These Aren’t the Jews Politico Is Looking For

By Ian Tuttle

Monday, October 03, 2016

It’s not clear whether Ben Wofford and his superiors at Politico Magazine were lazy, ignorant, or malicious. But one of the three is to explain for Wofford’s most recent essay, “In a Time of Trump, Millennial Jews Awaken to Anti-Semitism,” published Sunday.

The piece’s subtitle reads, “A new generation is experiencing an age-old hatred for the first time. But why has the Jewish right looked away?” Critics of headlines are always well served to exercise caution, since titles and subtitles usually aren’t of the author’s making, but, conveniently, the subtitle here and the piece’s thesis match up. And both are false, shamefully so — as anyone with access to Google can discover.

Since Wofford frames the essay by talking about Jewish Millennials, perhaps someone could introduce him to Ben Shapiro. The editor of the Daily Wire has written about Trump’s anti-Semitic following repeatedly at his own site, and at National Review Online. Or how about Jamie Kirchick, who wrote about “Trump’s Terrifying Online Brigades” over at Commentary? And then there’s Bethany Mandel, senior contributor at The Federalist, who’s written endlessly on the subject, including a piece at Forward, where she reported that her anti-Trump tweets had occasioned such opprobrium from Trump supporters that she had bought a gun for self-defense.

That was in March.

That same month, Karol Markowicz, a columnist at the New York Post, wrote a piece in Haaretz titled “Don’t Tell Us Jewish Republicans We’re Not Opposing Trump Enough.” She followed up the next month at Heat Street: “Donald Trump’s Alt-Right Supporters Are Antisemitic. Does He Care?”

This is all to say, if you’re looking for young, rightwing Jews who’ve spoken out against Trump, they’re not difficult to find.

Additionally, it’s worth observing that Wofford’s piece pulls a bait-and-switch. He starts out discussing Jewish Millennials, but in condemning rightwing Jews cites several organizations: the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), AIPAC, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Those outfits’ silence on the anti-Semitism that clings to Trump’s campaign is troubling — but none of the organizations is run by Millennials.

And if we follow Wofford’s lead, and move beyond the “Millennial” category, the list of rightwing Jews who’ve sounded the alarm about Trump-associated anti-Semitism expands further. Among others, there’s Commentary editor John Podhoretz and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and National Review senior editor Jonah Goldberg — or, put differently, three of the most influential voices in conservative media.

And Wofford managed to stumble across none of them? Really?