President’s remarks seemed to refer to a perception that Jewish Americans have a dual loyalty to both America and Israel

Donald Trump used an apparently antisemitic trope when accusing Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats as showing “either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty”.

The remarks came as part of a barrage of disparaging comments that threaten to re-ignite an ongoing feud with the Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. They seemed to refer to a perception that Jewish Americans have a dual loyalty to both America and Israel.

Trump, who recently encouraged Israel to block Tlaib’s visit to see her family in the occupied territories, lashed out after the congresswomen criticized Benjamin Netanyahu’s government for denying them entry, vowing that the Israeli leader would not “succeed in hiding the cruel reality of the occupation from us”.

Calling Omar a “disaster” for Jews, Trump said he didn’t “buy” the tears Tlaib had shed Monday at an emotional press conference during which Tlaib talked about her decision not to travel to Israel to see her elderly grandmother, who lives in the occupied West Bank.

“Where has the Democratic party gone?” Trump asked reporters at the White House. He then went on to apparently refer to Jewish Americans’ supposed loyalties to Israel and how voting Democratic was disloyal to the country. “Where have they gone, where they’re defending these two people over the state of Israel? And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”

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Accusing Jewish Americans of having dual loyalties to America and Israel is widely seen as an antisemitic trope. The comment provoked immediate condemnation from a raft of American Jewish leaders.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, pointed out on Twitter that charges of disloyalty “have long been used to attack Jews … It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football”.

J Street, the progressive Jewish American lobbying group, released a statement in which it called Trump’s remarks “dangerous and shameful”. It noted that 70% of American Jews voted for Hillary Clinton against Trump in the 2016 presidential race, adding “this vast majority of our community rejected and continues to abhor the xenophobia, bigotry and extremism of Donald Trump and his allies”.

Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who is a leading contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination, also waded in. Calling himself “a proud Jewish person”, he said: “I have no concerns about voting Democratic. And in fact I intend to vote for a Jewish man to become the next president of the United States.”

This is not the first time that Trump has been castigated for invoking the “dual loyalty” antisemitic trope. In April he called Netanyahu “your prime minister” in front of the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas.