The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) recently brought together 10 organizations representing a “broad swath of mainstream American Jewry, including three of the four religious denominations. Together, they put out a statement urging people to reject what they described as the Trump administration’s “false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy.”
The document is a glaring example of misdirection, accusing the administration of using “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.”
It goes on to claim that students are “being punished for their constitutionally protected speech,” as if inciting hatred and violence against Jews and calling for revolution in the United States is protected speech for foreign students on visas and green-card holders disrupting life on college campuses. Orthodox leaders wisely declined to sign on, as did the Jewish Federations of North America. The Anti-Defamation League did not sign the letter but then came out in support of it, presumably after (mis)judging it to be a worthy declaration, in the days following its release.
Jews recently observed Yom Hashoah. No doubt many of these leaders repeated “Never Again” in their observance remarks, but it is déjà vu all over again, folks. Once more, Jews are in the crosshairs of a major political movement organized against us. Incredibly, many of our national Jewish leaders are again co-opted by Democratic Party politics, as happened during the Holocaust, and they are foolishly sabotaging efforts to stop today’s global assault on Jews.
To understand the depth of their depravity in repeating these mistakes, I urge you to watch the documentary film “Against the Tide” about the American Jews during the years of the Holocaust and how one young activist, Peter Bergson (real name Hillel Kook), challenged Jewish communal organizations to fight for the rescue of European Jewry.
For five decades, the Jewish left has nudged Jewish attention away from fierce support for Israel to maintain an ethereal place for Jews within leftist coalitions, even as hostility to Israel and Jews became the norm. It is time for Jews to wholeheartedly reject this foolishness.
There’s nothing wrong with Jews focusing on secular issues. The problem is that groups like the JCPA and others are trying to re-engineer Jewish identity itself by claiming that Jews don’t need to ferociously defend Israel or ourselves. It seems like their twisted message is that the best way to be Jewish is to prioritize progressive politics. These days, that includes defending advocates of a genocidal Arab and Muslim cause from the Middle East called “Palestine.” This is insane.
Jews cannot secure our homeland in Israel or our place in American society by crafting an identity that denies Jewish history and indigenous rights in the Arab- and Muslim-dominated Middle East. We cannot surrender our Jewish identity and our role in America to an identity-obsessed left that refuses to acknowledge 4,000 years of Jewish history.
Those pushing this narrative are the same people who, even after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, continue to talk about a “two-state solution” while whitewashing the genocidal culture in Gaza and the territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority. They never address the anti-Americanism behind anti-Israel politics because to do so would get them booted from circles on the left. They are incapable of developing serious counter-offensives to criticism of Israel and the Jewish people because they refuse to assert Jewish power in defiance of the progressives’ anti-Jewish politics. They can’t imagine such defiance because they forgot, if they ever knew, that it was the Jews and not the progressives who brought ideas like social justice and social responsibility into the world. That it is the Jews and not the progressive left that know how best to make these ideals work.
The JCPA-led coalition that put out the statement against the government’s actions to fight antisemitism on campus is telling Jews not to believe our eyes when we see President Donald Trump and his administration do more to protect Jews than any American president since George Washington. They want Jews to criminalize Trump administration efforts to fight antisemitism and, instead, focus on protecting those who mean to harm Jews and other Americans.
Not so long ago, Jews joined with members of black churches to demand that the civil rights of all Americans be protected. Today, the Trump administration, Christians of all races and reform-minded Muslims are standing together to demand that the civil rights of Jews, now under severe attack, be protected.
It’s time to stop following Jewish “leaders” who tell you to reject that help. To save democracy, we must first save the Jews.