(((Semitism)))--Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump by Jonathan Weisman

Author:Jonathan Weisman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

FOUR

Stand Up or Ignore

David Bernstein, a conservative law professor at George Mason University, thinks he knows why so many Jews are alarmed at the rise of anti-Semitism in the era of Trump: they don’t like him.

Jewish discomfort is unquestionable. In an article in the Washington Post, Bernstein quoted Andrew Silow-Carroll, editor in chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency:

Most Jews didn’t vote for him, and regarded his campaign antics as particularly unsettling, from his appeal among white supremacists and ethno-nationalists to his willingness to exploit the country’s racial and ethnic divides. In his embrace of a fiercely chauvinistic “economic nationalism,” White House strategist Steve Bannon represents something “unprecedented and inconceivable” in the minds of many Jews. Until Trump, resurgent nationalism seemed a problem for Europe, where economic malaise, fear of immigrants and the ghosts of the 20th century have combined into a particularly toxic brew on the right.

But does that add up to the greatest upswell of actual anti-Semitism that we have seen since the 1930s? Bernstein pointed to a Wall Street Journal story from 1995 that fretted,

These are anxious times for American Jews. Still reeling from the results of the November election, many liberal Jews are alarmed by the rise of the religious right. They are increasingly uncomfortable with verbal attacks by conservative commentators on the “cultural elite” and on “Hollywood,” both of which they believe are code words for Jews. And they are shaken by well-publicized reports of neo-Nazi groups and of anti-Semitic violence by teenage “skinheads.”

But those earlier fears proved to be groundless. With the benefit of hindsight, the Republican “revolution” that swept Newt Gingrich to power in the House did not herald an era of uncertainty for Jews. It cemented the power of Israel in American foreign policy; ushered in the “Jewpublican,” who strengthened the Jewish position in society by divorcing Judaism from a single party; and eventually gave us Eric Cantor, the first Jewish House majority leader.

And measuring this anti-Semitic surge is just plain difficult. Before it devolved into a deadly melee, the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017 was likely the largest gathering of white supremacists in more than a decade. Images of Nazi salutes, swastika flags, and angry white men chanting “Jew will not replace us” leave an indelible imprint, and the numbers back up the fear. The Anti-Defamation League trumpeted a 34 percent increase in assaults, vandalism, and harassment in 2016 over 2015, with 1,266 total acts targeting Jews and Jewish institutions, nearly 30 percent of them coming in November and December, after Donald Trump’s unlikely election triumph. More troubling, the surge powered into 2017, with another 541 incidents by the early summer, putting 2017 on pace to top two thousand incidents. The first three months of 2017 saw 161 bomb threats and 155 acts of vandalism, including three cemetery desecrations. In Denver, vandals scrawled “Kill the Jews, Vote Trump.” In St. Petersburg, Florida, a Jew was accosted by an assailant shouting “Trump is going to finish what Hitler started.”

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