EDITORS NOTE: This opinion piece is adapted from an earlier version first published by FoxNews.com. The original version is available here.
NEW YORK — The recent spike in anti-Semitic attacks that plagued Jews in and around New York City appears to have ebbed, if not stopped altogether. Let’s hope that these verbal batteries, physical assaults, and deadly onslaughts are over for good and will follow anti-black lynchings out of the headlines and into the history books.
However, if any such atrocity flares up in the next one to five years, the Left will do what it always does: baselessly and ludicrously blame President Donald J. Trump for whatever disgrace befalls American Jewry.
This was the sick, outrageous, and thoroughly predictable way that prominent Leftists politicized the surge in anti-Semitism that coincided with Hanukkah:
• “Anti-Semitism is on the rise in America. And it’s being stoked by Donald Trump, who won’t condemn it,” Representative Eric Swalwell (D – California) fumed via Twitter. He wrote December 10 in The Forward: “Driving people at society’s fringes to believe that Jews are somehow detrimental to the nation helps pave the way to violent acts such as the mass shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh in 2018 and Poway, California in 2019.”
• “Folks still don’t see the connection with his [Trump’s] words and how it [sic] ignites violence,” Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D – Michigan) harangued via Twitter. “He fuels people’s anger and misguided hate. Instead of leading with compassion, he simply gaslights and laughs about it.”
• Governor Andrew Cuomo (D – New York) asked MSNBC rhetorically: “You foment that hate, and then you are shocked when you see these episodes of hate all across the country?”
• “Some of the most hateful speech is emanating from Washington, D.C.,” according to Mayor Bill de Blasio (D – New York City). “What we need our president to do is be a unifier, a calming, positive voice reminding us of what we have in common as Americans. That’s what presidents both Democrat and Republican have done for generations. We’ve missed that.”
These and other Trumpophobe Democrats and their media errand persons repeatedly lie when they claim that the president divides gentiles from the descendants of Moses. Those who routinely defame Trump are smart enough to recognize the falsity of their words. This renders them, liars, at best and enablers of anti-Semites at worst.
Anyone who thinks Trump is gunning for the Jews should read his remarks as he hosted a December 11 White House Hanukkah party. That’s right: the supposedly Jew-hating Trump invited Jews to the executive mansion to toast the eight-night Judaic festival of lights. It included 23 minutes of remarks by the president and several guests.
“Today, we thank God for the Jewish people, whose love and loyalty, brilliance and bravery, resilience and resolve, spirit and strength bless America and the world,” Trump said. “Across our country, Jewish Americans strengthen, sustain, and inspire our nation. As President, I will always celebrate and honor the Jewish people, and I will always stand with our treasured friend and ally, the State of Israel — that, I can tell you.”
Trump stated: “I’m very proud that the Jewish faith is a cherished part of our family. Very proud of it.”
The president’s daughter Ivanka converted to Orthodox Judaism before marrying Jared, himself an orthodox Jew, in October 2009. Donald Trump’s reaction is key: If he were an anti-Semite, he would have disowned Ivanka, chopped her out of his will, and told her go to Hell. Instead, Ivanka and Jared constantly are at the president’s side, advising him, from the Oval Office to overseas.
“As we gather this afternoon, our thoughts turn to the grieving families in New Jersey,” President Trump said. “Yesterday, two wicked murderers opened fire at a kosher supermarket and killed four innocent souls…With one heart, America weeps for the lives lost. With one voice, we vow to crush the monstrous evil of anti-Semitism whenever and wherever it appears. And we’re working very hard on that.”
What did this hard work entail?
“Two years ago, I recognized the true capital of Israel, and we opened the American Embassy in Jerusalem,” Trump explained. “I’ve also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights…For 52 years, they’ve been having meetings on the Golan Heights. Nothing happened until I came along.”
“In just a few moments, I’ll sign an executive order to combat anti-Semitism,” Trump continued. “This action makes clear that Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act — which prohibits the federal funding of universities and other institutions that engage in discrimination — applies to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate.” He added: “My administration will never tolerate the suppression, persecution, or silencing of the Jewish people. We have also taken a firm stand against the so-called Divestment and Sanctions movement, or BDS…And we forcefully condemn this anti-Semitic campaign against the State of Israel and its citizens.”
Alan Dershowitz, Esq., emeritus professor of law at Harvard University and now a member of President Trump’s impeachment-defense legal team, attended this reception and applauded the chief executive’s action.
“For 65 of my 81 years I have spent at universities all over the country and all over the world, there is no more important event in those 65 years to turn universities away from being bastions of hatred and discrimination than this executive order being signed today,” Dershowitz said. “It is a game-changer. It will go down in history as one of the most important events in the 2,000-year battle against anti-Semitism.”
As if these words and deeds did not confirm Trump’s warm regard for Jews and his wholesale rejection of anti-Semites, the President hosted the next day a second, 21-minute Hanukkah celebration.
“This evening, we give thanks to the Jewish community for its irreplaceable contributions to science, art, music, medicine, culture, philanthropy, public policy, and every other aspect of our national life. Incredible job. Incredible people,” Trump said. “We stand in awe of your extraordinary contributions to our county and to humanity.”
“Discrimination against members of the Jewish faith — it has to be confronted at every turn,” Trump said. “And we will confront it at every turn. There is no tolerance for hate.”
Rabbis Zvi Boyarsky and Moshe Margareten then lit the White House menorah.
All of this surely dominated the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news programs.
Wrong!
ABC’s World News Tonight, and the CBS Evening News spent zero minutes and zero seconds on these events. ABC squeezed in a minute and 25 seconds on a married couple in Texas whose 50-year-old Christmas song finally got played on the radio. CBS devoted two minutes and 10 seconds on a veteran, 52, in his freshman year at Yale, and his service dog.
“NBC Nightly News had 12 seconds of Trump deploring anti-Semitism, in remarks delivered at that event, but not identified as a White House Hanukkah party,” said Brent Baker of Media Research Center, which tracked the near-total news blackout of this story. “The TV networks are happy to relay characterizations of Trump as a bigoted anti-Semite, so refuse to let their viewers know about facts that might counter that narrative.”
Especially since all three networks led their December 11 evening-news coverage with the deadly Jersey City attack, it would have been perfectly newsworthy for them to mention President Trump’s reaction to this mayhem, his denunciation of anti-Semitism, and his executive order to combat it — all in the context of his official Hanukkah parties.
But why would they do so? The Big Three completely ignored President Trump’s May 2 Rose Garden ceremony in which he physically embraced Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein of Chabad of Poway, near San Diego. It suffered a fatal shooting attack, in which the rabbi was wounded.
“We will fight with all of our strength and everything that we have in our bodies to defeat anti-Semitism, to end the attacks on the Jewish people, and to conquer all forms of persecution, intolerance, and hate,” President Trump said on that occasion.
Rabbi Goldstein, his hands still bandaged after the gunman shot off several of his fingers, replied: “I’d like to thank our dear, honorable Mr. President for being, as they say in Yiddish, a ‘mensch par excellence.’”
The role of the Trump-hating media in this situation is thoroughly reprehensible. When Jews and the gentiles who love them tremble in fear after anti-Semitic attacks, they deserve to hear Trump’s message of love for the Jews. And yet the media’s largest organs — the Big Three network news shows — blockade these words of comfort from the president of the United States.
Conversely, those who hate the Jews and yearn to harm or kill them, need to hear President Trump tell them how wrong they are and to stand down. Instead, the Big Three network news shows impede those words of condemnation from the president of the United States.
When anti-Semitism rears its ugly head in America, first blame the anti-Semites themselves. They scream the slurs, hurl the punches, and tug on the triggers.
But second, blame the legacy media in general and the much-watched Big Three networks’ evening news programs. They contribute to this monumental ugliness because they hate President Trump more than they hate those who hate Jews. This psychopathology is so deep that these so-called reporters actually censor Trump’s efforts to reassure Jews and repel anti-Semites. They would rather wrap him in lies about fake anti-Semitism than wrap their arms around Jews, who endure genuine anti-Semitism.
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a contributing editor with National Review Online, and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
