Of course, the inverse of what the former U.S. president says is true. Kamala Harris has shown that she’s an unshakable friend of the American Jewish community and is unequivocally committed to Israel’s security
Menachem Z. Rosensaft
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is nothing if not tediously repetitious, and his mantra to American Jews this year is that if they vote for a Democrat, any Democrat, they are out of their minds and in dire need of psychological or psychiatric help.
Speaking at a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, he said that ‘any Jewish person’ who votes for Vice President Kamala Harris ‘or a Democrat has to go out and have their head examined.’ Back in April, he expressed the exact same sentiments, using the exact same phraseology, regarding ‘any Jewish person that votes for a Democrat or votes for Biden’ – that is, they ‘should have their head examined.’
And he repeated this sentiment at a fundraiser hosted by Jewish real estate developers on the Jersey Shore in late July, and at his rambling Mar-a-Lago press conference on August 8, and then in what purported to be an interview with Elon Musk on X, formerly Twitter.
Allow me to return the compliment: Jews who vote for Trump should have their heads – or at least their sense of right and wrong – examined.
Why? Because no American Jew – or any American with any sense of decency for that matter – should forget that it was Trump who insisted in 2017 that at least some of the neo-Nazis who screamed ‘Jews will not replace us’ in Charlottesville, Virginia, were ‘very fine people.’ Trump is the one who believes that migrants are ‘poisoning the blood of our country,’ and who dehumanizes his political opponents by referring to them as ‘vermin.’
Trump also had no problem breaking bread at Mar-a-Lago with two quite notorious antisemites, the rapper Ye, formerly Kanye West (‘I’m going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE’) and the white supremacist Nick Fuentes (‘All I want is revenge against my enemies and a total Aryan victory. … I’m just like Hitler’).
Spoiler alert: Jews haven’t fared all that well under fascist regimes, and I am intentionally not making any analogies to Nazi Germany in this discussion. White supremacists such as Fuentes also have a long history of antisemitism, and this includes the Ku Klux Klan.
There is no reason to believe that repulsive characters such as Fuentes and Ye won’t feature prominently in a second Trump administration, or perhaps a version whose bigotry is directed not necessarily at Jews but at Muslims, or Black Americans, or immigrants, or refugees, or members of the LGBTQ community.
To be sure, the elephant in the room needs to be addressed: What about the strident antisemitism from the extreme left as manifested at the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist demonstrations and university encampments over the past 10 months? And what about the failure of far too many supposedly liberal or progressive groups to denounce that antisemitism?
This is definitely a serious concern, but the mainstream of the Democratic Party as represented by President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among many, remains outspoken in both its strong support for Israel and its abhorrence of any form of antisemitism. Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib (Michigan), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) and the soon-to-be former Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (New York) and Cori Bush (Missouri) are in their party’s minority in this regard.
In particular, Harris has made clear over and over again that she is an unshakable friend and ally of the American Jewish community. This is nothing new. ‘When Jews are targeted because of their beliefs or their identity,’ she declared in November 2021, ‘when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is antisemitism. And that is unacceptable.’
Over the course of her time in the Senate, she co-sponsored a number of resolutions condemning antisemitism and other bigotries. As a woman of color, she understands discrimination, including antisemitic discrimination, viscerally. In addition, we must not lose sight of the fact that Harris and her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, have been the principal protagonists of the Biden administration’s broad-based efforts to combat surging antisemitism.
Harris is also unequivocally committed to Israel’s security and has been 100 percent on the same page as Biden in supporting Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’ October 7 terrorist pogrom. This, too, is nothing new. In this connection, her recent statement in reaction to what she called ‘despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric’ at pro-Hamas demonstrations in Washington bears quoting:
‘I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews,’ she declared unambiguously. ‘Pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric is abhorrent and we must not tolerate it in our nation. … I support the right to peacefully protest, but let’s be clear: Antisemitism, hate and violence of any kind have no place in our nation.’
At the Munich Security Conference in February, she said that ‘we are working to end the conflict that Hamas triggered on October 7th as soon as possible and ensure it ends in a way where Israel is secure, hostages are released, the humanitarian crisis is resolved, Hamas does not control Gaza, and Palestinians can enjoy their right to security, dignity, freedom, and self-determination.’
These are hardly the words and sentiments of someone who, in Trump’s distorted portrayal of his adversary, ‘hates Israel.’
American Jews also care deeply about the numerous civil and legal rights that Trump proposes to tear apart if given the chance. To give just one reason why a substantial majority of us will not vote for Trump this year, even if some of them might have done so in 2016 or even in 2020, they – we – fundamentally believe in the rule of law, and rightly see Trump’s incitement of the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol and his subsequent promise to pardon the perpetrators of that insurrection as conclusive evidence of his willingness to subvert that rule of law. Not for nothing do we consider ourselves to be the people of the book, and by book we mean the book of laws.
The reality – contrary to Trump’s dismissive belittling of American Jewry’s values and intelligence – is that the majority of American Jews are simply not in line with Trump or Trumpism. Disparaging them – disparaging us – will not make any of us more sympathetic to his dystopian view of the American and global scene. On the contrary.