Calling the kettle black: Trump’s not the anti-Semite in this race

This is the third time I have had the honor of writing an op-ed for Jewish Star readers the week before a presidential election. The first two times I warned against voting for Barack Obama because he would be unfriendly to Israel and other Jewish causes; sadly those predictions were correct.

Regular readers of The Jewish Star know I have the same concerns about Hillary Clinton based on her history as first lady and as secretary of state. Recent WikiLeaks releases including one of her transition co-chair describing Israel as “Ruthless Wingnuts” have added to those fears. But rather than focus on something discussed in this column many times before, permit me to focus on her opponent.

I will be pulling the lever for Donald Trump on election day, but I am not going spend this pre-election column trying to convince you to vote for Trump; rather, I would like to eliminate one of the reasons some have given not to vote for him.

In the past week two liberal Jewish writers, Peter Dreier of the Huffington Post and Ron Kampeas of the JTA, have made false charges of anti-Semitism against Donald Trump. Both writers pointed to a speech which in their opinion echoed anti-Semitic imagery.

“Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks to plot the destruction of U.S. sovereignty in order to enrich these global financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors. This election will determine if we are a free nation or whether we have only the illusion of democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system, and our system is rigged.”

When Bernie Sanders said that Hillary Clinton made secret speeches to banks and that she was beholden to the big Wall Street banks, Dreier and Kampeas were silent.

What Trump was reacting to in his speech was a posting by WikiLeaks one week earlier of a speech Hillary Clinton made to executives at a Brazilian bank in which she asserted her support for open borders for the United States.

“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” Clinton told the bankers. “There is so much more we can do, there is a lot of low hanging fruit, but businesses on both sides have to make it a priority and it’s not for governments to do but governments can either make it easy or make it hard and we have to resist protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade, and I would like to see this get much more attention and be not just a policy for a year under president X or president Y but a consistent one.” 

Dreier and Kampeas were trying to brand Trump as a Jew-hater to make it easier to elect Clinton. Yet for Trump to be an anti-Semite he would have to hate his Shabbos-observant daughter Ivanka, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and their three children (who will be attending Ramaz, the Modern Orthodox day school on the Upper East Side), along with his son Eric’s wife Lara Yunaskav (who is Jewish). Donald Trump Jr.’s wife Vanessa is not Jewish but her father was.

If Dreier and Kampeas wanted to point out the anti-Semitism of candidates, the better place to start would have been with Clinton, whose supporters include an extensive list of Jewish haters and Israel haters, and whose own track record is seriously anti-Israel. 

(For those of you who don’t believe that hating Israel is the same as hating Jews, I give you two quotes.

(From Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: “When people criticize Zionists they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”

(And from Pope Francis: “To attack Jews is anti-Semitism, but an outright attack on the State of Israel is also anti-Semitism. There may be political disagreements between governments and on political issues, but the State of Israel has every right to exist in safety and prosperity.”)

With the hatred identified, let’s take a look at some of Hillary Clinton’s supporters who have stirred the pot of hatred:

Rev. William Barber II: Tried to de-legitimize Israel during the DNC by claiming that Jesus was a Palestinian Jew. This is standard Palestinian propaganda used to disassociate Judaism from its roots in the holy land. Jesus was not a Palestinian.

Black Lives Matter: Hillary supports the Black Lives Matter moment (BLM). In its official demands document BLM supports the anti-Semitic BDS movement, based on this false rhetoric: “Israel is an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people. Palestinian homes and land are routinely bulldozed to make way for illegal Israeli settlements.” 

Sidney Blumenthal: He was kept out of the State Department during Hillary’s term because President Obama didn’t like how he acted in the 2008 primary season. But that didn’t stop Blumenthal from sending Clinton countless emails about Israel. Along with forwarding articles from his anti-Semitic son Max (who compares Israel to the Nazis) Sidney sent policy recommendations about Israel, generally describing Israel as the oppressor.

Center for American Progress (CAP): The Simon Wiesenthal Center tagged this group as anti-Semitic. The head of Clinton’s presidential campaign, John Podesta, used to lead CAP; the co-chair of Clinton’s transition team, Neera Tanden (author of the wingnut email), took over for Podesta. CAP bloggers post regularly in the vehemently anti-Israel fringe publication The Electronic Intifada and have accused American Jews of a dual loyalty, calling them “Israel-Firsters.”

Tim Kaine: Clinton’s vice-presidential candidate is Mr. J-Street. Open Secrets reports that J-Street was the number one donor ($178K) to Kaine campaigns over the course of his political career. In turn Kaine has shown himself to be a supporter of J-Street. This year, he spoke at the group’s national convention (for the second time), saying, “There is no organization, no NGO in the United States now that so stands for the values of diplomacy as J-Street.” Diplomacy? As the IDF was protecting Israel after it suffered tens of thousands of rockets from Hamas-controlled Gaza, J-Street called Israel’s actions “counterproductive.” J-Street made a moral equivalency argument between the policies of Israel and Hamas, stating that it found it difficult to distinguish “between who is right and who is wrong.”

Al Sharpton: He led two anti-Semitic pogroms in New York — in Crown Heights and at Freddy’s Fashion Mart in Harlem. According to the sworn testimony of Efraim Lipkind, a former Hasidic resident of Crown Heights: “Then we had a famous man, Al Sharpton, who came down, and he said Tuesday night, kill the Jews, two times. I heard him, and he started to lead a charge across the street to Utica.” Giving the eulogy at Gavin Cato’s funeral, Sharpton said, “The world will tell us he was killed by accident. Yes, it was a social accident. … It’s an accident to allow an apartheid [Jewish] ambulance service in the middle of Crown Heights. … Talk about how Oppenheimer in South Africa sends diamonds straight to Tel Aviv and deals with the diamond merchants right here in Crown Heights. The issue is not anti-Semitism, the issue is apartheid.” The Freddy’s massacre was incited on Sharpton’s radio show.

George Soros: Creator of the anti-Israel organization J-Street. Recent document leaks exposed Soros‘ Open Society Foundation’s funding of other anti-Israel advocacy groups as well. Soros condoned European anti-Semitism, saying it is “a result of the policies of Israel and the United States.”

I

 would never say that Hillary Clinton hates Jews just because some of her supporters do, the way some of my liberal colleagues attack Donald Trump.

Clinton’s feeling about Jews should be judged by her own comments, like the time she said Orthodox Jews in Israel are like Iranian fundamentalists.

Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through speech. The rabbis tell us that the harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating someone financially — money lost can be repaid, but the harm done by speech can never be repaired.

This chasidic tale vividly illustrates the danger of improper speech:

A man went around his community telling malicious lies about its rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends. The rabbi told the man, “Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds.” The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned to tell the rabbi that he had done it, the rabbi said, “Now, go and gather the feathers. Because you can no more make amends for the damage your words have done than you can collect the feathers.”

Mr. Dreier and Mr. Kampeas didn’t prove that Donald Trump is an anti-Semite, but they did prove they need a remedial course in loshen hara.

Contact Jeff Dunetz: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com