Former US President Donald Trump has admitted that American Jews do not love Israel and that this has led to his defeat in the recent elections.
In an interview with the Brooklyn-based ultra-Orthodox weekly Ami, the former U.S. President mused that had American Jews been more attached to Israel, they would have supported him in greater numbers.
“American Jews don’t love Israel enough,” Donald Trump declared this week, bemoaning his small share of the U.S. Jewish vote.
“You know what really surprises me? I did the (Golan) Heights, I did Jerusalem and I did Iran — the Iran deal was a disaster, right? And I also did many other things,” he said, referring to his decision to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and Jerusalem and his withdrawal from the nuclear deal.
“Jewish people who live in the United States don’t love Israel enough,” he continued, noting that he was excluding the Orthodox community in this criticism, whose support for him was “very high. I believe we got 25 percent of the Jewish vote, and it doesn’t make sense. It just seems strange to me.”
While his remarks elicited applause from attendees, the speech was criticized by other Jewish groups for being rife with anti-Semitic tropes and equating support for Israel with being Jewish. A few months earlier, Trump came under fire for saying that he thought Jewish people who voted for Democrats demonstrated a “total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
“American Jews ― like all Americans — have a range of political views and policy priorities,” American Jewish Committee CEO David Harris said at the time. “His assessment of their knowledge or ‘loyalty,’ based on their party preference, is inappropriate, unwelcome, and downright dangerous.”
