Currently, there is a major controversy over AIPAC’s decision to invite Donald Trump to speak.
There is also a minor controversy involving the Simon Wiesenthal Center which has been attacked by a disgruntled former employee for not mounting a jihad against The Donald.
Anyone who has read my blog posts over the last three or four months knows that I have declared my own war against Trump. In addition to skewering him for xenophobia, nativism, religious bias, misogyny, authoritarianism, anti-intellectualism, and troubling ambiguity and “neutrality” about Israel, I have been and am concerned about his nihilistic assault on the foundations of the Republican Party, an institutional foundation of American democracy since the days of Abraham Lincoln.
At the same time, I have worked heart and soul for the Center and its Museum of Tolerance for 25 years. I speak for myself, not the Center, yet nobody in its leadership has tried to discourage or taken issue with my decision to take on Donald Trump.
The Center at the highest level has indeed already criticized Trump for his proposed Muslim ban and his waffling on a condemnation of David Duke and the Klan. Both as a nonprofit and as a nonpartisan human rights organization, the Center believes it is obligated to avoid whenever possible positions that would involve it in partisan politics. I believe the Center is correct, both philosophically and strategically, to be very measured at this point in its criticisms of Trump at the same time as people like me go after Trump with exclamation points and pyrotechnics.
If Trump is the nominee, and moves to moderate his positions and rhetoric, it is not desirable for the Center to then have to withdraw criticisms and even praise him. But if Trump instead goes further off the extremist deep end, the Center then can and should escalate its critique of what Trump represents.
Just recently in the pages of the Forward, J. J. Goldberg, with whom I often disagree, defended AIPAC’s decision to invite Trump as the only choice AIPAC had, given its core commitment to continue to promote vital dialogue across party lines about U.S.-Israel relations.
I think the Wiesenthal Center has also made the right call by keeping its criticisms of Trump within the bounds of its nonpartisan mandate. The ADL claims to be acting within the same constraints, though its anti-Trump rhetoric in recent months has been vociferous.
As a Wiesenthal Center consultant who is also as an independent voice, I will continue to unload both barrels on The Donald for however long he deserves it.
Jewish critics of Trump—whatever their differences in rhetoric and approach—should concentrate their fire not on each other but on The Donald.
