Following Donald Trump’s comments earlier in the week accusing American Jewish voters who support Democrats of “great disloyalty,” and on the same day praising anti-Semite Henry Ford in a tweet, as The Inquisitr reported, Trump was widely accused of anti-Semitism himself for invoking the longstanding accusation of “dual loyalty” made against Jewish people by anti-Semites for centuries.
Trump denied the accusation of anti-Semitism, telling one reporter, as cited in a Twitter video, “it’s only anti-Semitic in your head.”
But one award-winning journalist, who is a senior editor for the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz , was not buying Trump’s denial that his attacks on “disloyal” American Jews were anti-Semitic. In a blistering op-ed column published by Haaretz Wednesday, Bradley Burston blasted Trump as not merely anti-Semitic, but “the greatest anti-Semite of our age.”
“For years he’s boogalooed and pirouetted around the issue, dog whistling Dixie at every opportunity. This week though, he made it official,” wrote Burston, a former war correspondent who covered the 1991 Gulf War.
Burston went on to say that Trump’s claim that Jews are “disloyal” for not supporting him is Trump’s “test of the Jews.”
In addition to covering multiple wars, Burston received the Eliav-Sartawi Award for Mideast Journalism at the United Nations, according to his Haaretz biography.
The Washington Post on Thursday reported that Trump’s accusations of “disloyalty” against American Jews — 79 percent of whom voted Democratic in the 2018 midterm elections, according to CNN exit polls — are the result of his “frustration” that Jewish voters still largely refuse to support him. However, he has “set about executing a pro-Israel checklist,” including moving the United States Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights, and other policies that align with the wishes of Israeli Prime Minster Benjanim Netanyahu.
According to the Post, Washington Bureau Chief Phillip Rucker, who cites “people familiar” with Trump’s “thinking,” Trump has grown “flummoxed that Jewish Americans are not in turn lining up to support his reelection.”
As a result, Trump has taken to “lashing out” against American Jews, Rucker wrote.
Burston, however, wrote that Trump’s intended audience for his anti-Semitic remarks is not an audience of Jews. Rather, it is Evangelical Christians, many of whom, as New York Magazine explained, believe in an “end times” scenario that requires the state of Israel to be reestablished in order for the Second Coming of Christ — and with it, the “rapture” in which Christians will be swept into heaven — to take place.
With his accusations of “disloyalty” against Jews who do not support him, Burston wrote, Trump is telling his Christian Evangelical supporters, “You’re better Zionists than the Jews.”