[[link removed]]

TRUMP HAS ORDERED A HIT ON JUDAISM  
[[link removed]]


 

Dave Zirin
March 18, 2025
The Nation
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Under the guise of “fighting antisemitism,” Trump is shredding
our rights and telling us we are safe. "The truth is that they hate
us. We should have some pride and return the favor. Jew, not a Jew?
Once a joke. Now an open threat." _

Demonstrators from the human rights organization Jewish Voice for
Peace are detained by NYPD officers as they hold a civil disobedience
action inside Trump Tower in New York on March 13, 2025., Timothy A.
Clary / Agence France-Presse (AFP) // The Nation

 

In 1988, the _Saturday Night Live_ crew performed a skit about a
game show hosted by Tom Hanks called “Jew, Not a Jew
[[link removed]].” Contestants would
look at a photo of a celebrity with an anglicized name and guess
whether that person was a “Jew or not a Jew.” It was great comedy,
written by the Jewish comedian and future senator Al Franken
[[link removed]]. Now we
have this same question voiced by Donald Trump, and it’s deadly
serious. Trump has long maintained that there are good Jews and bad
Jews. The good Jews fund his campaign
[[link removed]] and
worship him for being, in his words, the Jews’ “big protector
[[link removed]].”
In contrast, any bad Jew, one who opposes him, “should have your
head examined
[[link removed]].”
Last year, he said menacingly
[[link removed]],
“If we were to lose in 2024, Jews would be to blame.”

A week ago, Trump threw more kindling on the fire, saying that Senate
majority leader Chuck Schumer, an enthusiast of the Israeli
occupation, was not only “not Jewish”; he was “a Palestinian
[[link removed]].”
I asked Rabbi Alissa Wise, the founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire, about
the implicit threat in this cocktail of bigotry. “Trump in one fell
swoop used Palestinian as a derogatory slur and—as a
non-Jew—elevated himself to arbiter of who is the right and wrong
kind of Jew,” Rabbi Wise said. “This has gotten Jews murdered by
authoritarian leaders like himself. Woe to the Jewish institutions,
like the Anti-Defamation League, that continue to kiss his ring,
playing Russian roulette with both Jewish and Palestinian lives.”

Schumer’s response, suffice it to say, was not to reply, “No,
I’m not Palestinian. I don’t have that privilege.”
Instead, after gutting
[[link removed]] the
Democratic caucus, he hightailed it out of the Capitol for his book
tour, a book about antisemitism
[[link removed]].
This is, of course, Schumer’s version of antisemitism, personified
more by college students fighting for Palestine than the authoritarian
denying his claim to his faith. Either way, he shouldn’t have
rushed. The tour has now been postponed due to fear of protests
[[link removed]] organized
by what was until recently his own base.

Today’s Christian nationalist sees Judaism not as a faith or culture
but as a political marker. Step on the wrong side, and these Christian
Zionists—a group that outnumbers Zionist Jews
[[link removed]]—will nullify your
Judaism.

Trump’s mentor Vladimir Putin is fond of saying that Ukrainian
leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and “ethnic Jews” are “not Jewish
[[link removed]].”
This sentiment that our Judaism is fraudulent has also long been
echoed by far-right Jewish Zionists who feel attacked in our critique
of autocracy. Trump’s former Israeli ambassador David Friedman once
informed me, much to the surprise of my _bubbe_, that I am not, in
fact, Jewish. These pompous, self-appointed arbiters of Judaism agree
with what Trump said last year
[[link removed]] to
former White House adviser and fascist sympathizer Sebastian Gorka
[[link removed]]:
“Any Jewish person who votes for Democrats hates their religion.”

People like Ambassador Friedman reject the proud Jewish saying that we
are “two people, three opinions.” They prefer one opinion and will
disappear the other person if necessary. Rabbi Brant Rosen, whose
anti-Zionist Tzedek Chicago (_tzedek_ meaning justice in Hebrew)
congregation was recently profiled
[[link removed]] on
NPR, said to me, “The ‘good Jew/bad Jew’ trope has been a
hallmark of Christian antisemitism for centuries. Now we’re seeing
it revived by Christian nationalists, with fealty to a Jewish
ethno-state serving as the new inflection point. What I find truly
chilling is the extent to which some Jewish leaders, politicians, and
organizations are willfully playing into it. This is a sick form of
collaborationism—and certainly won’t keep Jews safe.”

It beggars belief that anyone thinks shuffling like a nebbish into the
strongman’s embrace while sacrificing a sizable portion of our
community will ensure our survival. But our safety as Jews—and the
safety of all of us—is even more imperiled now that “fighting
antisemitism” has become the rationale for Trump’s
post-constitutional order. This regime’s basis for having a secret
police disappear Palestinian rights activists without due process for
criticizing Israel is “fighting antisemitism.” The defunding of
universities, the outlawing of academic departments, and the firing
of Jewish professors
[[link removed]] is
all part of its struggle to “fight antisemitism.” Then, clearly
feeling itself after the extrajudicial arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the
White House tweeted with a bully’s swagger, “Shalom Mahmoud.” It
read like a nightclub comic, pimping our faith for a cheap laugh.

“The right-wing theft and misappropriation of the language of
antisemitism has emptied it entirely of concern for Jewish safety and
turned it inside out so the fascists and antisemites can use as a
shield for their own violent agenda,” Stefanie Fox of Jewish Voice
for Peace told me.

Jewish Voice for Peace has been a frontline organization against the
Israeli occupation. But even Israeli publications like _Haaretz_
[[link removed]] are
pointing out that these policies endanger us.

When Trump tells Schumer that he, as Great Leader, has revoked the
senator’s Jew card, it is a warning aimed well beyond the senator.
When Elon Musk financially backs Germany’s far-right Alternatif für
Deutschland party, it is a warning. When the _Sieg Heil_–saluting
Musk says that George Soros is behind the protests
[[link removed]] at
Tesla dealerships, it is a warning. And especially when the Trump
administration hires and appoints brazen antisemites, it’s a warning
to every Jew in the United States who rejects his protection racket.

Consider the deputy press secretary for the Department of Defense, a
26-year-old nepo-baby named Kingsley Wilson. The daughter of the
former Trump adviser who was too much of a conspiracist for NewsMax
[[link removed]],
Steve Cortes, Wilson has tweeted out Nazi slogans
[[link removed]] and even
praised the lynching of Leo Frank
[[link removed]].
In case your knowledge of antisemitism only extends back a century,
Frank was a Jewish factory owner who was hanged in 1915 in Georgia on
false charges of raping and murdering a young girl. He was
posthumously pardoned in 1986. Frank’s murder spread fear throughout
immigrant Jewish communities who thought they had found safe harbor
from the anti-Jewish violence of Eastern Europe. “Get him like Leo
Frank” was the sort of thing my immigrant grandfather heard walking
the streets of Brooklyn as a child—and Frank’s guilt is still
maintained on neo-Nazi message boards. Both the Department of Defense
and Wilson have refused to comment on the contention that the deputy
press secretary’s Leo Frank obsession has been drawn from the
darkest corners of the Internet.

The people whom Trump has chosen to run the military are telling us
what they think through their silence. They are saying that their
Christian-nationalist acceptance of us is conditional upon fronting
for the lie that this group of antisemites are shredding the
Constitution to fight antisemitism. That is why it’s so threatening
to their project when Jews refuse to have our faith weaponized, and we
chant, “Not in our name!”

We need to amplify testimonials like that of Columbia student Jonathan
Ben-Menachem, who wrote an article titled
[[link removed]],
“I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Mahmoud Khalil Is One of the
Most Upstanding People I Have Ever Met.” Ben-Menachem reminds us of
what Khalil told CNN last spring: “I believe that the liberation of
the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go
hand-by-hand, and you cannot achieve one without the other.”

When Jews and Jewish organizations occupied Trump Tower 
[[link removed]]last week, leading to 100
arrests, Fox News was beside themselves. Anchor Harris Faulkner fumed
on-air that these Jewish protesters “hate Jewish Americans
[[link removed]].”
Her normally cool demeanor cracked, as she alleged that these protests
are what happens “when you have open borders.” I reached out to
Faulkner to ask for evidence that these Jewish American protesters
“hate Jewish Americans” or what she meant by invoking “open
borders,” but she did not reply. Faulkner may have delivered her
lines poorly, but the allegations make sense in Trumpworld. The
unconstitutional immigration policy of this administration is being
enacted in the name of Jewish safety. But it is also a warning that
our own citizenship is revocable, that our loyalty is suspect, and
that the borders can always close with the “bad Jew” on the other
side looking in.

For decades, a minority of Jews have been telling hostile family and
friends that our safety does not exist by the grace of the Israeli
Occupation, that our only salvation is when we are in solidarity with
the oppressed and refuse to allow our culture, religion, and history
to be used as a tool to subjugate others. The choice now for American
Jewry is clear: We can cower in the clutches of an administration that
treats us like trash, or we can stand with those outside our faith
pleading for us to call out the latest set of Big Lies: the lie that
we are more secure when our rights are forfeited, the lie that
victimizing others will keep us safe, and the lie that this collection
of Jew-hating bigots gives a damn about antisemitism. The truth is
that they hate us. We should have some pride and return the favor.
Jew, not a Jew? Once a joke. Now an open threat.

_[DAVE ZIRIN is the sports editor at The Nation. He is the author of
11 books on the politics of sports. He is also the coproducer and
writer of the new documentary Behind the Shield: The Power and
Politics of the NFL [[link removed]].]_

_Copyright c 2025 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without permission
[[link removed]].
Distributed by PARS International Corp
[[link removed]]. _

_Please support progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
[[link removed]]
to The Nation for just $24.95!_

* anti-Semitism
[[link removed]]
* Jews
[[link removed]]
* Jewish community
[[link removed]]
* American Jewish community
[[link removed]]
* Israel
[[link removed]]
* Palestine
[[link removed]]
* Palestinians
[[link removed]]
* Gaza
[[link removed]]
* Ceasefire
[[link removed]]
* Israel-Gaza War
[[link removed]]
* Genocide
[[link removed]]
* zionism
[[link removed]]
* Anti-Zionism
[[link removed]]
* Jewish Voice for Peace
[[link removed]]
* JVP
[[link removed]]
* #IfNotNow
[[link removed]]
* If Not In Our Name
[[link removed]]
* #NotInOurName
[[link removed]]
* Donald Trump
[[link removed]]
* Sen Charles Schumer
[[link removed]]
* Chuck Schumer
[[link removed]]
* Rabbi Alissa Wise
[[link removed]]
* Rabbis for Ceasefire
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]