Why Trump is the wrong choice for the Jews

Throughout this campaign, there have been many opinion pieces written about Kamala Harris’ close bond with the Jewish people and the state of Israel. Some have spoken to the Vice President’s decades of fighting for the Jewish community, since even before she sought public office. Others have emphasized her ironclad commitment to Israel and its security. Having had the honor of traveling to Israel with her myself 20 years ago, I’ve even written one myself.

But a piece I don’t see as often is one that makes an equally important argument: that Donald Trump is a danger to the Jewish people and, yes, to Israel. I know there are many voters across this country who put Israel and the Jewish people’s security at a premium when choosing who to vote for this November. If that describes your deeply felt priorities, I want to address my concerns to you from the perspective of someone who has advocated for our community for more than 40 years.

It’s important to remember that as Jews we’ve always believed that facts matter. It is the only way we’re able to ensure that our history is accurately portrayed, whether that’s asserting the Jewish people’s ancestral ties to the land of Israel or combating Holocaust denial.

So, let’s let the facts have their moment.

Donald Trump has a blind spot regarding the Jewish people. The man speaks in antisemitic tropes. And when his audience is mostly Jewish, the antisemitism becomes even more pronounced. During his first campaign for president, he told the Republican Jewish Coalition, “You’re not gonna support me because I don’t want your money. You want to control your politicians, that’s fine…I’m a negotiator like you folks.” He has repeatedly said that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion,” a comment the ADL publicly called “defamatory and patently false.” And he has gone so far as to openly push the “dual loyalty” trope, saying in 2019, “If you vote for a Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you are being very disloyal to Israel.”

This isn’t just garden-variety partisan politics. Treating Jews and Israel as political footballs makes us less safe. Dividing Jews into “good” and “bad” camps normalizes antisemitism. What’s more, Trump has said that Jews would be to blame if he doesn’t win in November. “In my opinion,” he said recently, “the Jewish people would have a lot do with a loss” if current polling holds.

Let’s be clear what that means. Trump is instructing others that Jews would be at fault if he loses. This risks the day-to-day safety of the Jewish community. It threatens us, putting us in the crosshairs of those who would be most angered by a Trump loss. With words like these, even beyond his usual encouragement of white supremacy, Trump makes it blindingly obvious he does not care about the well-being of American Jews.

As Jews, we know from our history that we must always be vigilant about antisemitism, and the post-October 7 world is a painful reminder of that truth. We know that it is critical that our leaders speak out swiftly and forcefully in condemning anti-Jewish hatred in all its forms.

Today, as we live in a charged political environment that has become a breeding ground for serious antisemitism, there’s no denying that Donald Trump has played an outsized role in the acceleration of this environment, even while we worry about growing antisemitism on the far left as well.

Over the years, we’ve seen support for Israel thrive in America as a bipartisan issue. Even when the Republican Party was flirting with Pat Buchanan who said, “There are only two groups that are being the drums for war in the Middle East – the Israeli Defense Ministry and its amen corner in the United States,” there was no suggestion from Democratic leadership that the Republican Party had abandoned Israel. No Democratic nominee for President has ever suggested Republicans are disloyal to Israel by voting for their party’s candidates. It has been a delicate, bipartisan consensus – with hawks emphasizing the strategic relationships and doves the shared values between Israel and the US – that’s assured decades of strong support for Israel and a commitment to Israel as a vulnerable ally worthy of strong support.

Donald Trump, by trying to turn Israel into a partisan issue, poses a long-term threat to Israel. And Israel’s enemies will continue to take notice.

While recognizing the importance of the Abraham Accords and the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the view “but he has done some good things” ignores the more insidious danger posed by Trump. The same excuse was once given to the likes of Louis Farrakhan, and we were appropriately outraged at the willingness of his defenders to overlook his extremism. Today, more than ever, we cannot afford to ignore what our better instincts tell us about Trump, the ugly words he utters, and the growing danger of those words being translated into action by true believers. After all, this is a man who was quoted by retired Gen. John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, as saying, “Hitler did some good things,” and was described by retired Gen. Mark Milley, Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as “fascist to the core.”

The deeper rot here and its implications for our security must not get lost in the mix. Consider everything we know about Trump’s extremism: his failure to condemn white supremacy, his assault on institutions that safeguard our democracy, his advancement of racist views to stoke fear and sow deep division within our society, his rejection of science, his personal corruption and much more. As a people who throughout our diaspora history have sought to convey the dangers of overlooking the warning signs, we owe it to ourselves and our country not to become the overlookers ourselves.

If you care about the Jewish community and the state of Israel, as I do, we have an easy choice in November. Kamala Harris has consistently demonstrated her support for Israel and stood with the Jewish people with sincerity and friendship. Donald Trump’s relationship with American Jews on the other hand is deeply cynical – we are a people he sees as a means to win an election and which he stereotypes at every opportunity. As Jews, we should be desperately nervous about another term for him, especially when many of the guardrails which existed previously will be absent. We are a people who thrive best in a robust democracy, and that is exactly what Trump threatens.

I urge all American Jews to understand the danger Trump’s candidacy poses and to vote for Kamala Harris on November 5.