JNS
The Biden administration failed to fight antisemitism, and yet 90% of Democratic senators oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to stop it.
The Republican Party led by President Donald Trump is launching an unprecedented fight to stamp out the outrageous rise in antisemitism on college campuses. The actions taken by the administration have been significant as they include ending $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia University and putting 60 universities on notice that they are not protecting Jewish students and could lose federal funding if they don’t address that concern.
The administration’s most recent action was the arrest and planned deportation of Mahmoud Khalil, a Syrian-born Hamas supporter who led the harassment of Jewish students at Columbia University.
Many members of the Trump administration have been involved with these efforts, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who signed the deportation order; Attorney General Pam Bondi; Leo Terrel, senior counsel to the U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights, who is leading the efforts in the Justice Department against antisemitism; and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. This is remarkable because not one of them is Jewish. Yet the community saw antisemitism rage out of control under the Biden administration, despite having a Jewish attorney general in Merrick Garland, who failed miserably to protect Jewish students.
A March 5 Senate Judiciary hearing on the rise of antisemitism, led by Senate President Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), epitomized why Jew-hatred became a major problem under the Biden administration. Democratic senators brought in two witnesses: Kevin Rachlin, Washington director of the Nexus Leadership Project; and Meirav Solomon, a Jewish student at Tufts University who is also co-vice president of J Street U’s New England branch.
Solomon testified in her opening statement: “We must be honest about the most urgent threat to the Jewish community. It isn’t student protesters, but the bloody legacy of Pittsburgh and Poway, Charlottesville and the Capitol riot.”
Rachlin, in his opening statement, opposed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, despite its widespread support. He was also against the Antisemitism Awareness Act currently before Congress. Rachlin falsely claimed that the legislation would risk “criminalizing antisemitic speech in ways that chill legitimate debate.” He also spoke in favor of continuing the failed Biden approach toward combating antisemitism.
Rachlin’s and Solomon’s views represented the consensus view of the Democratic senators on the Judiciary Committee. Their views are not surprising since J Street supported cutting military funding to Israel in the middle of its multifront war and opposed Khalil's deportation. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations rejected J Street for membership 10 years ago—before the group supported cutting military aid to Israel—as its views were outside of the mainstream of American Jewish opinion.
A recent Gallup poll showed that just 33% of Democratic voters have a favorable view of Israel, as compared to Republican support at more than 80% favorable. Another survey, this one by Schoen Cooperman Research found 87% of Jewish college students are concerned that anti-Israel protests and petitions to boycott the State of Israel lead to hate crimes and violence against Jewish students.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s tweet on March 11 criticizing the Trump administration’s decision to deport Khalil shows how out of touch the Democratic Party has become with American Jewry.
With the notable exceptions of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Rep. Richie Torres (D-N.Y.), virtually all Democrats oppose deportation efforts against Khalil. Most Democrats try falsely to claim that the arrest is based upon Khalil’s views and not his actions—as if anti-Israel encampments, taking over school buildings and harassing Jewish students are not actions.
If the Democrats oppose the deportation of Khalil because he has a green card and his wife is pregnant and an American citizen, then why do they make free speech arguments and say that even if Khalil had a student visa, he should not be deported? Why do they support other young people, like Khalil, receiving student visas to come to American universities, harass Jewish students and express support for Hamas? We know the Biden administration gave out such student visas; this is ending under the Trump administration.
The current leadership is doing an amazing job of quickly working on stopping antisemitism; even left-leaning Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League support these efforts. This should have been a bipartisan issue, as it has consensus support in the mainstream Jewish community. The Biden administration failed to fight antisemitism, and yet 90% of Democratic senators oppose Trump’s efforts to stop it.
Israel has always been a bipartisan issue, and for a long time, Democrats were stronger supporters of Israel than Republicans. Yet a third of congressional Democrats approved of cutting aid to Israel during its multifront war that started when Hamas and Palestinians invaded the border on Oct. 7, 2023; slaughtered 1,200 people; and kidnapped 251 others into the Gaza Strip.
The vast majority, around 90%, of Democrats in the House and Senate supported Schumer’s call for Israel to replace its democratically elected leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the middle of war. The Biden administration illegally withheld vital weapons from Israel that Congress had appropriated during this war, virtually without objection from most Democrats in either the House or Senate with the exceptions of Fetterman, Torres and some others.
It is fortunate for the security of American Jews that Trump was elected president. He got more support from the American Jewish community than any Republican candidate in 100 years, and that support has only increased since the election. If the Democrats believe that J Street represents a significant percentage of the American Jewish community, they will be in for a rude awakening at the polls, because they do not.
It is time for the Democrats in Congress to follow the lead of Fetterman and Torres, and once again make supporting Israel and fighting antisemitism a bipartisan consensus.
