Rantz: Can we stop pretending Trump dislikes Jews?
Apr 11, 2017, 11:45 AM | Updated: 12:59 pm
Jewish voters have indicated their willingness to break away from Democrats in presidential elections. Consequently, some are doing their best to paint the current sitting Republican President as an anti-Semite. It’s nothing more than a political ploy.
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This week in the Huffington Post, Alana Horowitz Satlin did her level best to imply that President Donald Trump has a serious problem with Jews, despite his daughter and her husband being Jewish.
In a disturbingly disingenuous blog post, Satlin explains that Trump was a no-show for the White House Passover Seder dinner, “bucking the tradition that his predecessor Barack Obama started.”
This was an Obama tradition, not a Presidential tradition. One person doing something means one person did something. To proclaim this a tradition is as ridiculous as it is dishonest.
Satlin continues: “His absence was surprising to people who thought he would attend because of his fraught history with Jewish people.” That’s cute but inaccurate. He has no “fraught history” with Jews, but, even if he did, Satlin essentially argues that he should have symbolically attended the dinner and used Jews as props to placate those angry with him.
I’m glad he chose not to turn us into props for political gain.
As a Jew, I really don’t care if Trump goes to a Passover Seder and I can’t imagine most Jews care. I care about his positions on Israel and other matters pertinent to Jews. It’s too early in his presidency to suggest he’s an unequivocal supporter of Israel. He says he is and I believe him for now. But let’s actually judge his policies, not his attendance at a dinner. Though we should feel free to speak up and remind dopey Sean Spicer about history.
I do know this: I’d rather Trump skip a Seder than attend one while creating a pathway for Iran to obtain nuclear weapons and undercutting Israel along the way. That was an Obama tradition, I suppose and I’m hoping he breaks with it.