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8 | JANUARY 2 • 2020

1942 - 2020

Covering and Connecting
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How to reach us see page 11

commentary
Why Are Jewish Groups Ignoring
Anti-Semitism from the Mainstream Right?
T

here are the makings
of a rebellion brewing
in the mainstream
American Jewish community.
It’
s not a “Jexodus,” the right’
s
quixotic dream that Jews will
migrate en masse
to the Republican
Party.
It is a potential
rebellion of
the median
Jew: pro-Israel,
pro-two states
and perfectly
comfortable sitting among
the 71 percent of Jews who
voted for Hillary Clinton. The
sort of Jew who is concerned
about left-wing anti-Semitism
on college campuses but
knows well enough to be more
concerned about deadly right-
wing anti-Semitism.
The issue is simple: The
Republican Party, from Donald
Trump on down, has a huge
anti-Semitism problem. Yet

too many American Jewish
organizations, which purport
to represent the Jewish
mainstream, are tiptoeing
around it.
When pressed absolutely up
against the wall, they might
issue a timid plea to “speak
more carefully” — a mild
rebuke that still usually comes
wrapped in an insulating layer
of gratitude for pro-Israel
gestures.
Most Jews are not fools. We
know there is a connection
between the scare-mongering
about Soros globalists and
“cultural Marxists” and
“cosmopolitan elites” —
rhetoric that has become the
conservative movement’
s
primary tool of political
mobilization — and the surge
in anti-Semitic harassment,
marginalization and violence
that has plagued Jews in recent
years.
We’
re tired of our own

establishment organizations
talking a big game about
fighting anti-Semitism
wherever it lies, only to
supplicate themselves to a man
and a party who has regularly
and consistently trafficked in
anti-Semitic tropes in pursuit
of a political vision radically
antagonistic to the values of
American Jews.
The latest group to abdicate

its duty? The American Jewish
Committee.
Eyes fell on the AJC in
December after President
Trump, in remarks to the
Israeli American Council,
suggested that Jews aren’
t “nice
people,” would vote for him
primarily to protect our own
“wealth” and are disloyal to
Israel. He even threw in an
anti-Native American racial

David
Schraub
JTA

President Donald Trump addresses the Israeli American Council National Summit
at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, Fla., Dec. 7, 2019. Some took some
of his comments as anti-Semitic.

MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

continued on page 10