The full implications of the outcome debate
between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have yet
to be seen. The encounter was a unique event in political history in
that the president’s faltering and sometimes confused performance was
such that not even his most rabid supporters could deny that it
confirmed doubts about his age and infirmity. While that didn’t stop the
partisan vitriol from continuing to flow between Democrats and
Republicans, it did set off speculation about the Democrats replacing Biden as their candidate.
But though that topic overshadowed the
substance that was discussed, one point of contention amid the word
salads of insults, hyperbole and untruths uttered by both men was
noteworthy, even if it only was raised in passing. At a time when the
nation is wracked by an unprecedented surge in antisemitism, what little
mention that topic received deserves further analysis.
Though it didn’t figure prominently in the
debate, Israel’s post-Oct. 7 war on Hamas in Gaza and the subsequent
surge in antisemitism in the United States did come up.
Arguing about Israel and Hamas
When asked about the Middle East, Biden
boasted of his support for Israel and denied that he was failing to give
them the weapons they need. He said that “Hamas cannot be allowed to be
continued [sic],” which is in line with his initial pledge of support
for Israel’s goal of destroying the terrorist group that governed the
Gaza Strip before and during the Oct. 7 atrocities. But then, he also
boasted of his ceasefire plan that whether he wants to admit it or not,
if accepted by Hamas (which it has not been) would ensure their
survival.
Trump’s reply was mostly devoted to
revisiting earlier arguments about Ukraine and Russia, though he did say
that Israel should be allowed to “finish the job” of defeating Hamas, a
clear difference between the two. He followed that with a
characteristic insult flung at his opponent saying, “He’s become like a
Palestinian. But they don’t like him because he is a very bad
Palestinian. He is a weak one.” It’s not clear exactly what that means
but suffice it to say that it probably offended both Palestinians and
Democrats.
Trump was then asked by CNN
moderator Dana Bash if he supported an independent Palestinian state,
which is an unrealistic suggestion that Biden and the American left
continue to cling to. He could have said that he had offered them a path
to one in the Mideast peace plan that he put forward in 2020, which
Palestinians rejected, as they have every other chance to gain
independence and end their century-old war on Zionism. Instead, he
simply said that he would think about it and then launched into a
digression about trade, NATO and Russia.
But an equally important Jewish issue arose later.
Relitigating Charlottesville
In the course of his attack on Trump as an
alleged threat to democracy, Biden revisited his claim that he entered
the 2020 presidential race because of the “Unite the Right” neo-Nazi
rally held in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017 and that Trump had
called the neo-Nazis “very fine people.”
The truth is that Trump did not say that.
He actually condemned the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members who took
part in that event but did defend those who opposed the removal of a
statue of Robert E. Lee. Indeed, just last week, the Snopes.com
fact-checker site finally got around to labeling that charge “false.”
It was especially wrong of Biden to bring
it up again. The myth about Trump endorsing Nazis is significant not
just because it has been fodder for Democratic rhetoric for the past
seven years, long after it was initially debunked. It was also the
foundation of a fundamentally mistaken assumption about antisemitism in
the United States promoted by liberal Jewish groups like the
Anti-Defamation League.
Right-wing hatemongers—like the few
hundred extremists who showed up in Charlottesville with tiki torches,
as well as lone gunmen like those who attacked synagogues in Pittsburg,
Pa., and Poway, Calif.—are a real threat. But they are a marginal
phenomenon with no political influence, let alone a link to the Trump
White House, as many on the left falsely asserted.
It also served to distract from the
growing threat of antisemitism on the left, which, unlike the neo-Nazis,
has genuine political influence.
A surge in antisemitism
Since Oct. 7, Americans have witnessed
mobs of protesters in the streets of their cities and especially on
college campuses not merely chanting slogans in support of the Hamas
terrorists and their genocidal goals of destroying Israel (“from the
river to the sea”) and killing Jews (“globalize the intifada”). They
also engaged in hundreds, if not thousands, of acts of antisemitic
violence and intimidation against Jewish students and ordinary Jews at
work or at their houses of worship.
In April, Biden was asked if he condemned
these actions, and he responded with exactly the sort of reaction that
he continues to insist that Trump uttered about Charlottesville. “I
condemn the antisemitic protests. That’s why I have set up a program to
deal with that,” he told a press gaggle. “I also condemn those who don’t
understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
This was deeply wrong since it equated
those engaging in open antisemitism with people who might not accept the
exaggerated and largely false claims of Palestinian casualties or a non-existent famine in Gaza that the Biden administration has itself promoted.
He also spent much of the year doing his best to appease
elements of his party, like the mayor of Dearborn, Mich., who is an
avid supporter of Hamas, to get them to support his re-election
campaign. The man who says he ran for president to oppose right-wing
antisemites has, to his shame, been currying favor with Jew-haters,
albeit those who identify with the political left or the Muslim-American
community, even praising
rather than condemning Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who is vocally
open about her desire for Israel’s destruction and support for
Palestinian terrorists. While Biden can chide Trump for his association
with antisemites like Kanye West,
he can’t do so without exposing himself to criticism for his ties to
the intersectional, Israel-hating wing of his own political party,
including its representatives in Congress.
Los
Angeles police officers clash with anti-Israel protesters outside Adas
Torah, an Orthodox synagogue, preventing access to an event on June 23,
2024.
Just last week, a pro-Hamas mob attacked
a Los Angeles synagogue and then went on a rampage throughout the
Jewish neighborhood where it was located. To his credit, Biden condemned
that assault. But in contrast to the way that he has weaponized the
U.S. Department of Justice to go after what he considers to be
right-wing extremists or opponents of abortion, his administration has
taken a pass when it comes to doing anything about antisemitic violence,
other than a meaningless plan
issued last year that involved legitimizing an antisemitic organization
like the Council of American Islamic Relations and equating Jew-hatred
to the fictional threat of Islamophobia.
In his closing remarks, Trump returned to
Charlottesville and issued what might stand as the one statement uttered
by either candidate during the 90-minute debate that could not be
legitimately challenged. Referencing the anti-Israel protests in which
“Palestinians and we have everybody else rioting all over the place,” he
added the following: “You talk about Charlottesville. This is 100 times
Charlottesville. 1,000 times.”
The Charlottesville march scared American
Jewry to death because the torches evoked Nazi rallies of the 1930s and
those who uttered the threats to Jews were familiar villains, the same
right-wing hatemongers who had plagued Jewish communities, here and
elsewhere, throughout the last century.
Mainstreaming antisemitism
Since then, Americans have, in fact,
witnessed hundreds and even thousands of Charlottesville-style events in
which Jews are slandered, intimidated, threatened and even subjected to
violence, including at their houses of worship. Yet rather than these
incidents uniting the nation in revulsion, as was the case after
Charlottesville, much of the corporate mainstream media and a
significant segment of Biden’s own party have rationalized or excused
these outrages.
The pervasive influence of toxic woke
ideologies like intersectionality and critical race theory that have
become the new orthodoxy in the American education system, media and
culture has promoted the lie that Jews and Israel are “white
oppressors,” and therefore deserving of opprobrium, if not terrorism. In
this way, a form of antisemitism has become acceptable in mainstream
discourse in a manner that right-wing hate is not.
We don’t know who will be elected
president in November. But one of the most important tasks facing
whoever it is that proclaims the oath of office next January will be to
take up the cause of challenging this newly respectable variant of
antisemitism. And it will require more than just talk. It will mean
rolling back the woke ideological tide and cracking down on violent
Hamas supporters on our campuses and in our streets. Fighting this
battle against a wave of hate that threatens Jews today, but ultimately
aims at toppling the foundation of Western civilization and American
liberty, shouldn’t be a Democratic or Republican issue. We should all
pray that it doesn’t remain one.
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