The Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) on Tuesday released a statement condemning the increased anti-Semitic abuse directed toward journalists by what they referred to as supporters of the three presidential candidates.
“We abhor any abuse of journalists, commentators and writers whether it be from Sanders, Clinton or Trump supporters,” the statement read. “There is no room for any of this in any campaign. Journalists, regardless of their race, religion or ethnicity should be free to do their jobs without suffering abuses, anti-Semitic or otherwise.”
Jewish journalists have recently faced anti-Semitic abuse and death threats by Trump supporters over articles they have published about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Most recently, New York Times editor Jonathan Weisman’s Twitter timeline was “>tweeted out an op-ed critical of Trump and called out anti-Semitism among Trump supporters, mainly on Twitter. Weisman also “>two weeks ago ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt urged Trump to denounce the barrage of anti-Semitic comments by some of his supporters on social media. “The onus is now on Donald Trump to make unequivocally clear he rejects those sentiments and that there is no room for .. anti-Semitism in his campaign and in society,” Greenblatt said.
Trump refused to condemn his fans in an interview with CNN. “You hated this article in ‘GQ’ about your wife, Melania. Julia Ioffe wrote it. Since then, some of your supporters have viciously attacked this woman, Julia Ioffe, with anti-Semitic attacks, death threats. What’s your message to these people when something like that happens?” Wolf Blitzer asked the presumptive Republican presidential nominee during an interview earlier this month. “I’ll tell you, I haven’t read the article, but I hear it was a very inaccurate article and I heard it was a nasty article… They shouldn’t be doing that with wives. I mean they shouldn’t be doing that,” he responded. “These death threats that have followed these anti-Semitic,” Blitzer pressed Trump. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t know anything about that,” said Trump. “You’ll have to talk to them about it. I don’t have a message to the fans.”
In Tuesday’s statement, the RJC did not single out Trump or his supporters.
Instead, they promised to make the case “that Jewish values are American values and American values are the Republican values of free markets, peace through strength and unwavering support of Israel. Now more than ever our political process should be geared toward a civil discourse focused on solving our most vexing and intractable problems as a country.”
