Courtesy of JTA. Photo credit: Adam Gray/Getty Images
Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump holds a fighting anti-semitism event with Miriam Adelson at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, in Bedminster, New Jersey, Aug. 15, 2024
(JTA) — The Kamala Harris campaign said Donald Trump “consistently denigrates American Jews, elevates Neo-Nazis, and traffics in antisemitic tropes,” escalating the war of words between the two presidential campaigns over Jewish voters.
“Vice President Harris and Gov. Walz have decisively called out antisemitism in any form their entire careers, and our campaign will always be clear: Antisemitism and hate have no place in the Democratic Party or in our country,” spokesman Charles Lutvak said in an email in response to a question about the war of words between leading Jewish Democratic and Republican groups.
“There is one candidate in this race who consistently denigrates American Jews, elevates Neo-Nazis, and traffics in antisemitic tropes, and it is Donald Trump,” he said. “And our campaign is uniting voters who reject his rhetoric of hate and will defeat him at the ballot box in November.”
The accusation, in a statement late Wednesday to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, comes after days of increasingly heated exchanges between the parties’ Jewish affiliates, the Jewish Democratic Council of America and the Republican Jewish Coalition. It also comes weeks after Trump said that Harris “doesn’t like Jewish people,” and after he has repeatedly said that Jewish Democrats need to “have their head examined.”
The statements come in a heated and tumultuous year for American Jews in which each party has argued that the other welcomes antisemites into its ranks.
Democrats have emphasized the flirtations Trump and Republicans who are close to him have had with white supremacists, antisemites and Holocaust deniers, exemplified by Trump’s 2022 dinner with Nick Fuentes and the artist Ye (known as Kanye West). They have also stressed his previous hesitance in condemning his far-right supporters publicly, such as his comment that there were “very fine people on both sides” at the 2017 far-right Charlottesville rally. They also point to Trump repeatedly denigrating the large majority of Jews who vote for Democrats, whom he has accused in the past of being “disloyal” and “a fool.”
Republicans have pointed out the growth of anti-Israel activism among Democrats, including an increasing number who are calling for an arms embargo on Israel. They have noted the burgeoning anti-Israel rhetoric and actions on university campuses since Hamas started the war in Gaza on Oct. 7. Trump last week launched an initiative against antisemitism, and accused Harris of cultivating the support of antisemites among the anti-Israel protesters, accusing her of fostering an atmosphere that was akin to the lead-up to the Holocaust.
Major-party nominees all but directly accusing each other of antisemitism is a relatively recent development in the increasingly bitter clashes between presidential candidates. President Joe Biden in his 2020 campaign accused Trump of enabling antisemitism on the right, and that year the JDCA produced an ad that compared Trump’s ascent to the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany.
Trump has expressed bafflement at why Jews would vote for Democrats, whom he brands anti-Israel, after he was friendly to Israel as president. He has accused Biden and Harris of weakness in tamping down antisemitism on the left. Trump and his allies frequently note that during his presidency Trump embraced policies in line with Israel’s right-wing government, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, cutting off funding to the Palestinians and quitting the Iran nuclear deal.
The war of words between the parties’ Jewish affiliates this week ramped up on Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention when Halie Soifer, the JDCA CEO, accused the RJC of “supporting an antisemite,” in reference to Trump. Speaking to The Forward at the convention in Chicago, she listed a litany of what she depicted as Trump’s offenses, noting the “heads examined” comments and accusing Trump of equivocating in condemning antisemitism.
“Let’s just call it like it is, he’s an antisemite,” she said. “The reality is, they’re supporting an antisemite,” she said of Jewish Republicans.
The RJC lashed back, saying in an online post that the “Democrats appease pro-Hamas antisemites at the expense of Israel and the Jewish community’s safety. A major reason why they are hemorrhaging Jewish support.”
Soifer, at an official convention event on antisemitism on Wednesday, doubled down.
“The vast majority of American Jews don’t support [Trump], and what has that led to?” she said. “It has led to a clear degree of animus that he feels toward American Jews, which is antisemitic, and he says it nearly every day, so I’m calling it like it is: He’s an antisemite.”
Speaking afterwards to JTA, Soifer said she was moved to heighten her rhetoric because of how often Trump has made comments denigrating Jewish Democrats.
“The frequency demonstrates the degree of animus that he clearly has toward millions of us, because we will never support him,” she said. “And how scary is it to consider the prospect that if he’s elected, he would go to the White House with this degree of animus.”
Asked for a response, the RJC CEO Matt Brooks texted in response, in quotation marks, “Any Jew that votes Democrat should have their head examined.”
Trump has escalated his attacks on Jewish Democrats on the campaign trail in recent weeks. He attacked Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who delivered a speech Wednesday night accusing Trump of undermining democracy, on Truth Social, the social media website Trump owns. Trump had previously suggested that Harris did not pick Shapiro as her running mate because he is Jewish.
He called Shapiro “the highly overrated Jewish Governor” of Pennsylvania, although Shapiro did not touch on his Jewish identity or Israel in his speech. “Shapiro, for political reasons, refused to acknowledge that I am the best friend Israel, and the Jewish people, ever had.” He added, “Shapiro has done nothing for Israel, and never will.”
One new tactic Trump has employed is to repeatedly call New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the Senate majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in U.S. history, a “Palestinian” because of his backing for the Biden administration.
On Tuesday night, from the convention floor, Schumer called Trump “a guy who peddles antisemitic stereotypes.”
