A New York Times headline Wednesday announced that “Rabbis Protest Trump’s Comments by Boycotting Conference Call.” Four Jewish Rabbinical organizations, which supposedly represent more than 4,000 rabbis and congregations, were skipping an annual conference call with President Trump due to his “handling of the Charlottesville aftermath.” They falsely accused Trump in a joint statement of having given “succor to those who advocate anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia.”
“We have concluded that President Trump’s statements during and after the tragic events in Charlottesville are so lacking in moral leadership and empathy for the victims of racial and religious hatred that we cannot organize such a call this year,” read the statement from the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. There was no mention in the article that each of these organizations is left-wing.
The Times, which would love to paint Donald Trump as anti-Semitic, suggested that the announcement "appeared to signal that Mr. Trump will encounter extreme difficulty in any immediate efforts to reach out to American Jews."
Leading the article was a huge picture of Rabbi Jonah Pesner, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who said there was “a lot of sadness” about scrapping the call. The newspaper neglected to mention that in March 2016, long before Charlottesville, Rabbi Pesner had boycotted a Trump speech at an AIPAC conference, the largest annual pro-Israel gathering in the United States, and then penned an Anti-Trump op-ed in 2016 in which he accused Trump of "intolerable," "hateful rhetoric" against women, Muslims, immigrants, etc. "His campaign has thrived on fear and resentment," wrote Pesner.
This is the standard leftist line about the President. But after eight years of America's most anti-Israel President, Barack Obama, American Jews and Israel are fortunate to have a friend like Donald Trump in the White House. Not that The New York Times and leftist Jews will ever admit that.
