Antisemitism befouls Republican campaigns

An ad is playing on the television, its tone celebratory.

"Doug Emhoff," a narrator says, "would be the first Jewish presidential spouse ever".

As the narrator cheerfully notes Mr Emhoff’s religion, an image of the Israeli flag appears onscreen.

“Kamala Harris is a strong leader for these difficult times — and joining Kamala will be her husband and top adviser, Doug Emhoff,” the narrator says, as images cycle across the screen of Mr Emhoff wearing a yarmulke; visiting Oskar Schindler’s factory; and lighting Hanukkah candles with Ms Harris. “Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff: making history, standing up for what’s right, supporting Israel.”

Reading the above description, borrowed from The New York Times, one might conclude that the ad is running in Brooklyn, fashioned to bring Jewish voters into the Harris/Walz camp. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the ad, sponsored by a Republican allied political action committee, is running in areas around Detroit, Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in the US. The goal: to suppress the Arab and Muslim vote for Harris in a key swing state.

Thus, what on first blush appears to celebrate Emhoff’s Jewish heritage is a dog whistle to antisemites, including the trope of Jews holding dual loyalty.

In 2024, antisemitism is very much alive in Republican campaigns across the US, though not as prominently as the racism targeting Haitian immigrants or the misogyny aimed at “childless cat ladies” like Taylor Swift.

Not all Republican ads this year are as cynically encoded as the one running in Michigan. Some are more direct and old school in their antisemitism.

Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY) sent out a mailer charging that his Democratic opponent, Laura Gillen, is “bought and paid for by the radical left”. The image on the mailer is of a giddy Gillen with the shadowy face of George Soros showering her with dollars.

Although the ad charges that “Gillen’s campaign is bankrolled by the Soros family”, Jacob Kornbluh, reporting in The Forward, points out that, contrary to the implication of the mailer, George Soros has not contributed to Gillen’s campaign. Soros’ son donated US$6,600 out of the US$3.5 million Gillen has raised, magnitudes short of what might constitute “bankrolling”.

In North Carolina, Mark Robinson, the African American Republican candidate for Governor, has referred to himself as a “Black Nazi”. During the Obama Administration, Robinson stated that he’d “take Hitler over any of that shit that's in Washington now”. His Democratic opponent is Jewish.

Presidential candidate Donald Trump is himself never quite free of the stench of antisemitism. Recently, his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club hosted an event featuring Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, described by the Department of Justice as a committed Nazi sympathiser who maintains that “Hitler should have finished the job”.

Trump, who has long insisted that he is the only proper choice for Jewish voters, upped the ante last week stating that “if I don’t win this election, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with it”.

As reported in Jewish Insider, a group of House Democrats has denounced Trump’s statement as “grotesque”, labelling him “a liar and bigot who views Jewish Americans as political pawns in his single-minded quest to stay out of jail by winning the election”.

Let us be clear: Trump has long held that, if he loses the election, it could only be the result of malfeasance with violence a likely remedy. With this latest comment, he has painted a bullseye on the back of the Jewish people.

Trump is getting cover for such assertions from his new-found bestie, Laura Loomer. As reported in The Forward, for Loomer, Jews who vote Democratic suffer from “either a genetic malfunction or a mental illness”. It was unconvincing when she added “I’m not trying to sound derogatory when I say this. I’m Jewish myself”.

Loomer has also compared “modern Democrat Jews” to “kapo Jews,” which she defined as “Jews during the times of the Holocaust who assisted the Nazis because they thought that they were gonna be the last to go”.

She added: “You might as well just go put yourself in a gas chamber yourself if this is how you’re gonna behave.” 

The Republicans are a party that claims to hold to a “Judeo-Christian” tradition. But they overlook that among the earliest precepts of that tradition, expressed long before the Ten Commandments, is that of hospitality toward strangers.

Jews who embrace this value must be horrified by the hatred Donald Trump and JD Vance are spewing at the Haitian immigrants legally living and working in Springfield, Ohio. As Rabbi Avi Shafran, writing in The Forward, put it “xenophobia is a phenomenon that should resonate with Jews — who have long been among its victims — and strongly evoke our dismay and disgust”.

Considering the above, one must wonder how it is possible, as a friend said to me last week, that “some people think Trump is better for the Jews”.

At a moment when rising antisemitism is a grave concern for diaspora Jews, Trump’s hateful and bigoted instincts, along with those of his party, are hardly “better for the Jews”.

But, if what’s good for the Jews is understood as what is good for Bibi Netanyahu and his far-right cronies, then Trump is indeed the candidate of choice, one who will look away from the crimes and atrocities committed in the name of Israel.

Apparently, according to a recent survey, 25% of Jewish voters fall into the latter camp. The same survey found that 68% of Jewish voters support Harris.

It is ironic, given the antisemitism focussed on him, that Doug Emhoff, serving as First Gentleman of the United States, could be a major factor in countering the growth of antisemitism.

In his speech at last month’s Democratic National Convention, Emhoff evoked images of plastic sofa protectors and station wagons with wood siding. He described how he enjoyed his mother-in-law’s chile rellenos on Christmas and the “mean brisket” Kamala prepared for Passover. Here was a regular guy, dad and husband in a blended family, as American as apple kugel.

As reported by The New York Times, at an August event commemorating a deadly attack on a Paris deli in 1982, Emhoff said “part of fighting hate is living openly and proudly as a Jew and celebrating our faith and our culture. I love being Jewish, and I love the joy that comes with being Jewish”.

Can I get a pickle with that?

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