As America’s First ‘Jewish’ President, Trump Looks Like He’ll be Most Pro-Israel POTUS Everhttps://archive.is/rlVb7
Lawrence Solomon | December 12, 2016 9:05 AM ET
Donald Trump has been widely accused of courting anti-Semites and of being a threat to Israel, especially by American Jews. These accusers, and these Jews, have it wrong. Trump — at a personal, professional and policy level — will go down in history as the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israel president ever.
The extended First Family will be largely Jewish. Donald Jr.’s wife, with whom he has five children, is half-Jewish. Trump’s younger son, Eric, married a Jewish woman two years ago in a highly publicized wedding under a traditional chuppa. It was officiated by Jared Kushner, Trump’s Jewish son-in-law and husband of Ivanka, who herself converted to Orthodox Judaism seven years ago. Ivanka keeps a kosher household and, to her father’s delight, is religiously observant, even avoiding phone calls on the Sabbath. Donald, who wholeheartedly embraces his family’s Jewish associations, encouraged his daughter’s conversion “from Day One” (in Ivanka’s words) and on the campaign trail gushed that Ivanka “is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby,” her third.
In business, Trump surrounded himself with tough-minded, often Orthodox Jews in top positions, as lawyers and trusted advisers. He also succeeded in business by welcoming Jews (and blacks) as members at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, breaking the city’s long-held bans, and then made Palm Beach’s discrimination practices a cause célèbre by suing the city council over its support for anti-Semitic and racist bans. The Trump Foundation’s IRS filings reveal a history of generous donations to Jewish organizations, an unusual practice by non-Jews, according to Jonathan Sarna, the chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History. The donations range from cultural to Zionist. Friends of the Israel Defense Forces is among Trump’s donees.
Jewish advisers — and full-throated Israel-backers of Christian as well as Jewish heritage — also dominate Trump’s political life. A high-profile adviser that Trump’s detractors point to as an anti-Semitic exception — his chief strategist Steve Bannon — is no exception at all. Bannon is an unabashed Zionist and opponent of the anti-Semitic BDS movement whose media outlet, Breitbart, has aggressively exposed Palestinian propaganda and c
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