michael barbaro

From The New York Times, I’m Michael Barbaro. This is “The Daily.” Today: The president has issued an executive order cracking down on anti-Semitism on college campuses. Why some Jewish Americans fear that the logic behind it could provide a rationale that ultimately furthers anti-Semitism. It’s Wednesday, December 18. So Max Fisher, tell us what happened last week at the White House.

max fisher

So last Wednesday, Trump, as part of his annual Hanukkah party, announced that he was going to sign an executive order targeting what he described as anti-Semitic speech on college campuses.

michael barbaro

Which seems like a worthwhile goal.

max fisher

Right. It seems totally straightforward. But it has set off — because of the kind of way it has touched on this, the way it presented it, the politics of it — what has been this really big, divisive debate, especially among American Jews, about basically how to receive this and whether this is a good or a bad thing.

michael barbaro

And why has it touched off this debate?

max fisher

Oh, man.

[music]

max fisher

So you can actually see the complications in this order, what makes it so sensitive, in the event where President Trump announced it.

archived recording (donald trump) Melania and I are delighted to welcome so many friends and families to this incredible house, the White House, to celebrate this really sacred season, and a very special time. To everyone here today, Happy Hanukkah. [CHEERING]

max fisher

At that Hanukkah party, the way that he kind of starts it is he starts talking about the scourge of anti-Semitism.

archived recording (donald trump) As we gather this afternoon, our thoughts turn to the grieving families in New Jersey. Yesterday, two wicked murderers opened fire at a kosher supermarket and killed four innocent souls, including a brave police officer.

max fisher

When he talks about this recent shooting in Jersey City, he promises to crush anti-Semitism.

archived recording (donald trump) My administration will never tolerate the suppression, persecution or silencing of the Jewish people.

max fisher

He then kind of introduces the people who he has gathered into the room, which includes some Republican donors who are Jewish, Bob Kraft —

archived recording (robert kraft) My wife, a blessed memory, would be smiling now. Because she loved America first, and Israel, and wanted to build bridges between the two places and have tikkun olam. And I think this, more than anything, is going to help do that. So thank you.

michael barbaro

This is the owner of the Patriots?

max fisher

— yeah. Yeah, that’s right, big Republican donor. Some Orthodox figures who were there, some evangelical leaders. And then he kind of starts to talk about the things that he has done for the Jewish community, and the big three accomplishments that he lists are —

archived recording (donald trump) So two years ago I recognized the true capital of Israel, and we opened the American Embassy in Jerusalem. [CHEERING]

max fisher

— moving the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

archived recording (donald trump) I’ve also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

max fisher

Recognizing Israel’s annexation of a region called the Golan Heights, which Syria considers part of its territory.

archived recording (donald trump) And I said to Bob, so what — Bob Kraft — I said, so what was bigger, Bob? What we did for Israel in terms of Jerusalem and moving the embassy to Jerusalem, becoming the capital of Israel, or the Golan Heights, which you’ve been looking to do? For 52 years, they’ve been having meetings on the Golan Heights. Nothing happened until I came along. I said, Bob Kraft, which is bigger? Which is more important to the Jewish people? He said, neither. I said, what does that mean? He said, what you did by terminating the Iran nuclear deal is bigger than both. [APPLAUSE] I think that’s true.

max fisher

Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which had been a big request of the Israeli government. So this is kind of his big windup to introduce the executive order that he’s there to announce.

archived recording (donald trump) Before I sign the executive order, I’d like to ask Oscar to say a few words. And Jonathan will light the menorah.

michael barbaro

And what’s notable to you about this framing from the president, this list that he wraps this into?

max fisher

Well, I mean, American presidents have always treated policies towards Israel as something that is of great interest to the American Jewish community because it has always been of great interest to the American Jewish community. But Trump is really leaning into the idea that pro-Israel policies are something that serve American Jews, specifically. And it’s specifically policies that are big requests of the Israeli right and of the kind of American pro-Israel right. But it’s also — for Trump himself, it’s kind of especially sensitive to set things up in a way that a little bit implies that Israel is an extension of the American Jewish community. Because that is something that he has actually said. He once, speaking to an American Jewish group, referred to the Israeli prime minister as “your prime minister.”

archived recording (donald trump) When I stood with your prime minister at the White House —

max fisher

Famously, he criticized Jewish Democrats who are critical of Israel by saying that they were disloyal to Israel.

archived recording (donald trump) And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat — I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.

max fisher

So, you know, while it’s not unusual for a president to kind of tout their pro-Israel policies as something they think the American Jewish committee will like, for Trump, the way that he leans into it does a little bit leave the suggestion that he sees Israel and the Jewish community as kind of one and the same.

michael barbaro

Right, that he conflates them.

max fisher

That he conflates them, yes. So then, from there, he moves to this new executive order.

archived recording (donald trump) This action makes clear that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits the federal funding of universities and other institutions that engage in discrimination, applies to institutions that traffic in anti-Semitic hate.

michael barbaro

Hm. What exactly does that mean?

max fisher

So the way that it works is that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act allows the federal government to withhold money from colleges that are deemed as not protecting people based on nationality, race or color. So it means that if your local college did nothing to stop the student K.K.K. from holding a big rally with racist banners saying horrible racist things against black people, then the federal government could intervene to withhold federal funding from that college in order to pressure them to act against the student K.K.K. and tell them, no, you’re not allowed to hold your racist rallies on our campus. And what it does is it adds Jews to that. It says, we now consider Jews to be under the consideration of foreign nationality, race or color for the purposes of this act. And then we also have this definition of anti-Semitism that has a few specific phrases and accusations that we’re going to consider discriminatory. And so colleges and universities are now required to basically stop students from saying these things.

michael barbaro

So this is an expansion of existing protections under that title —

max fisher

That’s right.

michael barbaro

— to include Jews.

max fisher

That’s right. It kind of reinterprets it to say Jews are now — but not other religious minorities — are now included under this.

[music]

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. So what’s the significance of these protections now including Jews? And what does this have to do with your point that this is the latest example of the president equating Israel with American Judaism?

max fisher

Well, when President Trump introduces the order —

archived recording (donald trump) We have also taken a firm stand against the so-called Divestment and Sanctions movement, or B.D.S. You know that very well. [APPLAUSE]

max fisher

— the way that he describes it is a firm stance against B.D.S. B.D.S. refers to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. It is an activist movement, including on campuses, that is aimed at pressuring the Israeli government over its policies towards the Palestinians.

archived recording (donald trump) This is our message to universities. If you want to accept the tremendous amount of federal dollars that you get every year, you must reject anti-Semitism. It’s very simple. [APPLAUSE]

max fisher

He describes the executive order as targeting what he calls the anti-Semitic campaign against the state of Israel.

archived recording (donald trump) — state of Israel and its citizens.

max fisher

The way that it’s written actually includes calling Israel a racist state as one of the banned anti-Semitic phrases.

michael barbaro

Hm.

max fisher

It really pitches this as something that is about promoting and protecting the Israeli state from this activist movement. And that is really controversial among American Jews because it happens to overlap very neatly with this division, kind of, among the American Jewish community, where there are some who consider B.D.S. to be beyond the pale anti-Israel, consider it to be anti-Semitic, and so have been asking for this for a long time.

archived recording (chuck schumer) Why does B.D.S. single Israel out alone for condemnation? There is only one word for it: anti-Semitism. Let us call out the B.D.S. movement for what it is.

max fisher

But there is also a very large segment of the American Jewish community that has been feeling very cool towards Israel, especially over the last 10 or 15 years —

archived recording (naomi klein) The main reason why I just say I support B.D.S. and I don’t pick and choose is the point is that this comes from a very, very broad cross-section of Palestinian civil society, with very, very few tactics at their disposal.

max fisher

— and finds the idea of kind of hard-line pro-Israel policies generally and curbs on anti-Israel activism specifically to be something that don’t really align with their values and with what they want. And so I think for them, pitching this as something that is serving American Jews when a lot of American Jews, even if they don’t like or agree with B.D.S. itself, are not that comfortable with a lot of Israeli government policy so might be sympathetic towards student activists who are critical of Israel, and maybe just generally don’t love the idea of the federal government curbing anti-Israel activism, just as a matter of free speech. I mean, this is the Civil Rights Act. You know? This is meant to stop Southern universities that allowed students to systematically harass black students. It’s strong protections that are meant to protect students from really severe discrimination. But that is what is kind of so complicated about putting Jews into that set of categories and into that bucket of protected race, color and nationality. Because on the one hand, Jews — for a long time, a lot of Jews have considered themselves to be a distinct race, a distinct nationality. Certainly, that is how Jews have been treated. So setting aside Jews and not other religious groups, in a sense, and I think for a lot of Jewish groups, feels like recognition in this really powerful way. And the fact that it’s recognition in a protected class is kind of granting Jews a little bit of a special status in American life. But on the other hand, that’s also really sensitive. Because there has been this longstanding Jewish sensitivity towards being deemed as foreigners within, which obviously is this very longstanding anti-Semitic trope. And so the threat that some Jews feel is embedded in this is that it chips away at their identity that American Jews fought really hard for as full Americans and as fully white.

michael barbaro

What do you mean?

max fisher

Jews, like Italians, like Irish, were not considered white for a long time. And that obviously came with a lot of discrimination. It wasn’t really until after World War II that Jews, again, like Irish, like Italians, were accepted as white, at a time when that was a condition for being seen as fully American.

archived recording (joachim prinz) I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime. I learned many things.

max fisher

And it’s part of why Jews developed this tradition of getting really involved in the civil rights movement, which was partly about expanding that kind of full cultural and social citizenship to nonwhites.

archived recording (joachim prinz) That bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence. [APPLAUSE]

max fisher

But that whiteness has been valuable to Jews since then, because it’s something that says you’re safe and welcome as Americans.

michael barbaro

And this, to some Jews, puts that at risk.

max fisher

It puts that at risk because it highlights them as racially or nationally distinct at a time when there is this really big, rising white nationalist movement that is saying the exact same thing in a very threatening way, that says that Jews are foreigners in our midst working to undermine the United States, and that uses that narrative to justify really serious rising anti-Semitic violence.

archived recording 1 We begin this hour with a developing story, a shooting at a synagogue in California. It happened in the town of Poway. That’s northeast of San Diego. archived recording 2 Here is a young man standing with a rifle, pointing right at me. archived recording 3 A disturbing discovery, just steps from the Holocaust Memorial. archived recording 4 Here you see the headstones that were toppled at a Jewish cemetery in Fall River. archived recording 5 Two bloody swastikas on a retaining wall, about two feet by two feet each. archived recording 6 What it does is it dredges up what’s happening in the United States today. That kind of thing is not hidden anymore, that it’s out there. archived recording 7 A group of men assaulting a victim in traditional religious attire on Saturday. archived recording 8 A second victim was randomly slapped in the face by his attacker. archived recording 9 We believe that the suspects held views that reflected hatred of the Jewish people. archived recording And what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue is the deadliest attack on Jewish Americans in U.S. history.

[music]

max fisher

And so this kind of irony to this is this order that is principally written as about curbing and addressing anti-Semitism also is written in a way that echoes this white nationalist worldview that says that Jews are other, that they’re racially other, that they’re not American, and specifically that they are these kind of clandestine secret Israelis, and these agents of Israel. Nobody intended that worldview to end up in this executive order. And it’s not that it’s written into it. But the way that it others Jews, even if that was clearly just a legal mechanism, ends up echoing that. And I think that that is a real fundamental irony, and a source of a lot of people’s discomfort with it.

[music]

michael barbaro

Max, thank you very much.

max fisher

Thank you.

michael barbaro

We’ll be right back. Here’s what else you need to know today. In a scathing letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Trump denounced the impeachment vote scheduled for this evening, saying that Pelosi has, quote, “cheapened the importance of the very ugly word, impeachment,” and has declared war on democracy. Trump accused Pelosi of attempting to undo his election, and wrote that Democrats are determined to distract from his success. And —

archived recording (mitch mcconnell) It appears that the most rushed, least thorough, and most unfair impeachment inquiry in modern history is about to wind down after just 12 weeks, and that its slapdash work product will be dumped on us over here in the Senate.

michael barbaro

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has rejected demands from Democrats to call four White House officials as witnesses during President Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate. Such a trial is expected to begin in January, following an impeachment vote in the House. McConnell said that calling such witnesses was the roll of the House, not the Senate, despite the fact that the president blocked White House officials from testifying before the House throughout the impeachment inquiry.

archived recording (mitch mcconnell) If House Democrats’ case is this deficient, this thin, the answer is not for the judge and jury to cure it over here in the Senate. The answer is the House should not impeach on this basis in the first place.

michael barbaro