This has been a bad day for Donald Trump. Not a bad day perhaps on a national scale. But today he lost even those 20% of Jews who voted him in the last election. His problems began with today’s press conference in which a Jewish reporter asked him (after having been asked virtually the same question yesterday) what he could say to American Jews to assure them he was taking recent anti-Semitic threats seriously.
His answer yesterday included a bizarre rambling monologue which offered yet another reference to his ‘landslide’ victory and 306 electoral votes. After that, he launched into another sidebar which highlighted his Jewish son-in-law and daughter who converted to Judaism, and his three “beautiful” Jewish grandchildren. All this was supposed to inoculate him against the charge of being anti-Semitic. Instead, it made him look like a condescending fool.
But today’s performance was far more damaging. Instead of addressing the question directly or seriously, Trump interpreted it as a charge that he himself was anti-Semitic. In fact, the questioner, an ultra Orthodox reporter, Jake Turx, had pointedly rejected the claim that Trump was anti-Semitic. Further, Turx had interviewed Trump just after his election victory and attributed it to “the Creator.”
The president, oblivious to the fact that he’d met the reporter before and that he was essentially a pro-Trump media shill, called Turx’s question insulting and claimed that its premise was based on “lies” (the reporter had accurately mentioned 50 anti-Semitic threats against Jewish communal institutions in the past month or so).
In fact, most American Jews know that there is real anti-Semitism abroad in the land. And that most of the really dangerous anti-Semites are white supremacists, many of whom support Trump. There were past fatal attacks on a Los Angeles Jewish community center and the U.S. Holocaust Museum, among others. Trump’s response will not just sour relations with the Jewish community, it will be catastrophic to all but his most ardent Jewish communal supporters (like Mort Klein of the ZOA).
FBI Arrests White Supremacist Would-Be Synagogue Attacker
Tonight, the FBI announced that it had targeted a South Carolina white supremacist who sought to mount a shooting spree against a Myrtle Beach, SC synagogue. An undercover agent had sold him a pistol and arrested him today when surveillance revealed that he was carrying the gun with him along with ammunition.
This is the truly catastrophic news for Trump as far as Jews are concerned. Only eight hours after angrily denouncing a Jewish reporter for asking a question about what his administration would do to combat anti-Semitism, and essentially claiming that anti-Semitic threats were lies, a real anti-Semite is arrested in the midst of planning a real terror attack. These are not alternative facts. These are real threats and real Jewish lives are on the line.
It’s darkly ironic that the Trump administration plans to remove white supremacists from the list of U.S. extremists included in the Counter-Extremism Task Force which Pres. Obama founded. That will leave only combatting Islamist extremism as the mission of the program. Someone perhaps in the GOP might want to suggest that removing white supremacists is a bit premature.
Mainstream Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Committee and ADL have denounced Trump’s response to the anti-Semitism question. But conspicuously absent from their statements has been any reference to Islamophobia, and anti-Muslim attacks mounted by white supremacists in many states. A Texas mosque was destroyed in an arson attack and a California mosque received death threats. Not to mention the Quebec City massacre that left six Muslims dead at a local mosque.
The irony of this bit of amnesia is that these are some of the same organizations which recently trumpeted a solidarity campaign between Jews and Muslims to combat hate and racism. Though the coalition has been heralded throughout the media as a breakthrough in Muslim-Jewish relations (my evaluation is much more skeptical), there hasn’t been a word from these initiatives about the recent round of attacks against Muslims.
Trump Abandons Two-States
Yesterday offered a whole different set of weird regarding Trump and U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine. The president toppled 50 years of bipartisan consensus in the space of a 30-minute press conference. He renounced a two-state solution, said he could live with a one-state solution, and asked Israelis to “wait a little bit” before building new settlements.
He had no clue what a one-state solution meant and certainly wasn’t endorsing the unitary secular democratic state advocated by the Jewish and Arab left for that past half century. If anything, he was supporting the radical settler iteration, favoring annexation of Palestinian territory and the expulsion of millions of Palestinians.
The mainstream media, including a rather clueless NY Times, tried to put lipstick on this treif pig by gussying it up with locutions like “outside-in;” a concocted theory calling upon Sunni Arab dictatorships to buy off Palestinian acquiescence in a giveaway deal.
Furthermore, Trump’s Israel ambassador pick, David Friedman, is himself a Jewish settler supremacist who has given tens of thousands of dollars to the Beit El settlement and called J Street’s liberal Zionist supporters ‘kapos.’ Is it any surprise that Trump attracts both white supremacist and settler supremacist support? As an aside, I reported this week that one of the pillars of that community, Rabbi Moshe Patron, was just accused of committing lewd sex acts publicly in front of a woman’s home there.
Richard. I have a question I’d like to ask you about the ‘two-State solution’. I’d like to know how many Palestinians you’ve spoken to about the ‘two-State solution’, and what were the opinions they held about ‘two-States’?
@ Seamus: Your question doesn’t really interest me very much personally. But I just read a poll that 44% of Palestinians support a two state solution. I find this amazing considering how humiliating & oppressive Israel’s ongoing Occupation is. But it does attest to the flexibility & pragmatism of Palestinians in the face of Israeli rejectionism.
The Palestinians are not doing Israel a favor by accepting a two state solution (nor does Israel does them a favor by accepting it). As much as they may detest Israel, that’s their most realistic option for self determination. If anything, I am surprised that that poll suggests that the majority of them oppose the idea. In the foreseeable future its either that or continuation of the existing situation. Anything else is an illusion.
@ Amico:
It doesn’t say that at all. In fact, if 44% favor 2 states it doesn’t mean 56% support one state. Have you forgotten about undecideds or those favoring the status quo (oddly there may be a few such)?
I stand corrected
My view was indeed too simplistic.
In addition to those you mentioned, BTW, there are some (I have no idea about their number but I recently heard few of them talking about it recently) that support the idea of annexation by Israel. Their argument was that they lost fate in the two state solution and believe its better to be full Israeli citizens (like the Palestinians within the green line borders) than continuing with their current situation. This is not really a “one-state” scenario but if that will ever happen (and with the current political situation in Israel-it may) that scenario will be realized unless Israel will not give them the right to vote and thus becomes an apartheid state.
@ Amico: I disagree. If Israel annexes the West Bank and offers Palestinians there full citizenship, then this IS a one state solution. The problem is that eventually Palestinians will become the majority and enjoy commensurate political power. That is something the “Jewish state” cannot permit.
But I do agree with most of the rest of what you said. The other option is annexation w/o offering rights. That IS apartheid. That’s the way things are headed. But the Likud will try to maintain the status quo as long as possible so it doesn’t have to make such a decision.
On your twitter, the title of this post come “FBI Arrests White Supremacist Planning Synagogue Attack After Trump Bristles at Anti-Semitism Question” with the first picture of the Haredi guy and the White House.
It just seems very wrong.
Amico “thus becomes an apartheid state”
RS “But I do agree with most of the rest of what you said. The other option is annexation w/o offering rights. That IS apartheid”
So what you have been claiming with others in the world that Israel is now an apartheid state comes out that you are contradicting yourselves or probably perverting the real situation.
@Sheker [inside joke: he calls himself “emeth” or “truth” & I call him “Sheker” or “Lie”]: Of course Israel is a de facto apartheid state. But if it annexed the Territories & denied citizenship/equal rights it would be a de jure apartheid state. Go look up the difference.
I think Trump knew the implications of what he said about the two state solution. Many of his Zionists supporters strongly oppose the two state solution and he was giving them something they wanted. I think this is a positive development. We can now discard the two state fantasy that was used for the last two decades by right wing Israelis to cover up their theft of the West Bank. The whole process was one big scam and the sucker in this grift was the American people. Trump has now removed the big lie in this game. This a positive development since it will give impetus to BDS — no longer will it be necessary to argue incessantly about the “peace process” when trying to convince American progressives who in their heart support justice for the Palestinians.
Spot on…I agree 100%. Trump is way smarter than most give him credit for.
I do not think Trump is smarter than he seems. And now he is saying that he ‘likes two states’.
[comment deleted: off topic]
Hi ‘Seamus’, I stopped reading here : “Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.”
Someone who begins an article with such a dumb caricature, is either an idiot himself or is trying to treat his readers as idiots.
@ Harry: You have a lot of fucking nerve threatening my life (I translated his earlier threat in a post but never approved it as a comment since I don’t publish death threats) and then posting this comment. Asshole. Banned.
Richard deletes a link to an article written by a journalist and Elizabeth stops reading the article after reading one line.
So much for a free and open exchange of ideas.
@Seamus Ignoramus: You comment here you follow the same rules everyone else does. If you object to the rules no one says you have to follow them or comment here at all.
@Seamus Ignoramus: You comment here, you follow the same rules everyone else does. If you object to the rules no one says you have to follow them or comment here at all.
You’re not looking for a “free & open exchange of ideas.” You’re looking for a venue to expound yr hasbara.
Nor does Elisabeth owe you any level of attentiveness when yr hasbara is so full of Arabophobic nonsense.
Seamus, it seems you lack the ability to recognize biased and dumb prose. That is too bad for you, but cannot be helped. Just refrain from pushing such substandard drivel to others, would you?
There’s so much speculation in the story, that it’s difficult to take any meaning from it.