In a Sunday MSNBC interview, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S., Ron Dermer, said that “radical left” college students are also to blame for the spike in anti-Semitism in the United States, Raw Story reports.
Dermer blamed “both sides” for what resulted in the largest attack on Jews on American soil in history.
“I see a lot of bad people on both sides who attack Jews,” he said.
“One of the big forces in college campuses today is anti-Semitism. And those anti-Semites are usually not neo-Nazis, on college campuses. They’re coming from the radical left.”
The ambassador did not produce any evidence for his claims, nor did he back them up with data.
It remains unclear what group on the left Dermer is attempting to blame for the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting, Raw Story notes.
Suspected Pittsburgh shooter Robert Bowers, who killed 11 and wounded six, appears to be, as detailed by a previous Inquisitr report, a rabid anti-Semite, racist, xenophobe, homophobe, and a white nationalist.
At least that’s what one could conclude after a single glance at his now-removed Gab profile, on which Bowers spread baseless conspiracy theories, announced that he would do something about those that want to “bring in invaders that kill our people,” referring to Jews.
Today, as the Associated Press reported, the U.S. Attorney in Pittsburgh said that federal prosecutors are seeking approval to pursue the death penalty against suspected shooter Robert Bowers.
Apart from claiming that the “radical left” bears part of the blame for anti-Semitism in the United States, Israel’s Ambassador Ron Dermer praised President Donald Trump’s remarks about the Pittsburgh shooting, claiming that no other world leader or politician has reacted as admirably as President Trump.
Not even Israeli politicians, Dermer claims, condemned the attack as strongly as Donald Trump.
My interview earlier today on @MSNBC https://t.co/rUviv5ZoB4
— Amb. Ron Dermer (@AmbDermer) October 29, 2018
“I’m not aware of a single non-Israeli leader that has made such a strong statement in condemning anti-Semitism meaning he said to those who seek to destroy the Jewish people, we will destroy them. I have never heard a non-Israeli leader say that and we appreciated that.”
MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin played two brief video clips of Donald Trump to Dermer: Trump’s recent admission that he is a nationalist, and his “both sides” comment following white nationalist violence at the Charlottesville rally, but the ambassador did not budge.
“I see a lot of bad people on both sides who attack Jews,” he said.
Dermer then explained that the Pittsburgh shooting was not the first attack on American Jews, arguing that anti-Semites should be viewed as anti-Semites, regardless of their political affiliation.
Attributing anti-Semitism to only one side of the political spectrum is, according to Ron Dermer, “a very big mistake.”