Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

Donald Trump’s Non-Apology for Online Anti-Semitism Isn’t Good Enough

After Donald Trump spewed racism about Mexicans and Muslims, and Trump supporters increasingly spewed online anti-Semitism at Jewish journalists like me, my editor here at the Forward, Jane Eisner, responded to this hatred by imposing a one-day moratorium on covering the Republican front-runner. The so-called “Trumpatorium” wasn’t received kindly by the Trump campaign. Sad!

Trump’s lawyer and Israel adviser Jason Greenblatt wrote in these pages last week, pushing back against Eisner’s assertion that his boss has turned a blind eye to the anti-Semitism in his camp. Greenblatt said (emphasis mine), “The facts are worth repeating since you will not find them in the Forward: on May 5, 2016, in The New York Times, Mr. Trump emphatically denounced anti-Semitism stating, ‘Anti-Semitism has no place in our society, which needs to be united, not divided.’ Despite Mr. Trump’s explicit disavowal of hate groups, his political opponents and their media acolytes continue to push the myth.”

You are, actually, reading Greenblatt’s “facts” in the Forward, because Eisner has chosen to print them. Say what you will about the liberal bent at the Forward (as one of its relatively few conservative columnists, I’m familiar with it), but Eisner has printed Greenblatt’s own critique of the paper.

And what of that critique? Does Greenblatt think that Trump’s generalized, boilerplate statement on anti-Semitism means anything to me, when in practice the candidate’s Twitter account continues to retweet the vilest anti-Semitism?

It’s not often that this conservative asks of her (former) Party’s nominee to emulate the Socialist who sat on the Democratic ballot just a few weeks ago. But I’d like Trump to consider, just for a moment, how Bernie Sanders has handled the ugliness coming from within his camp. Bernie Bros, a certain kind of male Sanders supporter, spent the better part of primary season spewing sexist attacks on Hillary Clinton and her supporters. Salon reported on Sanders’s response on multiple networks in the middle of his campaign:

“I don’t want anybody, anybody, who is engaged in sexism to support me,” Sanders told NBC News’s Kate Snow in New Hampshire on Sunday. “I don’t want that support,” he insisted, calling that type of behavior from some supporters “unacceptable.”

In another Sunday interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sanders called the behavior of so-called Bernie Bros “disgusting,” saying his campaign is working to address the issue of online harassment.

Compare that specific and widely disseminated response from Sanders to the vague comments about theoretical anti-Semitism made by Trump when directly asked by The New York Times and the Jerusalem Post. Sanders didn’t respond to theoretical sexism; he specifically rebuked the kind coming from his own side. Despite Trump’s famous hubris, he does not have the courage to do the same.

The results of that lack of courage are, for me, very personal — and very concrete.

If you think that I, and many other Jewish writers, are being dramatic about the kind of online abuse sent our way, consider this. Several weeks ago I noticed I was receiving a good number of hang-up calls. I entered my phone number into Google, and a reproduction of a story I wrote in these pages about getting a gun thanks to the deluge of threats I had already received popped up. Along with my phone number and an address, the photo the Forward ran with my story was Photoshopped with a Star of David with the word “JUDE” inside a bull’s-eye on my back.

I’ve received well over 1,500 tweets according to my best estimate, my face has been Photoshopped onto the faces of Holocaust victims, and several Twitter accounts have become fixated on me, tweeting about me for almost 19 hours straight after an appearance on Megyn Kelly’s show on Fox News.

Thanks to this, several other threats and the behavior of a few online nutcases, my local police department drives past our house several times a day, and a dozen hate crime officials in my state now know our family.

I write opinion columns on politics and culture for a living, so I’ve developed a skin thicker than most alligators’. And I generally loathe playing the victim. But in my years of writing on every controversial subject imaginable (abortion, transgenderism, politics, rabbinic sexual abuse, Jewish conversion, Israel’s conduct during war and more) I’ve never seen anything like what Trump supporters have spewed in his name in the last year.

Back in October I wrote in these pages asking Trump to do what Sanders did to his sexist supporters: loudly repudiate and show the door to those who traffic in the most vile anti-Semitism imaginable while proudly wearing his signature red “Make America Great” hats in their profile pictures. Over eight months later, I’m still waiting.

Bethany Mandel writes on politics and culture, usually from a conservative perspective. Follow her on Twitter @BethanyShondark

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.