Fighting Anti-Semitism Should Be Bipartisan
This week, The Jewish world mourned the brutal slaughter of 11 Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue — the deadliest anti-Semitic shooting attack in American history. Americans of good heart universally grieved and condemned the evil. And then politics broke out. As always, it broke out thanks to our nation’s obsession with President Trump and his mouth.
The media immediately leaped to the conclusion that the shooter at the Tree of Life Synagogue — a virulently anti-Semitic white supremacist with a particular dislike for President Trump and his “globalist” policies, a man who decried the “kike infestation” supposedly forwarded by Trump — was somehow brought about by Trump.
Two pieces of evidence have been presented to support this contention. The first is Trump’s untoward rhetoric concerning the migrant caravan headed north from Honduras toward the United States border. Trump believes the caravan is directed for political purposes. The shooter in Pittsburgh specifically decried the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), stating on the social media website Gab: “HIAS likes to bring in invaders that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.”
Suffice it to say that millions of Americans agree with President Trump regarding the caravan, and that none of them but one felt it necessary to go shoot Jews. Attempts to link opposition to George Soros to anti-Semitism lack evidence at best. Those who despise the Jews don’t need an excuse to kill us. The long history of anti-Semitism shows it to be a uniquely chameleonic conspiracy theory, crediting the Jews for communist uprisings and capitalist machinations, secularizing tendencies and religious separatism, ethnic solidarity and ethnic diffusion.
“If we wish to be accurate, we shouldn’t link normal but heated political rhetoric with anti-Semitic violence.”
The only common strain: the Jews must be eradicated. To credit President Trump’s feelings about a migrant caravan with this shooting would be to grant him Rasputin-like powers far beyond the evidence.
Then there’s the second piece of evidence: Trump’s horrifying blitheness about alt-right groups in 2016 and 2017. There’s no question that Trump’s treatment of the alt-right during the 2016 campaign and in Charlottesville was despicable. I wrote about it repeatedly and incessantly. But it’s worth noting here that the alt-right has been wildly disappointed with President Trump, who has turned out to be the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States.
Trump’s words on the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting themselves are far stronger than any words we’ve ever heard from a president before: “If you seek the destruction of Jews, we will seek your destruction.” Furthermore, we must distinguish between the alt-right, a relatively new phenomenon, and the persistent white supremacist movement, which has routinely attacked Jews; Trump wasn’t a gleam in the political eye when a white supremacist shot up the West Valley Jewish Community Center in Woodland Hills in 1999.
All of this suggests a certain gross partisanship on the part of people who, without sufficient evidence, blame Trump for the Tree of Life Synagogue murders. That’s particularly true of people who seem fully complacent with the Democratic Party’s open embrace of Keith Ellison, Linda Sarsour and Louis Farrakhan; people who brushed off President Obama labeling an anti-Semitic terror attack in France as “random”; people who shrugged away Obama’s statements about Iranian anti-Semitism (he said that they would only act in anti-Semitic fashion “at the margins”); people who pooh-pooh the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement and Hamas.
Here’s the reality: If we wish to be accurate, we shouldn’t link normal but heated political rhetoric with anti-Semitic violence. If we wish to fight anti-Semitism, we should label all anti-Semitic rhetoric and anti-Semitism-enabling rhetoric for what it is, regardless of partisan persuasion. And if we wish to have a country, we ought to stop conflating politics we dislike with incitement to violence.
Ben Shapiro is a best-selling author, editor-in-chief at The Daily Wire and host of the conservative podcast “The Ben Shapiro Show.”
JJ Inside The Print
I didn’t think I wanted to be a weekly columnist until I read a column by comedian Mark Schiff. I’ve never told him this, but...
Perhaps the most surprising part of the D.C. Dyke March, which sought to ban rainbow flags embossed with the Star of David, was how surprised...
As a kid, I wanted to be Erma Bombeck when I grew up. With book titles such as “If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries,...
“When a father helps a son, both smile; when a son must help his father, both cry.” — Yiddish proverb “My father gave me the...
On June 2, graduation day at the United States Military Academy, the class of 2019 pushed the total number of Jewish West Point graduates past...
There is something about New York City that drives me closer to my personal “d’mimah dakah” (still, small voice). That voice inside of me that...
I stood on a wobbly paddleboard in the Mediterranean Sea in my pajamas, feet apart, arms at my sides, trying to balance. The water was...
“How does it feel to be here?” I asked my father while we were standing inside the magnificent rotunda of the U.S. Capitol a few...
Leah Silver was at a wedding on Lag b’Omer when she saw the headline on her phone: “Mevo Modi’im Destroyed in Fire.” Harrowing photographs displayed...
Let’s be serious: No participant in a Dyke March feels “threatened” when a Star of David appears on a rainbow flag. Not unless he or...
As a Jewish woman who frequently shares her opinions on social media, I’ve been targeted online by white supremacists, communist bots from China, die-hard Donald...
They were older than the other parents, gray and pale, with consonants that gargled when they said come in. They played Beethoven sonatas on their...
One verse, five voices. Edited by Salvador Litvak, Accidental Talmudist The Lord spoke to Moses saying, “Speak to Aaron and his sons, saying: this is how...
When I opened the first Mexican restaurant in Uganda and hired local cooks, not only had my team never experienced any of the dishes I’d...
More than 200 supporters gathered June 5 to sample dishes from some of Los Angeles’ top chefs at Playa Studios in Culver City for “Hunger...
It seems there is nothing Rabbi Sherre Hirsch can’t do when it comes to shaping the Jewish community. She was a pulpit rabbi at Sinai...
Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC), Los Angeles’ first gay and lesbian synagogue, and Temple Isaiah came together on the night of June 8, to celebrate Shavuot...
The terrace outside Dr. Amnon Rofe’s office at Bnai Zion Medical Center offers picturesque views of the Mediterranean Sea and the Báha’í Gardens in the...
Reaching Acme Smoked Fish in Brooklyn requires traversing worlds: through Chasidic Williamsburg, full of modestly dressed Chasidim, and then through Hipster Williamsburg, where tattooed young...
It was possible to believe a part of New York’s Lower East Side had moved west, as Russ & Daughters, the iconic 105-year-old New York...
Two swastikas were discovered at Glen Rock High School in Glen Rock, N.J., over the last two weeks. The first was found on May 28...
When the cast of the Israeli television series “Shtisel” began shooting interiors in Tel Aviv and exteriors in the ultra-Orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim in...
The well-known Hollywood red carpet query is “Who are you wearing?” But at a fashion exhibit currently making the rounds at Los Angeles Public Library...
“After Auschwitz,” warned Theodor Adorno, “to write poetry is a barbarity.” And yet, ironically, some of the most iconic words ever written about the Holocaust...
Leslie Arden Archer died May 4 at 68. Survived by sister Adrienne (Lewis) Weissman. Mount Sinai Norman D. Beals died May 4 at 102. Survived...
For Father’s Day, give the men in your life some more ties. But not the kind they wrap around their necks. I’m talking these cute...
Award-winning artist Avi Pashnov has spent his career merging art and Judaism. As a teaching assistant in the Judaica Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts...
Friendship Circle of Los Angeles (FCLA) celebrated its 552 volunteers at their annual garden party, on May 21. In its 16th year, FCLA runs...
FRI JUNE 14 “The Joy of Change” Sinai Temple honors Matt Baram, millennial director at Sinai, at his final Orden Family Friday Night Live Shabbat...
‘New’ Canard or an Old Canard in a New Disguise? According to the “new” canard, Zionists created an apartheid state in the Middle East. Because...
The great scholar Maimonides wrote, “The measure of honor and awe due one’s teacher exceeds that due one’s father. His father brings him into the...
