If Trump is truly as supportive of the Jewish people as he so often says he is, why can’t he denounce anti-Semitism once and for all?
At President Trump’s whirlwind of a press conference Thursday, Feb. 18, Jake Turx, a reporter for the Jewish Publication Ami, asked Trump about how his administration would deal with a rise in antisemitism. Turx clearly stated that he hadn’t “seen anybody in [his] community accuse either [Trump]…of being anti-Semitic.”
However, Trump, flabbergasted that anyone would ask him such an “insinuating” question, proceeded to tell the Jewish reporter to sit down. Trump continued by saying that he was the “least anti-semitic person that you have seen in your entire life” and answered the reporter’s question by talking about his electoral victory (because what else can Trump talk about?).
Figures such as David Duke, an anti-semitic former leader of the KKK, and the Daily Stormer, a Neo-nazi website, praised Trump’s beratement of the reporter. Duke thinks that the media is “totally” a part of “the deep Jewish state” (whatever that means). Eric Striker, a writer for the Daily Stormer, said that Turx is a ” lice-infested ghetto Jew [who] will be getting hardcore press coverage and made into a folk hero for a month straight or more. But on the bright side, Jews will gasp when they realize that A) nobody is listening to their fake news or celebrities anymore, and B) everyone is pretty damn sick of Jews.”
Those are both blatantly anti-semitic statements. Both Duke and the Daily Storm have large followings and are well known. The fact that Trump has chosen not to condemn their heinous comments raises the question: If Trump is truly as supportive of the Jewish people as he so often says he is, why can’t he denounce anti-Semitism once and for all?
The administration is not even a month into office, and already they have had too many brushes with anti-Semitism. They purposely didn’t mention the genocide of the Jews in their Holocaust remembrance statement, appointed Steve Bannon, a man with anti-semitic ties, as a senior advisor and tweeted a photo of Hillary Clinton’s face with a six-pointed star (usually recognized as the Star of David or the Jewish star), money and the words “most corrupt candidate ever”.
While Trump has repeatedly stated that he isn’t anti-semitic, he has continually avoided condemning anti-Semitism as a whole. His only defense for not being anti-semitic is that his daughter Ivanka, her husband Jared Kushner and their children are all orthodox Jews. But simply having Jewish relatives does not automatically make someone the “least anti-semitic” person ever.
Ivanka’s Judaism has become a crutch for Trump to use when he can’t bring himself to forcefully condemn anti-Semitism. It’s his favorite prop to use for making himself appear as someone who isn’t discriminatory in any way. It is time for Trump to stop hiding behind his daughter’s faith, and to stand up to anti-Semitism. It’s not a partisan issue; there is no reason that Trump shouldn’t be able to strongly condemn it.
Trump may not be anti-semitic. But if he can’t even condemn the forces of anti-Semitism when he himself has family affected by it, he is a bystander to the discrimination of the Jewish people.
