NY Jewish Week: On Trump’s Nativist Turn, ‘This Feels Different’
By Shira Hanau
Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, criticized Brooks for condemning the chant while failing to name the president. “What we saw from the Republican Jewish Coalition was a condemnation of those chanting, but they stopped short of condemning the inciter-in-chief,” Soifer told The Jewish Week. “They didn’t condemn the president himself, despite the fact that those chanting were repeating the president’s own words and remarks and racist sentiments.”
Some of the president’s supporters have argued that his comments about the congresswomen were not racist, but instead focused on the question of loyalty to America. Trump’s opponents said that, apart from being racist, he was confusing dissent with disloyalty.
While the Jewish Democratic Council of America issued a strong response — calling the president a racist — they were not the only Jewish organization to condemn the president’s rhetoric last week. Other organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, issued statements of their own…
Soifer accused the president of using Israel as a justification for his rhetoric. “We don’t want to be used as an excuse for his racism, we don’t want Israel to be used as a political pawn or a political football.”