Trump’s Menacing Rosh Hashanah Message to American Jews
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Like most politicians, former President Donald Trump marked the occasion of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, by passing along holiday greetings to American Jews. Unlike most politicians, Trump used the opportunity to threaten them.
On Sunday evening, just as Rosh Hashanah was coming to a close, Trump posted a meme on his social-media platform, Truth Social, excoriating “liberal Jews” who had “voted to destroy America.” (Majorities of American Jews have voted for Democrats since before World War II.) “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake,” the caption continued, “and make better choices going forward!”
Trump’s Rosh Hashanah broadside was far from the first time that he had shared objectionable sentiments about Jewish people. But it was particularly ugly in the way it deliberately singled out a specific constituency during that constituency’s holiest season. As the conservative writer Philip Klein wrote in National Review , “Color me skeptical that Trump’s defenders would be so understanding if Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer were to post a Merry Christmas message … blaming Christian conservatives for destroying America because they didn’t vote for Democrats.”
Read: Why Trump can’t answer questions about anti-Semitism
But while Trump’s message may be offensive, it is also instructive, because it reflects the way that many people think about Jews. Some anti-Semites treat Jewish people as a menacing monolith that suborns society to its sinister ends. But others divide the community into “good Jews,” who warrant respect and provisional protection, and “bad Jews,” who can be subjected to all manner of abuse. In this construction, the righteous Jews are those who affirm the bigot and support his worldview, while the unworthy ones are those who stubbornly refuse to get with the program. Like other minorities, the Jewish minority is expected to conform to the preferences of a dominant majority culture—whether that is political or religious—and those who dissent become fair game for denunciation and discrimination.
Sometimes, as in Trump’s case, this distinction between good Jews and bad ones is made along partisan lines. In other instances, bigots draw the line geographically between the Jews in Israel and those outside it, with one community venerated and the other denigrated. This is why former Republican Congressman Steve King pointed to his support for Israel when criticized over his sympathy for the white nationalists who assail Jews in North America. For the same reason, Ken Livingstone, the socialist former mayor of London and inveterate critic of the Jewish state, infamously insisted that “a real anti-Semite doesn’t just hate the Jews in Israel.” For a certain type of bigot, the fact that they deprecate only the right kind of Jews means they cannot be a bigot.
This Semitic sorting never ends well, because justifications for abusing Jews have a way of metastasizing. Permission structures for anti-Semitism are rarely restricted to their original target. Once a society starts accepting attacks on entire swaths of Jews—for being too liberal, too religious , too secular, too pro-Israel, too anti-Israel, too whatever—that acceptance will grow. And when Jewish existence becomes conditional on staying in the good graces of a non-Jewish actor or movement, it becomes an impoverished existence—provisional and precarious, forever looking over its shoulder.
James Kirchick: Leave Jews out of it
This is why true friends of the Jewish people don’t pick which half of the world’s Jews are the good ones and which half are the bad ones, like some sort of anti-Semitic Santa Claus. They do not paint millions of Jewish people with Manichaean moral strokes, but rather grant them the dignity of their diversity and judge individuals as individuals, not as avatars for their group. Those who, like Trump and King, make lists of bad Jews or suggest that Jews aren’t proper Jews if they don’t adopt a certain ideology are not allies of the Jews. They’re the people laying the groundwork for persecution.
Bitchy comments about George Soros are mundane, steer clear of making them.
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My mother was an anti-semite throughout much of her early life, it took most of the rest to overcome it and yet it would still sneakout insidiously.
trump is locking down the white xtian moron vote for 2024.
Once one falls for the huge god lie, all others are easy.
Will never, ever trust a religionist about anything.
Back in my Denver days lived with a beautiful Jewish princess in an old Jewish castle. Met a bunch of her old Jewish friends.
We never once talked about religion. It was a non-thing.
one of my 2 best friends in high school was jewish and I never knew it until after he died 3 years ago. then again, I'm not even sure to this day exactly what evangelical cult my family was officially a part of...
She was from Philly and I was from KC. We argued football.
And we were both Elway/Bronco fans.
Lost touch with her over ten years ago so.....................
How can Kelce and Swift ever have a relationship?
She's an Eagles fan!
Chiefs 38 Eagles 35 in the last Superbowl.
maybe she's looking for more consistency when it comes to putting it thru the uprights...
That was never our problem.
My problem was she had one too many placekickers.
you've obviously never spent the day shopping with a woman, have you?
Typical of Trump disgusting as it is.
Seems to me if you hate the liberal Jews of America, what is your justification for supporting Israel? Especially if you are a white nationalist
dammit! you know those mackerel snappers and thumpers hold sole dominion over the jewish convert or kill program. the bible doesn't say anything about jewish americans. you know how rwnj's love their loopholes and technicalities.
Don't even get me started about Jewish space lasers!
To bring about Armageddon.
You wouldn't think that American Nazi's would buy into that Chrisitian mumbo jumbo. The White Chritians Nationalists...yeah I can see that with them
Anthropogenic global warming is doing that already.
I think that's a Venn diagram with a lot of overlap.
Leftists have zero room to comment after letting Brandon go on this one.
/
As for Trump.
Name one thing Brandon or Democrats have done for Israel or Jews for that matter. Just one.
They have more anti-Semitic members in the squad than Republicans do in their entire party.
American Jews' message to Trump: Gay kaken ofn yahm!
Does that mean FOAD asshole?
google translate says it means "go take a shit in the ocean", so basically, yeah...
It's one of the finest Yiddish curses.
Yep.
Trump is on the attack. That is his main deflection, all he knows. If he ever has to sit in a courtroom for hours in any of his cases the implosion will be the best TV ever broadcast anywhere in the World. If I were him I'd nail down an iron clad 'mental defect' defense immediately and just maybe he can spend the rest of his tortured life on house arrest bumbling around Mar-a-Lago. Fitting end to an imposter who didn't really win in 2016 and got away with it. In 2020 even the Arizona Cyber Ninjas couldn't save the lout.
I really do want to see him in a courtroom, implode, and then removed from the courtroom in handcuffs. Now that would be humiliating
OMG election denier?
Isn't one of the "indictments" that come out of Fulton County for just what you just said?
Don't call them that. You know it makes them cry.
Hillary did win the popular vote.
Time for the electoral college to go away.
time for the popular vote win to be worth 200 electoral votes, since the electoral vote was invented to give slave owner states an end run around the popular vote winning the elections.
And you still haven't bought her a tiara? The popular vote is just that - popularity. Your high schools Homecoming Queen won the Popular Vote. It's a feel good vote and has no meaning for the Presidential elections process.
still confused about when the end zones changed in the revisionist history books?
And that's what spawned all the hissy fits and fictitious "investigations" that continue today.
Just another gleaming example of their hypocrisy that the Bidenista's go right along with.
Way past time for one person one vote.
Nope just like 2016. The coasts would have given us Hillary while the rest of the country suffered. And we already have one person one vote. Just has to go through the rest of the system.
If you really want to understand the original thinking behind the Electoral college read:
Federalist Number 39
Federalist Number 68 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed68.asp
Federalist Number 10
Where was slavery illegal when the electoral college was "invented"?
Nowhere. Except in certain states it was not practiced.