Imagine if out of the blue the decision was made to purge Roberto Jarach, Marco Vigevani, Milena Santerini, Luciano Bellipaci from Milan Shoah memorial as they are disliked by a political party on charges of being inadequate in the fight against antisemitism (perhaps someone is really hoping for this, aren’t they?).
It has happened in Washington in the last few days, where President Trump has decided to torpedo some of the members in charge of the management of the American Memorial, such as Douglas Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ Jewish husband, Tom Perez, Susan Rice, Ron Klain, Antony Bernal, all directors who are close to Biden and Obama.
In the American tradition, the management of Washington memorial has always been bipartisan and the memory of the Shoah had turned the museum into a centre for the prevention of all genocides. Throughout the years, it has been the most universal and dialogue-centred “memorial”.
However, Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s press office head, has declared in a peremptory statement that “the President looks forward to appointing new people who will not only keep honouring the memory of those who died in the Holocaust, but are also staunch supporters of the State of Israel”.
Besides the obvious fact that Biden administration was always close to Israel and the Jews, the administration’s decision is a new sign of the reversal of the whole approach to combating antisemitism, where even memory should have an instrumental political purpose.
In the classical conception, from the post-war period onwards, the fight against antisemitism by Jews, albeit with all its difficulties and variables, has always linked the denunciation of antisemitic prejudices to all forms of hatred emerging in society. For years, it has rightly been repeated that antisemitic hatred is a wake-up call about prejudices that can affect other groups of the population, therefore Jews and non-Jews.
And throughout history, totalitarianisms from fascism to communism to Islamic fundamentalism, albeit using a different language, have affected both Jews and all groups that did not accept political and cultural homologation. This is the great lesson of history that should unite Jews and non-Jews. However, what is often forgotten is that the banner of the fight against antisemitism has also become instrumental for completely opposite ends.
Anna Foa recalled this in these pages, when she wrote that massacres in Gaza and settler policies in the occupied territories were unfortunately justified in the name of a barrier to antisemitism.
However, distorted use of words can already be found in the communist past where, after the Second World War, so-called opponents were shot and imprisoned in the name of antifascism. A democrat who did not accept the dictatorship became a fascist. In Bulgaria a paradoxical situation took place. The 43 MPs who, like Dimiter Peshev, Vice-president of the Bulgarian parliament (whose story I have told in the book “The Man Who Stopped Hitler”) were the architects of the rescue of fifty thousand Jews, the entire Jewish community, were sentenced to death on charges of antisemitism.
Now, as major Jewish groups have boldly reported, the traditional fight against antisemitism is being turned upside down instrumentally by the US administration. The charge of antisemitism is used not only to silence freedom of expression in American universities and any criticism of Israel, whether made by Jews or Arabs and Muslims, but also to expel hundreds of students not only from universities, but also from the country.
Such distortion is of great concern in that by presenting Jews as eager to shut down democratic freedoms, the American administration is starting and fuelling further prejudice against Jews. Those who see these campaigns by Trump can not only imagine that all Jews are with Netanyahu for the massacres in Gaza (while fortunately Israel is a plural country having different souls), but worse still, that Jews are eager for illiberal regimes and applaud repression.
Such distorted portrayal of antisemitism is kindling a negative view of Jews in society and, in turn, it is fuelling all the worst prejudices.
This is why the appeal launched by hundreds of rabbis entitled “Rejecting Antisemitism as a Political Wedge” https://truah.org/actions/a-call-to-moral-clarity-rejecting-antisemitism-as-a-political-wedge/ is particularly significant.
It is worth noting that the petitioners do not deny that since 7th October a wave of antisemitism has emerged in American universities and American society as never before in the last few years, but they claim that methods adopted by Trump use the denunciation of antisemitism for other purposes.
“We, as Rabbis, are deeply committed to fighting the rising tide of antisemitism in the United States. The resurgence of this age-old hatred is alarming, and we unequivocally stand against it in all its forms. We must also be clear: the way in which the Trump administration claims it is combating antisemitism is not about protecting Jews — it is instead overtly abusing the issue to divide Americans, undermine democracy, and harm other vulnerable communities.
History has shown that the safety and flourishing of American Jews are tied directly to the health of our democracy. As Rabbi Michael Knopf reminds us, “as democracy recedes, Jews become increasingly imperilled”.
This is why we cannot allow the fight against antisemitism to be twisted into a wedge issue, used to justify policies that target immigrants and other minorities, suppress free speech, or erode democratic norms. Antisemitism is real, and it must be fought, but not by those who traffic in its imagery and tropes to suit a partisan political agenda.
Detaining and deporting student activists without due process, even if we as Jewish clergy strongly disagree with their perspectives or rhetoric, will not ultimately make our community safer. Already, we have seen students arrested without a warrant, sent to detention centres without their families being notified, and threatened with deportation without a hearing.
Immigrant students have been targeted not only because of their alleged political views and participation in protest, but because the Trump administration is laying the legal groundwork and administrative framework for more mass deportations, testing boundaries to see what the public will tolerate.
The president’s attacks on universities are straight out of the autocratic playbook. As Jacob Miller, a Jewish student leader at Harvard, points out, “politicians are seizing on Jews as their perfect political pawns.” Defunding universities, threatening to deport student protesters, and using Jews as a justification for authoritarian tactics does not make us safer; it makes us more vulnerable. We reject these cynical attacks on higher education — institutions that have long been strongholds of Jewish academic and cultural life — under the pretence of protecting Jewish students.
Rabbi Sharon Brous powerfully stated recently, “these actions themselves constitute a form of antisemitism.” Capitalizing on Jewish fear to justify oppressive policies does not fight antisemitism; it distorts its meaning and undermines the very democratic structures that protect us all. It is alarming that some of the same political actors who now claim to champion Jewish safety have also defended Nazi sympathizers, promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories, and sought to dismantle civil rights protections
We affirm the Jewish teaching that “God is One” — a reminder, as Rabbi Elliott Tepperman teaches, that our liberation is bound up with the liberation of all people. We reject efforts to pit us against other marginalized communities, even at times of disagreement, knowing that when any group is targeted, all are at risk.
American Jews have always stood for democracy, free speech, and justice — not just because these values are moral, but because they are essential to our safety and our future. We call on our fellow Jews, Jewish institutions, and all people of conscience, to remain vigilant against the real dangers of antisemitism across the political spectrum while refusing to let the fight against it be co-opted for authoritarian ends.
We must stand firm in our values: protecting democracy, defending the vulnerable, and building a society where no community is used as a political pawn — because we are only safe when everyone is safe.”
This appeal should be read throughout Italy, in that there are groups that advocate, albeit in different ways, an authoritarian way to fight antisemitism.
Although not everyone understands this, when the fight against antisemitism loses its democratic and universal character, it becomes a boomerang for the Jews themselves.
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Pictures from Washington DC Memorial https://washington.org/it/find...
