At a campaign rally for Donald Trump last weekend, a group of attendees started shouting “genocide Joe,” an epithet that radical leftists have been hurling at President Biden because of his support for Israel. The former president, upon hearing the shouts, said, “They’re not wrong.” It is, of course, impossible to know if Trump understood the implications. But this is not the only statement he has made recently that appears at odds with his pro-Israel record while in office.
Seth Mandel, remarking on comments Trump made previously, takes a closer look:
Trump . . . has an obnoxious habit of deeming Democratic-voting Jews as heretics, and he repeated it [last week] when telling reporters that Jews who vote for Biden “should have their head examined.” This treads dangerously close to the “good Jews/bad Jews” dichotomy mostly favored by people who do not like Jews very much. Trump isn’t such a person, but many of his fans are. If this is an appeal to Jewish voters, it is boneheaded. If it is really a winking message to his supporters on the new right, it is morally repugnant.
It seems, Mandel adds, that “every time Trump opens his mouth these days he has harsh words for Israel’s war effort,” which is one thing he seems to share with his successor. Yet the presumptive Republican nominee’s pronouncements seem to stem not from a political strategy but from a tendency to see everything in personal terms—in favors done or loyalty owed.
Such are the dangers of thinking purely transactionally regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And this mode of thinking—regardless of which “side” you’re coming from—introduces a measure of volatility that is uniquely unsuited to the challenges of extricating the Middle East from the bloody chaos of Hamas and its Iranian patron.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/trump-still-doesnt-get-it/