(December 11, 2019 / JNS) Demographers have spent a great bargain of time in recent decades trying to larn more about the changing demographics of American Jewry. Just whatsoever else he has accomplished, President Donald Trump has, admitting unwittingly, gone above and beyond those efforts. In signing an executive lodge extending protections to Jewish students against anti-Semitic detest on higher campuses due to savage incitement and discriminatory actions promoted by the BDS movement, Trump has, in effect, provided us with a sanity test for Jews.

It consists of the following formulation: If you are then deranged with hatred of Trump and rabid partisanship that you are even prepared to denounce administration efforts to stop anti-Semitism, then you should immediately seek aid.

Unfortunately, some Jews are flunking that test, though to be fair, their deluded reaction to the executive order has been influenced past biased media reports and statements coming from left-wing groups that are the production non so much of madness as of partisanship and anti-Zionist sympathies.

The best example of this was an article in The New York Times that asserted that Trump wanted to redefine Jewish identity. In reporting about his executive club apropos the enforcement of Title Six of the Civil Rights Human activity of 1964, the paper said that Trump is "effectively interpreting Judaism as a race or nationality." The event of the slanted report was that the president's motive was to distract the country from his own declared anti-Semitism and to silence criticism of the State of Israel. That was echoed by another report from CNN. Moreover, the Times and manufactures published elsewhere intimated that it was "inherently anti-Semitic" for Trump to treat Jews every bit a split up nationality since it somehow fit in with the views of white nationalists to whom he has supposedly been dog-whistling.

Along the same lines, still other commentaries claimed that the action was "bad for the Jews" because information technology "separated usa from other religious groups and saying that we are something other than American." If that wasn't enough, it was also asserted that even deportment beneficial for Jews would be terrible if they came from Trump. Others carped that the president was suppressing the free voice communication of principled critics of Israeli policy.

These arguments are all rooted in false premises about the executive order, the reality of contemporary anti-Semitism and the nature of Jewish identity.

The notion that Trump was trying to redefine Judaism is only nonsense. As fifty-fifty the left-wing mag Slate pointed out, Trump's order was in line with past rulings by the George W. Bush Department of Pedagogy and Barack Obama Justice Department (in an stance written by and so Assistant Attorney General and electric current Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez) about extending Title VI protections. The original linguistic communication of the act did not extend protection against discrimination to members of religious groups when based on shared ancestry or organized religion. That ways that when groups of people are discriminated against on the "perception of shared race, ethnicity or national origin"—as is the case with Jews as well every bit Muslims and Sikhs—the constabulary offered them no help. Both the Bush and Obama administrations agreed that was wrong.

Trump'southward effort orders that the government utilize the definition of anti-Semitism promoted past the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which is too the one recognized by the U.S. State Department and many other countries. That definition correctly states that "denying the Jewish people their right to cocky-decision, e.g., by challenge that the existence of a Country of State of israel is a racist effort, applying double standards past requiring of it a beliefs not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation, using the symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism … to characterize Israel or Israelis" and "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" and "holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of israel" are anti-Semitic.

The BDS movement routinely violates every ane of those points. That ways that while it is non anti-Semitic to criticize Israel's policies, it is an human activity of hate to back up Israel's elimination or to engage in rhetoric that is drenched in hatred for Jews. Universities that don't protect their students against that are now going to hear most it from the federal government.

Moreover, this endeavor has long had bipartisan support, as both Democrats similar old Senate Bulk Leader Harry Reid and Republicans, sought to remedy the loophole in the law that got anti-Semites on campus off the claw. Legislative fixes failed due to congressional gridlock.

There is nothing new in Trump's society. But the difference is that although the Obama administration was on record agreeing in principle to extending Title VI protections to Jews, it chose not to act, leaving Jewish students vulnerable. Trump's Department of Pedagogy has reversed that policy, calling for investigations into anti-Semitic activity at Rutgers University, and  the University of Due north Carolina and Duke Academy to revise curricula that were anti-Semitic. Trump's mensurate merely makes that shift official.

Even those partisans whose bias against Trump has undermined their organization'due south missions, similar Anti-Defamation League CEO and national director Jonathan Greenblatt, recognize this and take endorsed the executive gild.

Left-wing groups like J Street and the anti-Zionist IfNotNow oppose it. The latter is patently worried that the thuggish behavior of their anti-Semitic allies in the ranks of Students for Justice in Palestine and on college faculties will now really be held accountable for their actions.

It'southward not surprising that anti-Zionists don't wish to acknowledge that although Jews are non a race or a specific nation nether American police, they are more than but a religion. Jewish peoplehood is non an invention of white supremacists; it is integral to Jewish identity. But if the goal is to deny Jews rights that are given to any other grouping—as is the case with anti-Semites—then efforts like those of Trump to defend Jews existence attacked, marginalized, silence and shunned on campus must be denounced.

The genu-jerk reaction of then many left-wingers to this move says more almost them than the president. Trump's order, as well every bit his assistants's exemplary policies about anti-Semitism and back up for Israel, doesn't obligate anyone to vote for him. Just if you are and so crazed by hatred that yous reject or denounce actions that conspicuously help young Jews, then you are the one with the trouble, not him.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

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  • topics:
  • Trump Administration
  • Championship Six
  • Campus Anti-Semitism