places in the Middle East, like Iran. Is there any hope for that?

That’s really hard to predict. I mean, the hatred of Iran is such a deep-seated part of modern American culture. To eradicate it is going to be very hard. I mean—take this morning’s New York Times. It’s pretty interesting, take a look at the lead story. It’s about Trump canceling, you know, the withdrawal of the—reinstituting the sanctions against Iran. And the headline says, and then the story says that Trump thinks that reinstituting sanctions will cut back Iran’s weapons production and cut down the—their repression inside Iran, and stop their meddling in the Middle East. I mean, first of all, does Trump think that? Probably not. Is there any truth to it? There isn’t a particle of truth to any of it. The most repressive countries in the Middle East are the ones we support. By comparison to Saudi Arabia, Iran looks like Norway, you know. As far as violence in the Middle East is concerned, the Saudi Arabian [and] UAE actions in Yemen, which we’re supporting, are much worse than anything. But here’s the—here’s the framework of discussion, you know. To break through that kind of, you know, just presuppositions, they don’t even say it, it’s just the presupposition …

Is it about—merely about hegemony? How do you explain the virulent disgust and hatred for Iran?

It’s very simple: in 1979 Iran moved towards independence. And worse than that, they overthrew the U.S.-imposed tyrant who had been ruling the country and U.S. interests. They’re not going to forget that. In fact, immediately right after the Iranian revolution, the U.S. began supporting the Iraqi invasion of Iran, which was devastating. Iraq was using chemical weapons, was killing hundreds of thousands of people, it was supported all the way through. In fact, at the very end it won the war for Iraq by closing the Persian Gulf to Iran.

So, could you say we’ve already had a war with Iran by way of the Iran-Iraq war?

…we didn’t really go to war with Iran because they’re not dumb enough to send troops to Iran. They’re pretty dumb, but not that dumb. What they’ll do, if they feel like it, is bomb from a distance, you know, missiles from the gulf, which could be pretty awful.

Speaking of bombs and missiles, I recently read The Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg. I found it riveting.

It’s a very important book.

Yeah. And he [Ellsberg] talks about key transition points and what is acceptable barbarism in war. He starts with the traditional notion that soldiers kill only soldiers, and then the bombing of civilians, and the way “Bomber” Harris worked it down to a science, and then the incineration of cities was the next step, and then the atomic bomb, and the savagery of Curtis LeMay; it’s really a beautifully-written book, very moving. But it made me think about Trump. Are we at another one of those key pivotal moments [featuring] a president with a trigger finger, and more and more nations with nuclear weapons?

Well, you know, Trump is a deviation from standard political history. He doesn’t give a shit about geostrategic issues. He doesn’t care what the hell he’s doing. If he smashes up the international economy, fine. If he throws out NATO, who cares? The only thing he cares about is himself, literally, and everything he’s doing follows from just the recognition that he’s a narcissistic megalomaniac who wants to make sure that, you know, he’s on top. He wins everything. And he has to keep his base under control. And he’s very good at it. He knows exactly what buttons to push to keep angry people—angry for good reasons, for the most part—to keep them sort of following him. He’s shafting them at every turn. Just take a look at wages. Since he’s come in, real wages have declined. They were actually starting to rise under Obama, and they’re starting to decline. But he’s keeping them in line. And the way he does it, by just doing one crazed thing after another, which looks as though he’s defending us. And they’re passionate. They revere him. So, you take a look—and on nuclear weapons, actually he’s got the best position of any politician in the country. He’s saying, we should reduce tensions with Russia. And he’s making moves to allow the Koreans to move slowly towards denuclearization, and it’s perfect. And that’s what everyone, including the Democrats, is denouncing him for.

Do you think those gestures are sincere?

No, of course not. Nothing is sincere. But, you know, it’s like a clock that nobody wound. It’s right twice a day. So, these are the—they should be praising him for that and supporting it, but instead, the liberals are so insane that they’re attacking him for the few things he’s doing which makes sense. Of course, we should reduce tensions with Russia. Of course, we should allow Korea to move towards denuclearization in a sensible way. I mean, try to find one liberal commentator or political leader who’s supporting him on that. I mean, the person—the one person who’s supporting him on that is the nuttiest guy in congress, Ron Paul. I mean, it’s crazy.

Do you think Trump is more likely to use tactical nuclear weapons than other presidents?

Well, I think the danger with Trump and nuclear weapons is something else. If this Mueller investigation ever comes up with something, which I doubt very much, but if it comes up with something that implicates Trump, everybody’s in trouble because he’s going to react like a maniac. Might try to start a war in the United States. He might start nuking people. He might do anything. Anything that goes after him personally is very dangerous. So, again, I think the liberals are out of their minds on this. What they want to do is implicate Trump, you know, threaten to impeach him, at which point he could go crazy. And he has a lot of power. Maybe the military wouldn’t follow his orders, who knows, but they might, you know.

Sunday, August 25, 2019

Trump Accuses Most American Jews of “Disloyalty” to Israel, Deploying Anti-Semitic Trope

Sunday, August 19, 2018

Noam Chomsky: Hopes and Anxieties in the Age of Trump

By Saul Isaacson

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