Politics
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April 11, 2025
I’m furious over the Jewish Trump supporters who’re upholding a set of values at odds with the ideas which have sustained us.
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A Jewish scholar wears a kippah given to him by Donald Trump’s marketing campaign throughout a speech earlier than outstanding Jewish donors on September 19, 2024, in Washington, DC.
(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Photos)
Passover has at all times been a favourite Jewish vacation of mine. A seder is the time to recollect the lash of oppression and the thrill of deliverance. It’s a time when the youngest are inspired to query their elders, a time to have a good time the autumn of pharaohs and false gods, and a time to be replenished by speaking with household and mates about how Jewish values apply in the present day.
With the strategy of this yr’s Pesach, I really feel neither fortified nor replenished. I’m, as a substitute, trembling with contempt for these in my Jewish neighborhood ignoring the core classes of the seder: the ache of subjugation, the thrill of freedom, and the questioning of why we do what we do, on the desk and in life.
Jewish Trump supporters are bereft of morality, propping up a set of ideas at odds with what has sustained us. Israel, not Judaism, is their faith and false god. They rally across the state as if it’s a golden calf. They act as if those that query don’t need to be heard, solely punished. And Donald Trump is their pharaoh.
Present Difficulty
The place is the dignity in being Bari Weiss and making excuses for Elon Musk and Steve Bannon’s Nazi salutes? She has no honor, as she basically worships an apartheid state. The place is the dignity in being Jonathan Greenblatt, head of the Anti-Defamation League, a corporation that has turn into a PR machine for right-wing antisemites?The individuals he now defends from “defamation” are actually not Jews. The acceptance by my pro-Israel Jewish brethren of getting Mike Huckabee, a Christian Zionist, as US ambassador to Israel is a option to forgo self-respect and to be handled like a Schmmatte. A lot of my fellow Jews at the moment are saying that Israel’s pursuits are greatest served by somebody who believes in a model of Christianity that claims belong in hell when the rapture comes. They’re saying that Israel’s significance doesn’t lie in “defending Jews,” as Weiss insists, however in creating an end-of-the-world Disneyland for radical right-wing evangelicals. By making this alternative, Trump is doing what he does to everybody who capitulates to him. He’s humiliating Jewish supporters of Israel as a result of their acceptance of humiliation solely breaks them extra.
However nothing is as damaged in our collective spiritual neighborhood because the acceptance and even embrace of the concept that this administration filled with antisemites should shred our civil liberties within the title of preventing antisemitism. A current headline in The Guardian learn“Leo Terrell, Trump’s antisemitism chief, shares submit by outstanding neo-Nazi.” What number of headlines like this should we see? In his first time period, Trump supplied a hand of friendship to avenue thugs chanting “Jews won’t substitute us” and those that trashed the Capitol on January 6. In his second time period, they are making coverage.
We’re seeing Jewish organizations align with ICE of their quest to abduct and indefinitely imprison worldwide college students who protest, signal op-eds, or have the temerity to marry somebody objectionable of their eyes. That these organizations usually are not solely silent within the face of this however supplying names and doxing individuals for the aim of armed abduction is a betrayal of earlier generations. It’s an erasure of our personal historical past at Passover: our personal bitter tears, represented on the seder plate by horseradish and salt water. Jewish supporters of the Israeli state are within the thrall of seeing their golden calf unfold from “the river to the ocean.”
The desecration of debate and acceptance of getting a thought police isn’t in our pursuits as a individuals; it marks the negation of our religious selves. No matter ICE has been because it was launched in March 2003 as George W. Bush’s scaffolding for the present second, a graphic it posted yesterday exhibits clearly what it has turn into, studying“If it crosses the U.S. border illegally, it’s our job to cease it.” The graphic then lists what its mandate is to cease: “individuals, cash, merchandise, concepts.” It’s ICE’s job to cease “concepts” from crossing the border. We have now already seen this happen, together with individuals being stopped for criticizing Pharoah Trump on their social media.
Then there are this week’s stories of Trump’s intention to basically take over Columbia Collegesuccessfully destroying the establishment with a purpose to, Trump says, make Jewish college students “really feel secure.” Jews supporting a governmental seizure of upper studying? My grandfather, the primary individual in our household to go to school, would die a second loss of life if he was right here to see such a factor. And never solely as a result of the college that delivered him from poverty was a faculty he barely was capable of attend due to quotas on Jewish college students. That faculty was Columbia College—and it wasn’t Palestinians making these quotas.
These threats, as Jewish Columbia professor James Schamus wroteare literally about bringing what has at all times been a hub of Jewish debate to heel: “They’re coming after Columbia exactly as a result of the College is, to the (not-) ‘populist’ base in entrance of whom they carry out their Hitler salutes and at whom they hose their antisemitic memes, an emblem exactly of Jewishness: it’s ‘globalist,” ‘cosmopolitan,’ New York-based, ‘liberal,’ and many others.”
Proof of Schamus’s level is seen within the variety of Jews who had been central to the Columbia encampments. Proof are the Jews standing up for Mahmoud Khalilthe scholar chief who was kidnapped from the streets of New York by masked gunmen with out badges calling themselves ICE. In accordance with paperwork submitted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Khalil has dedicated no crimes. He’s harmless of all the things however a perception in a free Palestine. The Trump administration’s solely declare is that Rubio can deport Khalil if he determines that Khalil’s “previous, present, or anticipated beliefs, statements, or associations which are in any other case lawful” will compromise US foreign-policy pursuits. What the hell is a deportable “anticipated perception” if not a thought crime?
To have Jewish organizations have a good time such a factor exhibits such contempt for who we’re as a individuals and what we’ve got endured. Count on Canary Mission to compile an inventory of the youngest individuals at each seder for daring to ask the 4 questions and feed these names to Rubio who on the pharaoh’s bidding may have them kidnapped from ICE’s new favourite looking floor: elementary colleges. No shred of decency exists, solely a humiliating hypocrisy in calling oneself a Jew and supporting this administration of Christian Zionists, fascism fanatics, and enemies of debate. A spot on the seder desk this yr, nonetheless, is sort of acceptable. Jewish Trump supporters symbolize a darkness, a bloodshed, and an assault on the younger. They’ve turn into an eleventh plague.
Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin is the sports activities editor at The Nation. He’s the creator of 11 books on the politics of sports activities. He’s additionally the coproducer and author of the brand new documentary Behind the Protect: The Energy and Politics of the NFL.
