The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), under CEO Amy Spitalnick, released a letter last week titled “Broad coalition of mainstream Jewish organizations release statement rejecting false choice between Jewish safety and democracy.” In it, Spitalnick, a former press secretary for the group J Street, and the other signatories questioned the motives of the Trump administration to rein in antisemitism on college campuses and suggested that something more nefarious was at play, something threatening “democracy.”
The JCPA letter stated: “In recent weeks, escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation, as well as to threaten billions in academic research and education funding.”
“We reject any policies or actions that foment or take advantage of antisemitism and pit communities against one another,” the letter went on to say, “and we unequivocally condemn the exploitation of our community’s real concerns about antisemitism to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press and peaceful protest.”
Apparently, the JCPA sees a conspiracy where the Republicans hide their malign activities behind the “guise” of helping Jews and believe that Trump will “take advantage” of the civil unrest. It sounds like the JCPA views victimized Jews as fortuitous tools of Trump.
Did the JCPA or any of the coalition’s 10 Reform and Conservative administrations explore the Democratic Party’s flabby response to campus antisemitism, or the skyrocketing hate crime in America against Jews, or the half-baked condemnations of how the Israel Defense Forces conducted war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip after Oct. 7, 2023, and its meddling in Israeli politics?
Did the JCPA or any of the organizations that signed onto the letter pen critical commentaries about the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran or former President Joe Biden’s slow-walking supplies to Israel after Oct. 7? What about the Robert Malley Iran security-clearance mess? Crickets.
For all of those who buy into what the JCPA suggests and who take great offense at Trump’s actions, where were you when Biden and former President Barack Obama and Biden, along with former Vice President Kamala Harris, made life tough for Israel during its time of need, and did so little about America’s antisemitism explosion? Did you probe where Deborah Lipstadt, Biden’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, was in Jewish students’ time of need? More crickets.
The JCPA characterized its coalition as “broad,” yet it failed to mention that Orthodox institutions were not included.
On behalf of progressives, the JCPA has sanctimoniously questioned Trump’s actions. During the Biden administration, it tolerated the anti-Zionists and pro-Hamas antisemites who camped out at universities across the country and protested with hate-laced speeches.
The letter exposes a politically motivated hypocrisy, and the JCPA and others’ silence then negates their right to complain now. Their grousing is a day late and more than a few dollars short, and demonstrates how politics is, for some, their new religion.
