Former President Donald Trump on Sunday slammed American Jews for what he called insufficient praise of his policy towards Israel, warning that they must “pull themselves together” before “it’s too late!”
The suggestion, made on Trump’s social media platform Truth Social, plays into the anti-Semitic trope that American Jews have dual loyalties to the United States and Israel, and it was immediately condemned.
‘No president has done more for Israel than I have,’ Trump wrote before saying it was somewhat surprising that ‘our wonderful evangelicals appreciate this much more than people of the Jewish faith, especially those who live in the States. -United”.
The head of the American Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, accused Trump of “pitying the Jews”.
“We don’t need the former president, who is currying favor with extremists and anti-Semites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship. This is not a quid pro quo; it is based on shared values and security interests”. is insulting and disgusting,” he wrote.
The Jewish Democratic Council of America also blasted Trump’s remarks. “His threat to American Jews and his continued use of the anti-Semitic trope of dual loyalty fuels hatred against Jews,” the group said. tweeted. “We will not be threatened by Donald Trump and American Jews will reject GOP bigotry in November.”
Trump’s comments echo an argument he has made before. In an interview last December, the former president claimed that American Jews “either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel,” and also repeated his assertion that evangelicals “love Israel more than the Jews of this country”.
A Pew Research survey published in 2021 found that 45% of Jewish adults in the United States considered caring about Israel to be “essential” to what it means to be Jewish, with an additional 37% saying it was “important, but not essential”. Only 16% said caring about Israel was “not important”.
During his first presidential campaign, Trump gave a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition that was replete with anti-Semitic stereotypes.