Islam Times - What Does Trump Seek Behind Order Countering Anti-Semitism?

Islam Times - The US is one of the main countries where the Jews are concentrated. According to the figures, an estimated population of 7.5 million Jews is living in the US. Having in mind that there is no precise statistics, their population’s number varies from 7.1 million to 7.5.

If this figure is correct, the number of the Jews living in the US is bigger than the number of those living in the occupied Palestinian territories as from the 8 million Israeli population 74 percent, namely about 6.65 million, are Jews. Although the Jewish community accounts for only 1 to 2 percent of the American community, it has considerable influence on the wealth and power structures. The administrations in the US have a special protective consideration of the Jews in general and the Zionist Jews in particular.

This support even grew bigger under the presidency of Donald Trump who has recently signed an executive order countering the so-called anti-Semitism. According to the order, the Jews are a nation not a religious minority and thus a nation has every right to have a state. Denying this right will be considered anti-Semitism, the new order asserts. Under the order, Trump will ask the Department of Education to consider International Holocaust Reembrace Alliance’s explanation of anti-Semitism when it needs to look into cases based on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act concerning discrimination.

Trump’s electoral goals behind the move

The Zionist lobby in the US is one of the most powerful lobbies a minority can have in a foreign country. Its influence is huge to an extent that some call it a state inside another state, with sway over the financial markets and media companies that empower it to influence the election of the president and other political officials. This influence even extends to foreign policy, essentially determining the political pathways of various American administrations.

Trump, a businessman with a record of doing business in the financial and media markets for long years, is well aware that Zionism has a substantial sway over the country’s policies. During his three years of presidency, Trump went to great lengths to defend Zionism’s international interests in the White House. To this aim, he relocated the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Al-Quds (Jerusalem), recognized the Israeli annexation of Syrian Golan Heights, advocated illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and also killed the two-state solution that proposed a Palestinian state with Eastern Al-Quds as its capital beside a Jewish state.

But he recently faced some troubles. While at the remaining time he seeks to pose as a reliable partner for Zionism, a Jewish group has raised a challenge against him when it said that during a meeting of the Israeli-American Council Trump made anti-Semitic remarks.

The story began to unfold when Trump on Sunday at the annual meeting of the Israeli-American Council in Florida addressed the pro-Israeli Jews saying that they had “no choice” but to vote for him or else lose their wealth.

“A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well, you’re brutal killers. You’re not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me. You have no choice,” the president told the audience, adding “You’re not going to vote for Pocahontas [a racist slur Trump uses against Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren], I can tell you that. You’re not going to vote for the wealth tax.”

He continued by repeating a false claim to the crowd that supporters of the tax want to take “100 per cent of your wealth away”.

“Even if you don’t like me – some of you don’t [and] some of you I don’t like at all actually – you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes if they [the Democrats] get in,” he added.

Now that some Jewish groups have deemed this largely insulting and anti-Sematic, Trump has come to contain a potential wave of image-damaging criticism. He rushed to issue the order to play as the man closest to the interests and ideals of Zionism. He also criticized the American Jews saying: “We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more. I have to tell you that. We have to do it. We have to get them to love Israel more. Because you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people — they don’t love Israel enough. You know that. You know that.”

Fear of public awareness

But the critics argue that the order to fight anti-Semitism very openly violates the freedom of speech while over the past years people mainly in the American colleges, while the media monopoly is broken by the social media, found space online to blast the Israeli occupation and brutality in dealing with the Palestinians on the strength of the American support. This public tendency raises severe worries of the Zionist circles.

Meanwhile, many argue that the final aim is to crack down on the advancement of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions Movement (BDS) that calls for boycotting relations and business with Israeli regime for its brutality against Palestinians. The movement has made its way into the American campuses, liberal circles, and even Congress thanks to new lawmakers like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. The BDS has key supporters in the British Labor Party, as well as in Washington and tens of other capitals. Its supporters have always been accused by the opponents of the path of anti-Semitism. In June, the House of Representatives passed an anti-BDS bill, drawing welcome by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally to Trump.

The Israeli regime, many agree, is sure that it has no legitimacy grounds in the region and across the world and the US supports are its only factor of survival. This is the main reason driving the Zionist circles and Tel Aviv’s struggle to control the American public.