{"id":83201,"date":"2015-12-24T15:38:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T23:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83201"},"modified":"2015-12-24T15:38:21","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T23:38:21","slug":"jews-against-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=83201","title":{"rendered":"Jews Against Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob Eshman writes for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles<\/a>:<\/p>\n

And the fact that Trump could provoke such a uniform reaction from such a fractious people is a credit to the dumbness and darkness of his ideas.
\nHis increasingly xenophobic and racist rhetoric reached a low point this week when he declared that under a Trump administration, America would close its borders to Muslims.
\n\u201cWe need a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States while we figure out what the hell is going on,\u201d Trump said to cheers of approval from his supporters.
\nIf Trump thought Jews, so often the targets of Islamic terrorism, would join the cheers, he really doesn\u2019t get Jews. The reaction from Jewish organizations and leaders was immediate and uniformly negative.
\nTrump\u2019s plan was \u201cunacceptable and antithetical to American values,\u201d Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt said in a written statement.
\n\u201cThe U.S. was founded as a place of refuge for those fleeing religious persecution, and religious pluralism is core to our national identity,\u201d Greenblatt continued. \u201cA plan that singles out Muslims and denies them entry to the U.S. based on their religion is deeply offensive and runs contrary to our nation\u2019s deepest values.\u201d
\nGreenblatt\u2019s words echoed similar statements from across the Jewish political, religious and ideological spectrum. Last month, even the Orthodox Union joined in opposing Trump\u2019s call to keep Syrian refugees out of America.
\nTrump must be scratching his \u2013 insert your own hair joke here. Jews are a particular target of Islamic terror. The coward who shot up the disabilities center in San Bernardino was \u201cobsessed\u201d with Israel, his father told reporters.
\nAccording to the FBI\u2019s most recent statistics, Jews still are the prime target for hate crimes in America\u201459 percent are directed at Jews. Second place, but rising faster, are Muslims.
\nBut Jews understand that the democratic safeguards built into America\u2019s Constitution, including the separation of church and state, form our strongest safeguard against hate and discrimination. When those crumble, we all fall down.
\nBeyond the danger posed by the threat to civil liberties and religious freedom, there is the practical issue. In Trump\u2019s mind, the best way to stop Islamic terror is to target all Muslims. But that just encourages Muslim radicalism, creates the \u201choly war\u201d between Muslims and non-Muslims that the extremists pray for, and pushes moderate believers to the extremes.
\nLiberal claptrap? Ask the French Jews and the Israelis.
\nWhen Trump\u2019s recent foulness exploded across the Web, I was having coffee with an Israeli official. Israelis, he told me, are simply bemused by Trump\u2019s antics. If Muslims in and of themselves are the problem, how to account for the success of Israel, a democratic Jewish state with a 20-percent mostly Muslim Arab minority ?
\nIsrael faces threats from Islamic extremism that, to use a Trumpism, would make your head spin, but Israeli leaders from David Ben Gurion to Benjamin Netanyahu have known that the best way to increase radicalization is to persecute the majority of law-abiding Muslim citizens, or to insult the Muslim religion itself.
\nFrench Jews have seen their own and their fellow countrymen slaughtered on the streets of Paris and Toulouse at the hands of Muslim terrorists \u2013 but they know the moral and practical dangers of a discriminatory France are a far greater threat.
\nThis week, the Jews of France issued a stinging rebuke to their homegrown anti-democratic forces, and, by extension, to Trump.
\nOn the eve of the upcoming regional elections in France, the Alsace chapter of CRIF, the umbrella Jewish organization, came out strongly against the Muslim-baiting National Front, led by Marine Le Pen.
\n“The Alsace chapter, strongly attached to the values of the Republic,\u201d the statement read, \u201ccalls upon all voters to participate at the upcoming elections \u2013 since so much is at stake. We are calling to reject the extremist parties that advocate hatred and try to prosper at the expense of the divide within the society created by fear.\u201d
\nCRIF president Roger Cukierman called on the Jewish community to vote “in order to block the National Front, a party of xenophobia and populism.”
\nIt was heartening this week to see Republican presidential candidates and Party leaders all denounce Trump\u2019s ideas. And it was especially thrilling to hear the silence and jeers that met Trump at the recent meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rob Eshman writes for the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles: And the fact that Trump could provoke such a uniform reaction from such a fractious people is a credit to the dumbness and darkness of his ideas. His increasingly xenophobic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=83201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83202,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83201\/revisions\/83202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=83201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=83201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=83201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}