DAMN THOSE JEWISH SUPPORTERS OF HAMAS

A Passover lesson for Jews who oppose Trump more than antisemitism

As Jew-hatred has surged, some still cling to the liberal allies and institutions that have betrayed them, preferring instead to oppose a president who is fighting for Jewish rights. 

 

By Jonathan S. Tobin

 

JNS

Apr 11, 2025 

 

 

Jews and supporters hold a Passover seder in Brooklyn, N.Y., near the home of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), to protest Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza, April 23, 2024. The 'table cloth' reads "Jews say stop arming Israel."

 

Is there such a thing as being too opposed to antisemitism? Can fighting those who call for the genocide of Jews be somehow bad for the Jews? Is it better to let bigotry flourish in secular institutions rather than suffer the indignity of supporting someone whose policies one opposes on other issues? Is the loyalty one feels to those institutions and to political allies who have abandoned the Jews in a moment of peril more important than the solidarity one ought to feel with fellow Jews, especially those under attack?

Those are the questions being raised by the conduct of leading Jewish groups and leaders in the last week. That they did so on the eve of Passover points to a troubling trend among those to whom American Jews look for leadership. This is a basic question of Jewish rights, in which they clearly view partisan loyalties as having a higher priority than standing up for their people at a time of an unprecedented surge in antisemitism in America, coupled with the war being waged by Iran and its terrorist proxies on the existence of the State of Israel.

Groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, along with former Biden administration antisemitism special envoy and historian Deborah Lipstadt, former Harvard president and economist Lawrence Summers, Wesleyan University president Michael Roth and, most outrageously, Hillel CEO Adam Lehman were just some of those who chose to join the “resistance” against President Donald Trump’s efforts to rid higher education of woke antisemitic ideologies and to deport foreign students who advocate for Jewish genocide and Hamas terrorism.

Their comments were not uniform. They all said they oppose campus antisemitism, as well as the way schools have tolerated and even encouraged left-wing ideologues and pro-Hamas activists who have created a hostile environment for Jewish students in which they have been targeted for shunning, intimidation and even violence. But all opposed or called into question the only meaningful way to combat the Jew-haters and to rid higher education of the toxic influence of radical ideas that have normalized antisemitism. Indeed, they are prepared to stand by—and do little or nothing about—something that is turning prejudice against Jews into behavior that is considered both fashionable and laudable among the credentialed elites who populate American universities and other entities that have traditionally run the nation.

Taking sides against those fighting antisemitism

They’re doing so because to do otherwise is to accept two things that are anathema among liberal Jews in 2025: support Trump and turn your back on institutions that have already shown themselves incorrigibly hostile to Israel and Jewish rights.

Trump’s war on campus antisemitism is a shock to the system for liberal elites who sat by and watched as academic settings that once welcomed Jews became bastions of intolerance for them, going back to the days when Jews weren’t allowed to enroll or were socially penalized for being there. The “long march” of progressives from the radicalism of the 1960s to a position of prominence throughout the academy brought ideas about critical race theory, intersectionality, settler-colonialism, and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) from the fringes to the mainstream. Indeed, society is now at the point where these deeply misleading beliefs have become the prevailing orthodoxy in American culture in education, the arts and much else.

As they are essentially opposed to the foundational ideas of Western civilization and the American republic, they are doing great damage to the entire nation. They are particularly dangerous to Jews and Israel because they are falsely singled out as among the “white” oppressors who are always in the wrong. At the same time, those who seek their destruction—Palestinians and other supporters of Islamist groups—are wrongly termed “people of color” and victims under all circumstances who are always in the right. That applies even when those alleged members of the victim class commit unspeakable atrocities, such as those done by Hamas terrorists and ordinary Palestinians to communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

It was long apparent that elite universities were a lost cause for those who opposed these toxic ideas, but their post-Oct. 7 conduct removed all doubt from the question. They didn’t merely tolerate antisemitism; many of them encouraged it, tacitly or openly. At this point, it would be foolish to believe that they can or will change. As even the leaders of Columbia University, a place where the treatment of Jews after Oct. 7 was particularly egregious and the first major institution to be targeted by the Trump administration for defunding, have made clear, they have no intention of abiding by the terms offered by the government in exchange for holding off on threats of losing billions of dollars.

Still, the liberal leadership of the organized Jewish world at places like ADL and AJC, as well as thought leaders like Lipstadt and Summers, feel that siding with Trump against antisemites is a bridge too far for them.

They cite bogus concerns about free speech or due process as reasons to oppose Trump’s efforts to deport foreign students who advocate for Jewish genocide. Those assertions fall flat when you realize that the deportations are for illegal conduct, not speech. Just as important, they view the survival of these elite institutions threatened with defunding for their egregious conduct as far more important than anything else, including rolling back the tide of left-wing Jew-hatred.

Partisanship over their children’s safety

Still, they have the nerve to declare that opposition to antisemitism, even the unprecedented post-Oct. 7 left-wing variety, and the push to rid these schools of doctrines that enable it is bad for the Jews. In their view, siding with Trump, even on matters of Jewish safety, is bad because … well, the “bad orange man” is always wrong, even when, quite obviously, he’s right.

This is nothing less than an effort to convince American Jewry that their partisan liberal sensibilities always take precedence, even if it means their children’s lives have to be made miserable. They are asking Jews to side with campus antisemites and institutions that have written them off as unworthy of the protections given to any other minority community. As even many of them have conceded, it would be inconceivable for any of these schools that are threatened with being stripped of federal funds to tolerate, let alone tacitly encourage, those who advocate for violence against minorities like blacks or Hispanics. Yet Jews are supposed to tolerate this because the alternative is to approve of a president liberals feel obligated to oppose, even when he is doing something they’d approve of if it were directed toward ensuring the safety of others.

This is disgraceful in and of itself. It is also a repudiation of some basic principles implicit in the observance of Passover.

The story of a people that went from bondage and oppression to freedom is one that has inspired humanity for millennia. Like the Bible and the entire history of ancient Israel, the Exodus from Egypt has been adopted by many other peoples who quite naturally identified with the Jews because of their own suffering or because they, too, saw themselves as having a Divinely inspired mission.

But for Jews of all sorts, religious and non-religious, the Passover seder—the most commonly practiced Jewish ritual—is an annual opportunity to reconnect with their faith and their history. And it is particularly meaningful during those periods when they are under attack, as, sadly, has been a commonplace occurrence over the last two millennia.

Revising the Haggadah and seder

Too many Jews have, in recent decades, seen it as a veneer of Judaism to justify their secular views on all sorts of topics unrelated to Jewish life more than anything else. That is why there is a never-ending stream of Haggadahs adapted to promote ideas such as environmentalism and racial equality, as well as calls to crowd the seder plate with oranges (for gays and lesbians or feminism, depending on whom you are speaking to) or acorns to weave indigenous land acknowledgement into Passover discussions, to name just a few examples. Whatever you may think about these causes, superimposing them on the Exodus narrative is a distraction from the main point of the exercise.

Far more troubling than that is how Jews who have allied themselves with the enemies of their people use Passover to demonize Israel. With their call for an “Exodus from Zionism,” hate groups that masquerade as advocates for human rights, like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, seek to portray genocidal organizations like Hamas and its allies as the modern equivalent of the enslaved Jews, as well as an Israel fighting for its life as Pharaoh and his Egyptian slave masters.

It takes a particular sort of ideological fanaticism to twist a holiday that is about the journey of Jews from slavery to freedom in their homeland into something that glorifies the eradication of Israel and the mass murder of Jews.

Even more troubling is the willingness of those who purport to care about Jewish life to express neutrality or even opposition to what is, for all intents and purposes, the only clear path to ensuring the defeat of ideas that are fueling antisemitism and those who are pursuing Israel’s destruction.

What matters most?

The question American Jews must ask when they sit down at their seder tables is: What matters most to them? Do they care about Israelis who were murdered, raped, tortured and kidnapped by the people all those the campus mobs are cheering for? Are they indifferent to the prospect of more Oct. 7 massacres of Israelis? Are they willing to delegitimize the heroic actions of the Israel Defense Forces in fighting the terrorists? Or are their relationships with liberal and left-wing erstwhile political allies who side with the victimizers of those Jews the only thing that is meaningful to them?

Passover is an exercise in atavism in which we are asked not merely to identify with our ancestors but to imagine that we were actually there in Egypt, suffering in slavery and then liberated by the strong hand of God that led the Israelites to freedom and the land of Israel. That normally requires a leap of imagination and faith that can prove to be difficult when we are living in times of peace and security.

Yet now, when antisemitism is on the rise, is it really so hard to think back on Jewish history, and all the moments when Jews spoke of liberation and “Next Year in Jerusalem,” even when those who sought their deaths were at their doorsteps?

As our liturgy teaches us, many Jews who fled Egypt longed for it and felt uncomfortable when presented with the dilemmas and responsibilities of freedom. Call it “Stockholm Syndrome” avant-la-lettre, but Jews have been identifying with their oppressors and in a state of denial about reality since the Exodus. At every point in history, there have been Jews who preferred to look away when danger was near or to rationalize, excuse or dismiss the peril that threatened them.

That many Jews would take this point of view is unsurprising when you consider how many rewritten Haggadahs omit key parts of the traditional seder that refer to the perennial threat to Jewish life, such as the key line that teaches that: “For not only one enemy has risen up against us to destroy us, but in every generation, they rise up to destroy us. But the Holy One, Blessed be He, delivers us.” Similarly, many leave out the admonition of the traditional service that speaks of resisting those who seek Jewish genocide by asking God to “pour out Your wrath upon the nations that do not know You and on regimes that have not called upon Your name.” By leaving this out, Jewish self-defense and even the help of allies are delegitimized in the name of a universalism that seeks justice for all except the Jews.

Trump is neither Moses nor Pharaoh, but by seeking to fundamentally reform American higher education by fighting the left-wing antisemitism that is normative there, he is providing leadership that much of organized Jewry has failed to provide. Opposing him on this issue is not a defense of American liberty or the Jews or Jewish values. It is a betrayal of all of them.

The lessons of history

This year, as it has so many times throughout Jewish history, Passover provides a lesson about standing together and supporting the cause of the Jewish people as they continue to fight for their survival. It teaches us that an abstract belief in freedom stripped of the moral values of faith and tradition is a path that leads toward oppression. Those who find excuses to stand apart from the plight of their fellow Jews—and against efforts to defend them—are identifying with the proverbial “wicked son” that the Haggadah speaks of, who asks what the ritual “means to you,” thereby excluding himself from the community.

If there is anything that Jewish history teaches us, it is that those who take such stands will be condemned by their posterity as having sided with the oppressors of their time. For the rest of us, the seder is the reminder that we must find the courage and faith to carry on just as previous generations have done.

We should do so with confidence that we are not alone. We have many friends in the Christian community, as well as faith in the power and strength of the Jewish state—the only true memorial to the Holocaust.

For us, the closing refrain of “Next year in Jerusalem” should not be dismissed as symbolism or an ancient and outdated tradition. It must be a clarion call to arms to defend Israel and the Jewish people and to refuse to let this generation’s enemies triumph. Just as past generations of Jews took heart from the promise of liberation inherent in the seder, so, too, must we do the same.

Wishing all of JNS’ readers, listeners and viewers a very happy, healthy and inspired Passover. Chag Pesach Sameach!