Member Newsletter
“If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves.” That’s ex-President Trump this morning as he headed into the courtroom in New York City. This is worth everyone taking a close look at. When Trump feels cornered and scared one of his go-tos is to lash out at American Jews. The overwhelming percentage of American Jews voted for President Biden in 2020. And there’s no pollster or political prognosticator who doesn’t think the same will happen this year. So this isn’t some hypothetical — if that happened they should be ashamed. It did happen and will again. While the precise percentage of American Jews voting for each party can shift a bit cycle to cycle, Jews are, along with African-Americans, the most consistent Democratic voting block in the country and have been so for the last century. And for this they should be ashamed of themselves, according to the Republican nominee.
I’m not even sure we should see this as generic anti-Semitism on Trump’s part. Trump is prejudiced against just about everyone. He’s rife with quotes about how he didn’t want black accountants. He wanted accountants with kippahs. So Jews, because the Jews were good with money. Like I said, every group a caricature. But as it always is with Trump, you’re either useful or you’re not. And if you’re not, well, you get bad Trump.
And hopefully, other groups will hear this loud and clear: Trump feels he has this opening because President Biden has put his foot down on a full scale assault on Rafah in the Gaza Strip. So for anyone who is still pretending Trump would be “better” on Israel-Palestine, well, this was obvious all along. But he’s reminding you.
Let me add a few more thoughts on Biden’s decision here. Dennis Ross, a longtime diplomat, tweeted this morning that Biden was right to demand that Israel allow more food aid into Gaza and a plan to evacuate civilians from Rafah before any IDF offensive. But he says it was still wrong to threaten an arms cutoff, as the Biden administration has. There already seems to be a de facto cut off or slowdown.
Two points on this.
First, I’ve picked up some indications that there might be significant opposition to an assault on Rafah from within the Israeli national security echelon. Unless you are extremely wired in, which I’m not, it’s almost impossible to tell how “real” these things are, who thinks what, who’s saying what. But hold open that possibility, that there are more moving pieces to this than we’re seeing at the surface. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if there were voices who saw the emerging de facto alliance with other Arab states as worth much more than whatever would be accomplished in Rafah. The bigger issue, though one that could go along with that one, is one we’ve already seen bubbling up from within the IDF and other parts of the Israeli national security world. That is the lack of a real strategy, the lack of a clear set of plausible goals for the whole operation.
As I said, you have to be very wired in that world to know what those people are thinking. And it’s quite unlikely they’re all thinking the same thing. But again, just keep in the back of your mind the possibility that Biden may believe there are significant misgivings about an attack on Rafah in Israel and the main driver may be the governing coalition and the need to keep it intact.
Let’s also be clear that the U.S. government has made it crystal clear that for Iron Dome, for the other missile defense systems, for anything happening to the north, for anything with Iran, the U.S. is there to supply all the weaponry Israel needs. This isn’t a cut off of arms for Israel. It’s tied specifically to this operation.
The second point is there’s really no logic to insist on X but say it’s fine if X doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, it’s not insistence — just a suggestion. So does this weaken Israel’s hand in the negotiation over the hostages? Maybe. But that’s in large measure because the Israeli government has failed to address these issues until now.