Trump's Vague Condemnation of Anti-Semitism Called "Too Little, Too Late"

by mobanmarketin NEWSon 29/09/2020

President Donald Trump finally spoke on Tuesday about a recent rash of anti-Semitic threats and attacks in the U.S., telling one news outlet: “Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s going to stop.”

The vague statement was the president’s only response thus far to the latest wave of anti-Semitic acts—including 11 new bomb threats against Jewish community centers, from New York to New Mexico, on Monday alone—and it wasn’t enough for many observers.

Steven Goldstein, executive director of the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, issued the following statement:

According to the Jewish Community Center (JCC) Association of North America, there have been 69 incidents (pdf) at 54 JCCs in 27 U.S. states and one Canadian province since the start of 2017.

In addition, vandals toppled and damaged as many as 200 headstones at a St. Louis-area Jewish cemetery sometime over the weekend.

At least one group, the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, is linking the rise in anti-Semitism to “expressions of bigotry surrounding the U.S. presidential campaign.”

“The rhetoric around the presidential election not only legitimized bigotry against all minorities, as we’ve seen through a variety of statistics, but also included specific coded and overt anti-Semitic expressions,” said Ann Jacobs, chair of the council’s Anti-Semitism Task Force, on Monday. “That climate on the national level affects the local community too.”

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Ivanka Trump tweeted about the threats on Monday:

But despite calls from many corners for him to do so, Trump did not address the seeming rise in anti-Semitism until Tuesday, in an exclusive interview with NBC News.

“Anti-Semitism is horrible. And it’s gonna stop and it has to stop,” Trump told the outlet after touring the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. “You don’t know where it’s coming from, but I hope they catch the people.”

This came after the White House issued a statement Monday evening condemning “hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind”—but failing to use the words “Jewish” or “anti-Semitism.”

What’s more, Trump’s remark on Tuesday followed his sidestepping of questions on anti-Semitism during two separate press conferences last week.

Vox reported:

He went on to say, “we are going to have peace in this country,” and mentioned “Jewish people, so many friends; a daughter who happens to be here right now; a son-in-law, and three beautiful grandchildren.”

However, as journalist Sarah Wildman noted for Vox: “He did not say, On behalf of my Jewish grandchildren, this White House will stand against anti-Semitism. He did not say, even more simply, No children should live in fear. He merely noted the existence of his Jewish relatives, as though their very presence spoke sufficiently to both of those points.”

Later in the week, Wildman continued, Trump cut off a question from Jake Turx, a journalist from the ultra-Orthodox Jewish publication Ami Magazine. Turx, she wrote, “wasn’t accusing Trump himself of being anti-Semitic.” But Trump brusquely shut him down all the same.

“This is startling,” Wildman wrote. “Instead of taking an easy opportunity to reassure concerned American Jews that their president has their back, Trump roughly pushed back at an Orthodox Jewish reporter whose questions weren’t about what the administration, or the president, was doing negatively, but what it might be doing proactively to address those who are attacking the community.”

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