With the bitter partisan divide showing no signs of abating, former long-time national director of the Anti-Defamation League Abraham Foxman warned against the "politicization" of anti-semitism in an interview with The Algemeiner.
"Stop blaming [President Donald] Trump for the increase [in antisemitism]," Foxman said. "The increase is out there because of instability, hypernationalism, anxiety, because of the internet, for a lot of reasons. To put it all on him, as some did, was I believe politicizing it for the wrong reasons."
Foxman said that the last several years has seen a high level of attacks against Jews, before the rise of Trump, but "the difference with now is that the news didn't focus on it."
He added that "Anti=semitism is serious enough that one shouldn't exaggerate it or politicize it. People viewed every expression on the subject in the last few months in political terms. And when it became clear that the threats against Jewish community institutions came from an Israeli, American, Jewish kid, and we all sighed with relief, I said, 'What lessons can we learn here?'"
Foxman stressed that two main lessons should be: Don't turn everything into an "existential crisis" and "don’t jump to conclusions."
He also said it was a mistake for many Jews to turn opposition to Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon into a Jewish issue, saying, "I thought Bannon was an American issue. There was nothing specifically Jewish, no record of anti-semitism ... Many people don’t like his worldview — okay, you’re entitled — but I wasn't comfortable when we made that a Jewish issue."
Foxman told The Forward that the issue of anti-semitism "has been hijacked politically by Democrats who've made it a political issue to attack Trump, and by Republicans who have made it a political issue to defend him," a situation which he said does not help the Jewish community.
Foxman conceded to The Algemeiner that the abandonment of political taboos during the presidential campaign gave anti-semitic Americans an opportunity to reach a much larger audience, but that if the "covers of the sewers" were removed before the election, Trump is "in the process of putting them back on" by speaking out forcefully in word and deed against anti-semitism.
Foxman also commented on the controversy over Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, whom he called "a champion of equal rights, except when it comes to Jewish rights."
He criticized her invitation to speak at the commencement ceremony at the City University of New York's Graduate School of Public Health, saying, "She is an enemy of Jewish sovereignty and Jewish liberation. She's a bigot, and she shouldn’t have been invited [to CUNY]."
Foxman stressed, however, that now that the invitation has already been extended it should not be canceled and turn her into a "free speech martyr," but rather CUNY should learn about her views and distance themselves from them.
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