It is a documented fact that antisemitism is on the rise not only in the United States but globally.
Donald Trump has a plan to fight this: Deport university students.
Amid the flurry of executive orders flying out of the Oval Office since Jan. 20, Trump signed one on antisemitism. He appears to address the campus protests that happened nearly two years ago in reaction to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waging war on Palestinians in Gaza.
Before getting to his latest actions, Trump referred back to his first term in office when on Dec. 11, 2019, he issued another executive order “finding that students, in particular, faced antisemitic harassment in schools and on university and college campuses.”
That was four years before the surprise Hamas attack on Israel that prompted Netanyahu’s revenge, which sparked campus protests nationwide.
“College campuses … have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Now back in office, Trump has picked up the theme from 2019: “Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities. To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you. I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.”
Trump’s plan to fight antisemitism is to use the powers of the federal government to go after universities and to deport people, including students, who are here on visas if the protests in which they are participating are deemed to be sympathetic to Hamas.
Let’s be clear: College students protesting what they saw in Israel’s invasion of Gaza is not antisemitism. Opposing the military policy of Netanyahu is not an act of antisemitism.
Even Israelis have taken to the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to protest Netanyahu’s war.
Is there an upsurge of antisemitism in the United States? Yes. Does it require an executive order aimed only at colleges? No.
Bundled racism
Trump’s executive order is part of a bundle that has to do with far more than antisemitism. It has to do with antidemocracy.
“Trump’s executive order is part of a bundle that has to do with far more than antisemitism.”
Look at his other executive orders and proclamations about “school choice” programs and defunding schools teaching Critical Race Theory or gender issues. Look at the announcement from the Department of Defense that it will no longer celebrate “cultural awareness months,” including Black History Month.
As BNG previously reported, Trump and his allies consistently define antisemitism in a way that lets them off the hook for their own biases.
Speech professor Ira J. Allen notes: “Racialized hatred of all sorts are consubstantial with one another and with Trumpism. Antisemitism flies in the same constellation of other forms of racialized hate belonging to Trump’s vision to ‘Make America Great Again.’ The misogyny, the racism, the transphobia, the antisemitism and the nativism are all part of the same Trump bundle.”
Trump seamlessly blends patriotism, nationalism, racism and antisemitism into one package. There’s a straight line from deporting “terrorist” students to deporting 11 million immigrants — the Trump ethnic cleansing pogrom.
What is antisemitism?
Since the president insists on the ruse of “antisemitism,” a solid understanding of exactly what is meant by the term is required. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, antisemitism means hostility to or prejudice against Jewish people.
The U.S. Department of State defines “antisemitism” according to the Stockholm Declaration and the IHRA Plenary in Bucharest: “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”
Most Americans are not, according to these definitions, antisemitic. There are, of course, antisemitic groups in America. The Southern Poverty Law Center lists 31 neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. Neo-Nazi groups share a hatred for Jews and a love for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll found one in 10 Americans think it’s “acceptable” to hold neo-Nazi views. (In contrast, 83% say it’s unacceptable, and 8% had no opinion on neo-Nazism.) These numbers suggest due diligence in resisting antisemitism but not a cause for too much alarm.
How can you say Trump is an antisemite?
Why should we bother with saying Trump is antisemitic? He denies it: “I’m the least antisemitic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life.” This parallels his “least racist person” and “I love women and women love me” insincere remarks.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is a Jew and a member of Chabad. His grandchildren are Jewish. His daughter converted to Judaism in 2009. Trump is a huge supporter of Israel. He moved the American embassy to Jerusalem. He appointed Mike Huckabee as U.S. ambassador to Israel. The same Mike Huckabee who has said, “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
Here’s the dilemma. If Trump is as personally close to Judaism and as politically close to Israel as any American president has ever been, why is his own political rise coupled with the rise of antisemitism and celebrated by antisemites?
“Antisemitism and racism have stuck to Trump since his earliest days in business.”
When Trump was first elected in 2016, there was a dramatic surge in incidences of antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League reported an 86% increase in antisemitic incidents in the first quarter of 2017. Through the first nine months of 2017, there were 1,299 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment or vandalism. During this time period, 160 synagogues received bomb threats and Jewish cemeteries were vandalized across the country. Antisemitism and racism have stuck to Trump since his earliest days in business.
This is revelatory: Antisemitism isn’t rising from college students protesting, but from Trump promoting his ideology of white supremacy. Adept at rolling all his prejudices into one statement, Trump once said: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
Elon Musk gestures as he speaks during the inaugural parade inside Capital One Arena, in Washington, D.C., on January 20. (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)
Antisemitism in Trump administration
If the Trump administration were serious about fighting antisemitism, it would stop scapegoating college students and start addressing the rampant antisemitic people in its own administration. These Trump surrogates are part of the dodge.
There’s Elon Musk. He has given a Nazi-like salute, posted pro-Nazi puns and spoken to a far-right Nazi party in Germany to get over their guilt and be proud of being Germans. Does Musk know that “Making Germany Great Again” by restoring German racial pride was the primary rhetorical strategy of Hitler?
There’s Stephen Miller, author of the family separation policy for immigrants. When a trove of emails were released showing Miller’s white nationalist views, Jewish organizations spoke against him. They called Miller a “white nationalist” and the “architect of the Trump administration’s cruel and endless attacks on immigrants.”
There’s the director of ICE, Tom Homan, who told 60 Minutes he didn’t write the memo for deporting immigrants, he was only following orders. My memory shifted automatically to General Himmler testifying at his war trial he only made sure the trains ran on schedule and he didn’t kill anyone.
The multi-pieces of Trump’s ideology fit together to make one clear picture: Marking off Jews as “other” just as he marks off of Black people, brown people, Muslim people, LGBTQ people and trans people.
Trump undermines human rights
Trump policies ultimately hurt Jews because they undermine basic human rights. Jews, perhaps more than other people, should know better than to advocate for a disliked minority to lose its rights.
“Trump policies ultimately hurt Jews because they undermine basic human rights.”
Hugh Taylor, blogger for the Times of Israel, argues, “American Jews should remember that anything that can be done for us can also be done to us. It should trouble us that the executive order can target people for deportation based on vague and frighteningly flexible parameters like ‘hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions.’”
Amy Spitalnick, head of the liberal Jewish Council for Public Affairs, said in a statement opposing Trump’s executive order: “It is both possible and necessary to directly confront and address the crisis of antisemitism, on campus and across our communities, without abandoning the fundamental democratic values that have allowed Jews, and so many others, to thrive here.”
First Amendment
One executive order at a time, Trump continues his assault on liberal democracy. Perry Bacon Jr. at the Washington Post argues this is “a full-scale war against modern liberalism. This executive order, in its attack on institutions of higher learning and on the constitutional right to free assembly and needs to be understood in that context.”
Even more haunting: This is but the first salvo in the coming war against American universities by a right-wing evangelical mob already intoxicated with more than a century of anti-intellectualism rooted in anti-science and anti-history ideologies.
Taylor says in the Times of Israel: “Trump is using Jewish fear and the threat of antisemitism to attack civil rights, minorities and democracy itself while allowing antisemitism in his own administration to fester.”
Deporting students is not action against antisemitism; it is governmental bullying that is grossly antidemocratic.
“The First Amendment protects everyone in the United States, including foreign citizens studying at American universities,” said Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “Deporting non-citizens on the basis of their political speech would be unconstitutional.”
All of us need to reject both Trump’s antisemitism and his authoritarianism. To accomplish this task, we need as many “others” as possible.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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