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| Jason Moscovitch |
By Jason Moscovitch
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The recent rising
intensity in tone and content from the president of the United States about the
State of Israel can’t possibly go to a good place – even if the words are supportive.
The divisiveness of the president in using Israel for his own domestic
political reasons is why nothing good will come of it.
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When
President Donald Trump takes the few visceral anti-Israel voices in the
Democratic Party to say American Jews can’t vote Democratic without being
“disloyal,” as so many commentators have noted, those words conjure up old and
ugly antisemitic boogiemen and women from the past. It proves, how, when it
comes to antisemitism, the past and the present can so easily blend into one.
Most thinking Jews never forget that.
But
when the proven pro-Israel president, the president who moved the U.S. Embassy
to Jerusalem, launched a loyalty grenade into the American election cycle, it
was the act of a crass and politically unsophisticated despot.
Despots
don’t measure their words. Despots dispose of subtlety as if it were poison.
Despots laugh at political compromise, and sometimes at necessary political
nuance and ambiguity. The problem is, if there ever was a country that needs subtlety,
compromise, nuance and ambiguity, it is the State of Israel. So, thank you
President Trump for your help.
In
this High Holy Day period you can imagine the renewed tension that will exist
in U.S. synagogues when the subject of Israel comes up, if it comes up. Can you
imagine the reluctance of rabbis to mention the state of affairs in the Holy
Land? Tension is running high in all Jewish communities across the U.S. Bluntly
put, not all American Jews support Israel’s perceived hardline views as their president
does.
Traditionally,
most American Jews support the Democratic Party although there has always been
a good number of Jews who support the Republican Party. The stereotype that all
Jews support the Democratic Party in the United States is as misguided as the
long-held view in Canada that Jews vote Liberal. Increasingly, not all Jews
think the same, pray the same, or vote the same.
And
on both sides of the border, support for Israel is not the only consideration
when Jews cast their ballots. If that were the case, every Jewish vote would
have gone to former prime minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party, which
we know didn’t happen.
What
Trump has done fits the pattern of his taking down long held ways of doing
politics. This time Israel and Jewish voters are made targets as the president
wings his way through another outrage to get attention and, he thinks,
political advantage.
Talking
about Jewish voters being disloyal to Israel, to America, or to both, is such a
disgusting outrage that you have to wonder if it is just a bad dream. But it’s
not – not when Trump is the most powerful leader in the world.
Trump’s
support of Israel is good to have – but it is necessary to note there is not
another world leader who supports what he is doing or saying about Israel.
Israel is so alone in the world, and when the United States has a president who
is often over the top on Israeli matters, the question for the medium and long
term is whether Trump is causing more harm than good.
Since the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, every
Rosh Hashanah has seen Israel in a state of war with most of its neighbours,
and this year, 71 years later, there is not a glitter of hope that peace is
anywhere on the horizon. The difference this year is the unworthy spectacle of
Trump stirring the pot so ferociously.
There
are those who think Trump says what needs to be said. The problem is that so
much time has passed without resolution and, rightly or wrongly, the fires of
frustration with Israel burn around the world.
The
reality is how there is so much difficulty for Israel in the world and while
Trump may think he is helping, there is no evidence of that.
Perhaps,
on this Rosh Hashanah, we need to face the sad reality that our loud and
powerful friend is not making anyone feel any better.
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