On Aug. 20, Donald Trump once again trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes by suggesting that Jewish Americans who voted for Democratic candidates (the vast majority of Jewish voters in the United States) were either ignorant or disloyal.
At the time of his original statement, Trump didn’t specify what or whom he was accusing these Jewish voters of being disloyal to. Some speculated he meant disloyalty to the United States or disloyalty to Trump, himself, but he subsequently clarified that he meant disloyalty to Israel.
This, of course, didn’t make his comments any less abhorrent, because it’s bigoted to assume that Jewish Americans of any political stripe owe (or should owe) their allegiance to a foreign country. Portraying this hypothetical allegiance as a desired or respected trait doesn’t soften said bigotry.
What did two local Democratic representatives, Kathleen Rice and Tom Suozzi, have to say about this matter? Surely they realized the seriousness of Trump’s words and condemned them unconditionally.
Actually, as of Aug. 25, Rep. Rice has had nothing to say. On Aug. 21, she took the time to criticize Trump on social media for his closeness to North Korea’s brutal dictator and his recent childish feud with the prime minister of Denmark, but his disloyalty comments don’t appear to have made the cut.
Rep. Suozzi posted a response to Facebook on Aug. 22, where he shared the story of an anonymous Jewish friend who was shaken by Trump’s comments. Suozzi went out of his way to mention that he, his friend and his Jewish colleagues in Congress were all “pro-Israel.”
Rather than merely condemning Trump’s words and pointing out why they were problematic, Suozzi appeared to be playing into them, assuring his constituents that Trump’s accusations of insufficient loyalty were not true. He probably would have been better off saying nothing, like Rice.
A proper response would have been simply this: One’s political affiliation does not make a person more or less Jewish, there is no defined relationship any Jewish individual must have with Israel or its government, and it’s never OK to promote a bigoted dual-loyalty trope, whether said trope is portrayed in a negative or positive light.
If Rice and Suozzi can’t manage such a response, perhaps they’re in the wrong line of work.
Matthew Zeidman
New Hyde Park
