Blaming President Trump for Attacks on Synagogues

This article first appeared in New English Review.

We have seen two tragic attacks on synagogues recently, in Pittsburgh last October, and now Poway near San Diego, which occurred on Saturday. In the aftermath of both, people on the left have rushed to blame President Trump for the violence, claiming that he has established a climate of hate in this country. The charge is absurd.

Say what you will about Donald Trump. He may not be a saint, but an anti-Semite (or a racist) he is not. Say what you will about his tweets and many of his public statements, but to accuse him of fostering Jew hatred and attacks on synagogues is silly on its face.

First of all, President Trump (who is the strongest ally Israel has had in the White House in recent memory and whose own daughter is a Jewish convert) has reached out to the affected synagogues in both cases. He visited the Pittsburgh synagogue (Tree of Life) and has called Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was wounded in the attack. Rabbi Goldstein was effusive in his gratitude for the President’s call.

That has not stopped the rush to attach the attacks to Trump. Naturally, that includes the universities.

It is true that in both of the above attacks, the perpetrators are white nationalist, racist anti-Semites. I will readily admit there is a rise in white nationalism in the country, and many of these people also include Jews in their hate list. I condemn it just as much as I condemn Islamic Jew hatred, which is also a big problem, especially in Europe.

But here’s the catch, which refutes the charges of Democrats, leftists, and academics that Trump is to blame: Neither of the two perpetrators under discussion here are Trump supporters. Quite the opposite. Robert Bowers, the accused Pittsburgh shooter, has written that Trump is a “globalist” who is controlled by Jews”. Similarly, the accused Poway shooter, John Earnest, reportedly produced a “manifesto” in which he condemned Trump as a “Jew-lover”.

So much for that argument.

We should all mourn and be outraged at the synagogue attacks. We need to focus our anger at those who carry out such attacks and those who encourage them. Using them to blame President Trump-even indirectly- is unfair and is just more political noise.