The fact is, Trump is not going to win over any Jewish voters he hasn't had from the beginning. Jewish voters are an incredibly small subset of the population, and they generally reside in liberal urban enclaves that are never going for Trump in any circumstance. So even if Trump did win the majority of Jewish voters somehow, it would not really give him an electoral college advantage.
Nor is Trump genuinely concerned about anti-Semitism. If he was, he wouldn't have actively diverted federal resources away from fighting White Nationalist terrorism, nor would he have broad support among white nationalists. He wouldn’t have referred to Jews who vote Democrat as “disloyal” multiple times. He wouldn’t have propagated anti-Semitic tropes about “globalists.”
What, then, are Trump's primary motivations? The first is to stifle pro-Palestinian activism and dissent. Basically, by both identifying Jews as a nationality, his goal is to paint all criticism of Israeli policy as anti-Semitic. This actually caters more to Trump's large Evangelical Christian base than his Jewish base; as Evangelicals are more likely than American Jews to support Israeli far-right politics and oppose any form of pro-Palestinian dissent.
Most American Jews are pro-Israel, but we have a very different vision for Israel's future than Evangelicals. One in which a peaceful resolution to the conflict is brought about through a two-state solution. Therefore, we have been very critical of the far-right Israeli government run by the Likud party, because West Bank settlements make the two-state solution far less likely to happen. This executive order could theoretically silence Jewish criticism of Israeli policy as well (such as Jewish organizations such as J Street that operate on college campuses). Evangelicals generally tend to side with the settlement movement, because they believe it is part of the fulfillment of a biblical prophecy.
The American right has been appropriating the term “anti-Semitism” in this regard for a while now. It's always been more about Evangelical Christians and their vision for Israel, than it has about either courting the Jewish vote or protecting Jews from anti-Semitism. Generally the tactic is to paint any influential person of Muslim dissent (such as Rashida Talib) as anti-Semitic; since Islamophobia is unfortunately quite common in Evangelical circles. The secondary goal is to try and create divisions between Jewish and Muslim communities; because the right would prefer that marginalized groups are spending their time infighting as opposed to working against their common oppressors.
“If we have to have a choice between being dead and pitied, and being alive with a bad image, we’d rather be alive and have the bad image.”
— Golda Meir
Zionism is the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel.
“If Hamas put down their weapons, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons, there would be no Israel."
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Originally Posted by Bigdog
Their only political plank is identity politics.
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