No, it is not anti-Semitism. President Donald Trump’s statement about US Jews being disloyal is not about that. Trump’s behavior — and that of his senior partner, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — causes more damage to the Jewish state and Jews everywhere than it would if he were an anti-Semite. There is enough anti-Semitism in the world without Trump. The moves and statements (or silences) by the allies Trump and Netanyahu are rupturing the unity of the Jewish world and its identification with the Jewish state. They are tearing apart the delicate fabric that underpins US Jewish support for Israel, sabotaging decades of bipartisan US political backing for Israel, and polluting the value-based strategic alliance between Israel and the United States in the short and medium term. And that’s just for starters.
On April 3, 2015, Netanyahu issued a statement in English regarding the world powers’ nuclear deal with Iran. Someone at The Associated Press (AP) erroneously added the letter “R” after the prime minister’s name, as if he were an honorable Republican senator. This amusing mistake was no Freudian slip. It could have been real. If Netanyahu’s brother Jonathan (Yoni) had not been killed in Israel’s 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue operation, Netanyahu might well have remained in the United States. He had spent many years there and could have taken up the offer of a prestigious job at the Boston Consulting Group, carving out an American career for himself. He had already changed his name to a more American sounding “Ben Nitai” and had no plans to come home. Yoni’s death turned him into the family standard-bearer. He went to his brother’s funeral as Ben Nitai, and emerged as Benjamin Netanyahu who would become Israel’s prime minister less than 20 years later.
