US Jews split over Trump’s anti-semitism approach

Amid a surge in anti-Semitic incidents across the United States, Jewish communities remain united in their concern – but sharply divided over former President Donald Trump’s approach to confronting the threat, according to The Arab Weekly plus agencies on the 9th of June.

The London MENA website claims although 89 percent of the country’s 7.2 million Jews express alarm over anti-Semitism, 64 percent disapprove of Trump’s strategy to combat it, as revealed by a recent Jewish Voters Resource Center poll.

This schism comes as Jewish communities grapple with both physical threats and ideological battles. In recent weeks, two Israeli embassy workers were murdered in Washington, Molotov cocktails were thrown at an event in Colorado, and university campuses have seen ongoing unrest, particularly at Columbia and Harvard.

On October 2024, the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation – best known for its “Project 2025” proposal to overhaul the federal government – introduced a new initiative: “Project Esther.” The blueprint aims to combat anti-Semitism by targeting what it claims is a network of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and pro-Palestinian organisations, allegedly linked to Hamas and operating within US academic institutions.

“Project Esther” outlines a controversial set of actions, including the dismissal of professors, revocation of visas for certain foreign students, expulsion of others, and the withdrawal of public funding from universities deemed insufficiently supportive of Israel.

Robert Greenway, a co-author of the plan, told The New York Times, “It was no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”

Progressive Jewish groups have fiercely rejected the initiative. Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which has led protests against the war in Gaza and is named in the plan as part of the alleged Hamas support network, condemned the accusations and broader aims of the document.

“Project Esther sets out a blueprint for the Trump administration to sharpen the legal regimes that will best advance (his) ‘Make America Great Again’ goals,” said JVP Executive Director Stefanie Fox. Dismissing the allegations as “baseless, paranoid, laughable,” Fox emphasised that her group – like many others – opposes both anti-Semitism and political repression.

Critics argue that Trump’s approach exploits Jewish safety concerns to justify broader crackdowns on dissent. Kevin Rachlin of the Nexus Project, a group formed in opposition to Project Esther, warned that the plan “doesn’t keep Jews safe,” and instead marginalises them by alienating Jewish communities from other minority groups and ignoring threats from the political right.

“There is anti-Semitism on those campuses … But to give the broad claim that the thrust to fight anti-Semitism is to go after higher education is just absolutely ridiculous,” Rachlin said. “We as Jews are safer when we’re in coalition with other groups and other minorities,” he added, advocating for educational solutions rather than punitive actions.

According to The Arab Weekly, the political divide reflects deeper generational and ideological shifts within American Jewry. Author and academic Eric Alterman noted that while traditional Jewish institutions have aligned themselves with Trump’s Republican Party and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, the majority of American Jews – especially younger ones – are increasingly critical.

“What’s happened in Gaza has been very hard for most American Jews, particularly young American Jews, to stomach,” said Alterman. “Young American Jews are now roughly evenly divided between supporting Israel and supporting the Palestinians.” While most American Jews are not anti-Zionist, he added, they oppose Israel’s conduct in Gaza and its West Bank policies. “They’re kind of caught in the middle.”

In response to Trump’s tactics, a coalition of ten major Jewish organisations recently issued an open letter rejecting what they called a “false choice” between Jewish safety and democratic freedoms. The letter warned against the “weaponisation” of anti-Semitism to justify restrictions on academic and political expression.

“There should be no doubt that anti-Semitism is rising,” the letter reads, “but access to higher education, and strong democratic norms … have allowed American Jewry to thrive for hundreds of years.”

Among the signatories was Rabbi David Saperstein, former US ambassador for international religious freedom, who acknowledged Trump’s attention to anti-Semitic violence but rejected the administration’s punitive focus on universities, media, and judicial institutions.

“Ironically, they are targeting democratic institutions that have given the Jewry in America more rights, more freedom, more opportunities than we have ever known in our 2,600 years of diasporic history,” Saperstein said.

As reported by The Arab Weekly, the debate continues to reflect the broader struggle over how best to combat anti-Semitism in a polarised political environment – without compromising the democratic values on which American Jewish life has long relied.

The Arab Weekly/ Agencies/ Maghrebi.org