[Ohio]

American Jews have been politically divided for decades, and it has little to do with Trump. They are also divided over Netanyahu, the State of Israel, and the need for rebuilding the Temple

The Jewish left botched its response to the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting

This brazen attempt to blame Jewish backers of the president for the attack and excommunicate them from their community is scandalous. It is also a dog whistle for animosity toward more traditionalist Jews, who constitute one of the most pro-Trump demographics in the country (indeed several serve as high-ranking officials in the administration).

Such sentiments reveal what underlies the entire liberal Jewish response to Pittsburgh: For them, Judaism is synonymous with liberalism. Donald Trump is cast as an enemy of the Jews not because he has shown any hostility to the Jewish people or the Jewish State (quite the contrary) but because he is an enemy of liberalism. The same goes for his “Jewish enablers,” who have allegedly betrayed their community by backing him.

As it happens, Trump has done more than any other president to prevent attacks on Jews, including by cutting funds to the Palestinian Authority. This courageous decision thwarts its pay-to-slay policy of issuing financial reward to terrorist murderers of Jews. But no matter. The Jewish social-justice chorale serves at the altar of liberalism and Trump is their Antichrist (just as, lest we forget, George W. Bush was before him).

Degrading Judaism to advance their petty politics, as the Jewish social justice movement has always done, is insulting enough. Using Pittsburgh’s dead to do so is altogether grotesque.