By Melanie Nathan, August 31, 2024
I will not ask you to pardon this scurrilous analogy, noting while unsavory, it is metaphorically sound.
A SIMPLE TRUTH that no Jew can escape acknowledging: We saw it with our own eyes: In 2016 Trump launched this current SURGE in antisemitism. While this does NOT deny the severity of antisemitism for years, decades and centuries before that, the current surge and wave started on that infamous Trump Tower escalator.
I will not ask you to pardon this scurrilous analogy, noting while unsavory, it is metaphorically sound. This explains how America’s antisemitism started this incarnation. The proof of the pudding is in the eating:
Let’s rewind to that 2016 day when no one could imagine where Trump’s remarks would lead. It started with everything we learned at the Holocaust Museum about scapegoating, becoming apparent from a mere sentence in! To me it was as clear as a hole in a bagel! To others as impossible as a hole in one. Oh the disparity! No lessons learned my fellow Jews? When I dared then, to even begin to suggest the obvious comparable likely Hitleresque trajectory – I was shot down! Now we are still on that path! The proof of the pudding is in the eating:
We know antisemitism started to rise significantly from the time Trump disembarked that downward moving stage. Trump had stepped off that escalator to announce his presidential campaign couched in a racist xenophobic rant and attack on immigrants. The other! Which tacitly includes the other among other OTHERS!
You know how there are a gazillion rats in the walls of buildings. We live with them, side by side, and they remain hidden, hardly seen. Well, there were a hella-lotta rats hidden in the walls of our beautiful America, prior to 2016.
THEN came the big cheese! And they poured out!
Make a hole in the wall – place a bit of cheese at the mouth, and they WILL come out to nibble. You will get a glimpse. Then make the hole bigger, place a larger chunk of cheese – and soon they will all be feasting, emboldened and entitled. Keep the cheese fest going, more holes, more cheese, and they will multiple!
Well guess who the cheese is ?
And like those chomping rats, the racists, the xenophobes, soon appear to nibble their cheese. They turn out to be those with white supremacist, nationalistic and Nazi ideologies, or ripe for such, attracted to the promise of the Trump dicta. The type tends to harbor a combo of hates and fears: where racism, xenophobia, and homophobia go hand in hand in with antisemitism, certain playmates – all one kindred mindset.
So with a massive rush to eat the cheese, it was bound to fester, dupe, and it did!
Trump’s dicta now emboldened those who hade been secretly harboring their hate, safely hidden from view, in those walls, to come out into the American sunlight and spread their germ! In 2018, almost to the day, I wrote a small piece on my Blog “Trump is the Cheese and The Rats are Feasting!” At that time I naively did not make the connect to antisemitism, thinking it was racism and xenophobia in isolation, and so I don’t blame you if you did not either- but looking back it is now clear… emboldening the racists is emboldening the antisemites. They are one! Trump did it and continues to do so and the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
It is not to call racists and antisemites rats. G-d forbid. The metaphor reflects quite simply on what is hidden in plain site, with merely a wall and a piece of cheese, one hole away from exposure ! !
So my message to any Jew out there who is supporting Trump, still on a very Hitleresque trajectory – (noting I compare the trajectory – not the man- as I did on that fateful 2016 day) – wake up – please I implore you – see the antisemitic path you are continuing to support. There is no escaping the obvious. It is one steeped in antisemitism, as further evidenced by a myriad of words and actions from 2016 to this moment. That asked, if you cannot see it, let us hope you never suffer the result as you will have the rest of us to thank when we succeed in saving you! You are making us work so much harder. So Dammit don’t – just stop! Its enough – okay!
To my fellow Jews who despite the obvious antisemitism still think Trump is good for Israel – your critical thinking fails you. Why do you think Jared Kushner is nowhere to be seen this campaign? Because he is in the know. Trump wants to ditch NATO. Trump’s isolationist policies only hurt Israel. Imagine no one to call on when Iran tries its missile tricks again? Lest we forget that if Trump is not good for Jews in America how can he be good for Israel?
Any perceived 2016 era action that in fact may have turned out to be good for Israel will deserve some credit. However the 2024 world (especially with with what has occurred in Ukraine) is a vastly different world that Trump just cannot handle in Israel’s interests, especially noting his alliance with Putin and the other dangerous despots who he seeks to emulate. He will only do what pumps his emboldened autocratic intent and that will involve the Jews and a democratic Israel getting out of his way! Remember his view of Israel is not through a Jewish lens but through the lens of the Christian Nationalist Evangelicals and the JD Vance alliance of puppeteers. (Lest we forget Trump is an old bloke – aged 78 – and that Mr. Turn-on-a-dime Vance is a cheeseburger away from the Presidency, with Article 25 at the ready to enhance his presidential aspirations.)
To my fellow Jews who smell the stink – who supported Trump then – and now finally and can no longer support him NOW – given their faith – their values – while noting the adjudicated rape, the porn star adulterous fornication, the insurrection, the 34 felonies, Charlottesville, expressions of “crappy Jew” etc. etc., and who have decided to SIT OUT THE VOTE – sorry brothers and sisters – to deliver this clear news – you may as well vote for HIM! You are complicit. Like it or not! It is time for you to re-think this.
Summary:
• 2016 – Scapegoats Immigrants with xenophobic and racist parlance – brings out and emboldens the antisemites!
• 2016- 2024 Antisemitism emboldened while many Jews continue to support Tr.um.p
• 2024- Project 2025 will tear down guardrails that Jews have enjoyed.
The world is different and any Jew supporting Trump is supporting antisemitism and is a grave dangers to Israel.
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Is Harris really Better for Israel than Trump – Clarity for the Voter and Influencer, Posted on The following analysis is attributed to Alex גדעון בן װעלװל @JewishWonk VIA X (Twitter) thread, READ MORE HERE.
By Melanie Nathan these view are in my personal capacity
Commisisonermnathan@Gmail.com
Background:
- Former South African Attorney
- Past Appointed Human Rights Commissioner, Marin Country California
- Past Elected VP San Francisco Pride Board
- Human Rights Advocate and ED of Human Rights Organization
- Country Conditions Expert Witness for LGBTQI Asylum Seekers
- Co-Founder Facebook Group, Jewish Women for Kamala Harris
O-blog-dee-o-blog-da 