An Israeli sociologist recently wondered why many Israeli and American Jews have not been more troubled by the anti-Semitism emerging from some of Donald Trump’s supporters. Evelyn Gordon, dismissing the scholar’s use of “the lazy leftist’s favorite tactic of stigmatizing . . . opponents as racist ultra-nationalists,” proffers some answers of her own:
Throughout the Muslim world, Nazi-style anti-Semitism is both rampant and government-sponsored. State-owned media, state-appointed clerics, and government officials all spew it day after day. . . .
Moreover, whereas anti-Semitic Trump supporters are armed mainly with Twitter and spray paint, Middle Eastern anti-Semites, even assuming Iran never gets nukes, are already armed with hundreds of thousands of state-of-the-art missiles, along with suicide bombers, stabbers, car-rammers, etc. Terrorist quasi-states like Hizballah and Hamas have used their weaponry to target Jews directly, and not just in Israel (remember the AMIA bombing [in Buenos Aires]?), while countries like Iran have so far preferred to do so indirectly, by funneling arms and cash to terrorists. Either way, the combination of high-tech weaponry with Nazi-style anti-Semitism constitutes a clear and present danger to millions of Jewish lives, one far greater than the danger posed by even the most noxious Trump fans.
So if your goal is to protect the maximum number of Jewish lives, your top priority is arguably electing a U.S. president who will provide strong backing for Israeli self-defense and strong opposition to murderous Muslim regimes. It should not be to support an American government that will, say, stop arms shipments to Israel in the middle of a war, help turn Iran into the Mideast’s dominant power, or reward Palestinian incitement and terror by blaming the stalemated peace process on Israel—all things Barack Obama actually did.
Read more on Evelyn Gordon: http://evelyncgordon.com/the-anti-semitism-the-left-ignores/