Two weeks before the American elections, decisive for the future of the country and the world, the American Jewish community is gripped by fears never felt in their recent history.
A context of unbridled anti-Semitism
Since October 7, 2003 and the Hamas terrorist attack, anti-Semitic acts have experienced a spectacular increase that has profoundly affected the personal security of American Jews.
This explosion of anti-Semitic acts is all the more notable as it is part of a context of a continuous increase in these acts over the past ten years, with American Jews caught between the Trumpist far-right, conspiracy theories, and wokeism.
If the increase in anti-Semitic acts between 2015 and 2020 is due to the liberation of anti-Semitic speech made possible by Trump, it was then fueled by the COVID conspiracy in 2020 and 2021, before exploding since October 7, 2023 and the intersectional surge, which sees in every Zionist (which the vast majority of American Jews are) a supporter of colonialism and racist oppression.
It is in this context that the 2024 American election is taking place with an unprecedented political exploitation of anti-Semitism and Israel.
A deadly instrumentalization
The anti-Semitism observed on part of American campuses allowed Republicans to settle their scores with their old enemies, such as the major progressive educational institutions. In this ideological fight, Jews and Israel have become pawns in the battle that the GOP is waging against the left, the woke or gay rights.
When anti-Semitism is used for partisan purposes, it is hardly surprising to see it brandished unduly. Thus, wearing a pin with the Palestinian colors becomes support for Hamas, and we have seen a poster campaign removed from the New York subway because one of the characters exhibited there wore a keffiyeh.
This weaponization of anti-Semitism is an absolute catastrophe for American Jews, because it then becomes easier to trivialize or deny, or even to be seen as an alibi to silence any debate on Israel and not as a scourge to be fought.
Another unfortunate consequence of this exploitation: it allows the most extreme ethnoreligious right to “de-Americanize” American Jews by referring them to their Jewishness and even more to their allegiance to Israel, which Trump’s multiple sallies against the disloyalty of American Jews only reinforce. This dangerous accusation is all the more erroneous since Israel, central to the definition of Jewishness for American Jews, is secondary (and historically) in their electoral choice criteria, particularly in 2024.
A democracy in peril
American Jews are much more concerned about the stability and resilience of American democracy than they are about Israel when making their choice.
For 44% of them, according to a JDCA poll, it is the dominant criterion, followed by the right to abortion, with the economy coming in a distant third place.
While the issue is also important for Democrats in general (less so for Republicans) according to Gallup, it is of singular importance compared to economic issues for Jews. It is ironic and disturbing for an anti-Semite to see that financial and economic issues weigh much less for Jews than for Americans as a whole…
In fact, the importance of democracy for American Jews reveals the very particular nature of Trump’s campaign, and its systematic questioning of the fundamental values of American democracy.
Trump’s openly fascist rhetoric
The threat of a new Trump presidency for American Jews attached to the rule of law and democratic norms is not an irrational or disconnected fear from reality.
It goes beyond the very real fears concerning the maintenance of the right to abortion or the achievements of Obamacare.
For the first time in American political history, the candidate of one of the two major parties has openly fascist rhetoric. In an article published in The Atlantic, authoritarian scholar Anne Applebaum clinically demonstrates that Trump’s rhetoric does not borrow from his GOP predecessors like Reagan, Eisenhower, or Nixon, but from Hitler or Mussolini.
The words “vermin”, “enemy within” and threats to use the military to deal with them are not the rhetoric of a democratic leader but of an autocratic and fascist leader, and the Republicans’ convolutions to whitewash these remarks do not change this reality. As much as the “reassurance chiefs” show that these fears are irrational, in light of Trump’s first presidency, the facts are stark.
First, because this Trump presidency, where “institutions have shown their resilience,” ended with the storming of the Capitol and the refusal of a defeated president to leave power. Then, because the GOP is now totally “Trumpified,” in ideas but also in its very leadership, and also because a new Trump presidency would be that of devoted people, and not of the “adults” who made up Trump’s cabinet in 2017. Finally, because Trump is incomparably more extremist today than he was 8 years ago, with an obsession with revenge that makes his return to power a terrifying prospect. Of course, Jews are not the only ones to feel this terror, but this community, or at least its vast majority, knows history well enough to detect the dangers of such rhetoric and such a regime for themselves.
Jews and Israel: Timeless Scapegoats
During the campaign, Trump not only accused Jews once again of disloyalty to him and Israel, he questioned their mental health if they voted Democrat, and, for good measure, he accused them in advance of being partly responsible for his eventual defeat in the presidential election.
Given the strength of the loyalty of some of his supporters, this veiled threat is not to be taken lightly, and there are fears for the safety of Jews in the event of a Trump defeat and the unrest that is sure to arise.
In the event of a Trump victory, Jews would be exposed in an even more direct way, and not only in terms of security. Like all Americans attached to the rule of law, they would have to live in a country moving towards autocracy, which has always endangered the security of Jews in their history, which explains why the defense of democracy is their first criterion of choice in 2024.
And this picture would not be complete if we did not mention the consequences of a Trump victory on the natural political family of the majority of American Jews, the Democratic Party.
It is possible that a Harris defeat could be attributed, rightly or wrongly, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Biden-Harris policy on this issue. If the votes of young people or Arab-Americans appear to be in sharp decline compared to their potential, it is the pro-Israeli tropism of the Democratic Party that could be called into question, with a rise in power of the left wing of the party.
This could then mark a significant shift and complicate the historical connection of a portion of American Jews with their political family, and call into question the definition of their Jewishness, which is based on a very strong connection to Israel while espousing progressive causes. Will this “dual allegiance” still be possible tomorrow in a Democratic Party turning away from Israel?
The omnipresence of issues related to American Jews in the election campaign will have put them in a very uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation. Having become a major political issue, they could thus re-assume a role of scapegoat that they know only too well in their history.
Sebastien Levi
