PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — President Trump and PM Boris Johnson in particular are nightmares, and Mayor Bill de Blasio, in his quest to advance from the nation’s second toughest to the toughest job, is abandoning his neighboring nine million New Yorkers.
The modern threesome are conducting themselves in a matter which could threaten Jews here, in Britain and in Israel. We must wonder if Trump’s actions have harmed American Jews and intensified Iran’s threat to Israel. Or if de Blasio’s missing presence encourages attacks against Jews on the city’s streets. And perhaps Johnson’s imperious manipulations will mar the lives of all Brits and raise the anti-Semitic temperature even higher.
Trump, de Blasio, and Johnson have in one way or another exemplified poor leadership for their Jewish populations as well as the rest of their citizens.
Trump is the worst president in my lifetime, yet I grant him his good intentions toward Israel. That does not make him helpful. At home, his refusal to sign gun control legislation has ensured the deaths of Jews at synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, and the school in Parkland. His rhetoric affords encouragement to white nationalists who have shed blood.
Could Trump be doing better in the conflict between Israel and Iran? Did his decision to pull out of the nuclear deal provoke Iran to take more aggressive action?
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported on Wednesday that law enforcement here is warning Jewish communities to watch for threats that could originate with Iran or its proxies, including the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah. Red flags were raised when Iran threatened the Foundation for Defense of Democracies last weekend with sanctions and other unspecified measures; the FDD is a think tank that counsels hawkish policies toward Iran.
Revenge for a terrorist leader’s assassination in Lebanon in 1992 is believed to be the motive for the deaths of 85 people in Argentina two years later; in that tragedy, a suicide bomber drove a van filled with explosives into the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, according to JTA. Hezbollah and Iran were identified by multiple intelligence agencies as the masterminds of the AMIA attack.
Now U.S. government officials fear that Iran might harm American Jews and other allies of Israel as tensions are rising swiftly in the Middle East, JTA reported.
How Trump figures in this situation is hard to determine, but we can be certain that few people trust Trump to respond wisely to a crisis. He is so erratic that he is liable to pour gasoline on any given fire. Hopefully that is not the case, but our ongoing problem is that we have a president who is incredibly unpredictable.
In the one city most vulnerable to terrorism, the mayor is fiddling around in places like Des Moines, Las Vegas and Los Angeles while New York burns, sometimes literally. De Blasio is frequently not around to perform what has been called the nation’s second hardest job while pursuing the presidency in the Democratic primaries, and so far with little success.
In the past week, two Jewish men were attacked by thugs within a dozen blocks of one another in broad daylight in Brooklyn, deBlasio’s home borough. On Tuesday morning, a man threw a rock at Rabbi Avraham Gopin as he was walking through Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights, and then the assailant punched the 64-year-old rabbi and struck him with another rock, knocking out some of his front teeth, according to the website Jewish Insider.
The second victim suffered a cut to his face when a rock struck him in the eye at 5 p.m. Thursday at Brooklyn Avenue and Prospect Place, JTA reported. The man, an Orthodox Jew who worked as a delivery driver, was sitting in his truck at the time. A group of men were involved.
These are the latest in a series of attacks against Jews in New York City, mostly in Orthodox communities in Brooklyn.
After the first incident, City Councilman Chaim Deutsch on Tuesday called upon the mayor to pay attention to his job in this instance, according to Jewish Insider. “De Blasio should make sure that his administration is on top of things, especially when he made the commitment to (a mayoral hate crimes) office in June,” said Deutsch, a Brooklyn Democrat. “We need to tackle these issues head on. We can’t just ignore them thinking it’s going to go away. The mayor needs to realize that if he makes a commitment, he needs to make good on it.”
De Blasio in June announced the immediate opening of a mayoral office to take on increasing anti-Semitic actions to “work to root out hate and make our streets safer,” according to Jewish Insider. “We are already in August, and I still haven’t heard anything about it being active or anyone being hired,” Deutsch said. “We are waiting for this to be implemented.”
The mayor tweeted that “the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating this despicable act of violence, and we will find the attacker. This city will stop at nothing to protect our communities from hate and violence.”
Across the pond, Johnson mocked the democratic process when he suspended Parliament for September to counter resistance from other members of Parliament over Brexit, the movement to break ties with the European Union. Queen Elizabeth II approved the move on grounds that she routinely removes herself from politics.
What Johnson did effectively closes the door on any prospects that British Jews might have had between the two major parties for an alternative to the Labour Party. Most Jews there have voted for Labour candidates because of its liberal domestic policies, but Labour has been rife with anti-Semitism since Jeremy Corbin was elected leader in 2015. The anti-Semitism is partly responsible for driving out a handful of Parliament members, both Jewish and non-Jewish. A smaller number of Conservative Party members of Parliament dropped out of their party before Johnson’s election in July, and two more left the party since the suspension earlier this week.
Johnson behaved like a tyrant in an act that is a violation of the British people. British Jews are equally victimized because the Jewish people thrive in a democracy and are vulnerable to dictators.
It is too early to project what this means politically, but British politicians frustrated with both major parties began moving in the direction of independent candidacies months ago. Unlike America, parliamentary democracies are more prone to upsetting the two-party applecart. The stage is set for just that to happen across the pond.
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Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.