Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:43 pm
Former President Donald Trump provided an interview to Axios’ reporter Barak Ravid, who has a book coming out on Trump’s Israeli relations and, in the interview, Trump said that he believes most Jewish-Americans don’t love Israel. Ravid told The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland about the interview in a broadcast set out Friday morning and even provides tapes of the interview with Trump.
As we have seen time and again, Trump loves to take groups of people, especially marginalized groups, and lump them together as having one singular thought process. With Jewish Americans, he expects Jews to “support Israel,” which translated from Trump-speak means everything else Trump ever means. Trump is demanding American Jews support Trump for all Trump has “done for Israel.”
Trump doesn’t understand that there are two layers of “support for Israel.” There is the layer regarding supporting Israel’s right to exist and defend itself, that, of course, we Gentiles firmly believe. But there is a deeper layer upon which there can be disagreement and that is Israeli governmental policy choices. With respect to government and policy, Israel is like every other nation on earth. Israel is a close ally but the government can be criticized or supported on any one given issue.
This obvious fact escapes Trump’s mind.
There’s people in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel. I’ll tell you the evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews in this country.
“Love” in this context means; “Support everything the country of Israel does, no matter what and especially do not love Israel because they don’t love me. I was so good to Israel., that if you don’t love me, it means you hate and reject Israel.”
“It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite.
So, it used to be an extremely unhealthy position from a United States foreign policy point of view, but now it is much more normalized in that the United States as a nation works with its ally Israel as a nation but the United States operates from its own position first? Yes, we think that’s what he means, that and he’s complaining that there are some Jewish Americans that do not support him.
And I think Obama and Biden did that. And yet in the election, they still get a lot of votes from Jewish people, which tells you that the Jewish people, and I’ve said this for a long time, the Jewish people in the United States, either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.”
Because they voted for Obama and Biden.
“I mean you look at the New York Times, the New York Times hates Israel. Hates them. And they’re Jewish people that run the New York Times, I mean the Sulzberger family.”
Obviously, he is not fooling a single reader here. This is all about Trump. Substitute Trump every time he says Israel and one has a much closer approximation of what passes for thought going through Trump’s mind.
New quotes from Trump to @BarakRavid: Most US Jews don't love Israel. Exclusive for Unholy podcast
@Freedland pic.twitter.com/Hv4joYkbCN— Yonit Levi (@LeviYonit) December 17, 2021
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