Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on June 15, 2024

Rep. Elise Stefanik has positioned herself in the months since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7 as a champion in the fight against antisemitism. After going viral for asking university presidents whether calling for genocide against Jewish students was against their codes of conduct last December (an exchange her office helpfully packaged), the Republican from New York was hailed even by some liberal Jews as an ally.

Since then, she has questioned more university presidents and leaders of public schools on antisemitism. Per Politico, she raked in more than $7 million during the first quarter of the year, fueled by her support from prominent Jewish Republicans in the wake of her grilling of university presidents over campus antisemitism. Last month, she went to Israel to address the Knesset Caucus for Jewish and Pro-Israel Students on Campuses Around the World, where she chastised U.S. President Joe Biden and praised former President Donald Trump, whose support for Israel she described as historic. On the same trip, she met with Israels President Isaac Herzog. Her political star is on the rise, too: Trump is reportedly considering her to be his running mate.

I would love to be able to write a piece detailing the ways in which this is the culmination of a career spent dedicated to Jewish safety, or a reflection of her deep concern for Americas religious minorities. Sadly, I cannot do that, as Stefanik has, for years now, consistently pushed and defended antisemitic rhetoric. This is to say that though she presents herself as a champion against antisemitism, in reality, Stefanik is spreading it.

To be clear: I am not saying Stefanik is an antisemite. I do not know, and do not care, what is in her heart and mind. I only know her words and deeds, which include boosting antisemitic conspiracy theories and smears. Presumably, given that she is a politician, she has done this because it serves her political ends.

Most egregious, to my mind, is her embrace of rhetoric similar to great replacement theory. This is the white supremacist, antisemitic conspiracy that alleges that there is a plot by shadowy elites to bring immigrants into the country to change its demographic makeup. This change, the story goes, would redound to those elites and the lefts political advantage. In 2017, that theory was behind the chant of Jews Will Not Replace Us as neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the 2018 Tree of Life mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, before carrying out the deadliest attack against Jews ever in the history of the United States while yelling, All Jews must die, the shooter reportedly posted a screed against HIAS, a Jewish nonprofit that resettles refugees, alleging, HIAS likes to bring invaders that kill our people.

One might thus imagine that anyone concerned about antisemitism in the United States would, at minimum, stay as far away from this conspiracy theory as possible. And yet, in 2021, Stefanik adapted this despicable tactic for campaign ads, as her regional paper, the Times Union, put it at the time. The ads referred to radical Democrats granting amnesty to illegal immigrants to create a permanent liberal majority.

Similar rhetoric was espoused by the person who carried out a mass shooting that killed 10 people in Buffalo, New York, in the spring of 2022, bringing attention back to Stefaniks use of it. But evidently, this was not enough to convince Stefanik that such language was harmful, or that whatever political gains might come from it were not worth the potential harm to Jews and other minorities living in this country; she neither renounced nor apologized for the language, and has continued to use antisemitic political rhetoric.

For example, in April of this year, the same month that she grilled Columbia University President Nemat Shafik about antisemitism and the safety of the Jewish students for whom she is purportedly so concerned, Stefanik tweeted, George Soros is trying to fund the downfall of America by buying elections for radical Far Left politicians and corrupting the next generation to support terror groups, implying that the Hungarian-born Jewish billionaire philanthropist is attempting to secretly control American democracy.

There will be some who argue that criticizing Soros is not antisemitic. And they are correct! It isnt antisemitic to criticize what Soros is saying and doing. In this tweet, however, Stefanik is not offering criticism, but conspiracy: wildly overstating what Soros is saying and doing, and implying that a lone Jewish person is, through money and power, trying to corrode the American nation. A cartoon depicting a Jewish person pulling puppet strings with dollar signs over the United States would have been just as subtle.

There is also an added irony in all of this, which is that Stefanik has, in some moments, spoken over Jews about antisemitism, erasing actual Jews from the conversation on Jewish safety. (Stefanik is Catholic.) For example, in March, after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States, called for new elections in Israel, Stefanik put out a statement that read, Israel is not only fighting for its right to exist, its fighting for the rights of Jewish people everywhere. Instead of meddling in Israeli sovereign elections, Chuck Schumer should follow House Republicans lead in supporting our most precious ally in their darkest hour. Evidently, Jewish people everywhere did not include Chuck Schumer.

In all this, she is joined by Trump himself, who regularly denounces Jews who dont vote for him (to date, thats a group that includes most American Jews), and who, along with others in his campaign, likewise espouses antisemitic conspiracy theories. Trump also famously downplayed the white supremacist march on Charlottesville, dined with white supremacist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, and hired Steve Bannona man crucial to bringing online white-supremacist and neo-Nazi support to Republicansto be his senior adviser in the White House. Stefanik was nevertheless an early backer of Trumps 2024 campaign and has become a top ally of the former president.

Her office did not respond to my request for comment.

Stefanik is, of course, not alone in her party in using this rhetoric and pushing these conspiracies while defending Israel. Still, perhaps it is worth stating plainly that all the viral moments and Knesset caucuses together cannot take out what she has helped put into our political water. Antisemitic conspiracy theories and smearslike, for example, that shadowy forces are trying to change U.S. demographics, or that a Jewish billionaire is attempting to fund the downfall of the countryerode trust in democracy, in our institutions and between Americans. But beyond that, they endanger Jewish people. And yet, even with ample evidence of this, Stefanik has repeatedly returned to those smears.

One might think all this would damage Stefaniks credibility as a soldier in the fight against antisemitism. But the fight against antisemitism has evidently helped Stefanik raise money. It has helped raise her political profile. It may soon help make her the vice president. It only seems fair to ask that she, in turn, finally help the fight against antisemitism. Not siding with antisemitism in that fight might be a start.

Follow this link:

Elise Stefanik, antisemitism, and Israel: She's Congress' self-appointed protector of Jews. There's just one problem. - Slate

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