Milbank: Trump's American no longer a safe place for Jews
George Washington, in his 1790 letter to the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, told Jews they would be safe in the new nation.
“The government of the United States … gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,” he wrote. “May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants — while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.”
Though that assurance has been tested, the United States has endured as a safe haven for Jews.
Now President Trump has violated Washington’s compact. He has given sanction to bigotry and assistance to persecution. After the shooting in Pittsburgh, which the Anti-Defamation League believes is the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, there is no longer safety under the vine and fig tree.
I had been dreading and expecting this day, and more like it, for two years. This was more than predictable; it was predicted.
After Trump’s presidential campaign began with genteel anti-Semitism, progressed to dog whistles and ended with a full-throated targeting of Jewish “globalists,” I wrote on Election Day that the results would be coming in on the 78th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the infamous night of Nazi violence and vandalism against German Jews: “I pray that on this solemn anniversary, Americans tell Donald Trump and the world that we are never going back there.”
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/milbank-trumps-american-no-longer-a-safe-place-for-jews/?utm_source=DAILY+HERALD&utm_campaign=bfbcc72813-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d81d073bb4-bfbcc72813-228635337
