Life

Ivanka Tweets Reaction To JCC Threats — Why Not Mention ‘Anti-Semitism’?

Ivanka Trump with her children

By Phoebe Maltz Bovy February 20, 2017

Ivanka Trump’s since-deleted tweet. Image by Screenshot/Twitter

In the world’s tiniest glimmer of hope, Ivanka Trump has reacted to the Jewish community center bomb threats. It’s a vague response that doesn’t use “Jewish” or “anti-Semitism,” and that missed the part of anti-Semitism 101 where you learn that it’s not just about religious intolerance.

It reeks of President Trump having delegated the women stuff and the Jewish stuff to his kid. But fine. It is, I will grant, better than nothing.

And hey, maybe the general terms she uses are a sign, another teensy glimmer, that she’s calling out Islamophobia as well? You truly never know.

Update as of 7:23 p.m. EST: The tweet is down, the embedded image above replaced now with a screenshot of the same. Oh, well.

Update as of 7:24 p.m., and there it is:

America is a nation built on the principle of religious tolerance. We must protect our houses of worship & religious centers. #JCC

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) February 20, 2017

Update as of 7:25 p.m.: I’m going to eat dinner and let the first daughter tweet, or not, as she sees fit.

One last one, 7:29 p.m.: First tweet had “American” rather than “America,” so let us all hold off on those Why Did Ivanka Delete the Tweet? think-pieces that we may or may not have already written in our heads.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy edits the Sisterhood, and can be reached at bovy@forward.com. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege’”, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in March.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy is a former editor of the Sisterhood blog at the Forward. Her writing has appeared in several publications, including The New Republic and The Atlantic. Her book, “The Perils of ‘Privilege,’” was published by St. Martin’s Press in March 2017. She has a PhD in French and French Studies from New York University, and has read a lot of 19th century French Jewish newspapers for a 21st century American.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO