When news outlets began reporting on Jan. 20 that the owner of the Atlanta Jewish Times had published an opinion column seemingly suggesting that Israel might be wise to assassinate President Obama, prominent American Jews responded quickly and furiously.
Here was a Jewish newspaper publisher providing fodder for something the Anti-Defamation League regularly deplores as a pernicious anti-Semitic canard: that Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States.
In his Jan. 13 column, Andrew Adler outlined what he said were three possible responses by Israel to Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon:
While few of those critics might go as far as Adler, it doesn’t take much discussion in some Jewish circles to find people who see something more sinister in Obama than a president whose policies they believe are bad for the Jews and Israel.
“I think Obama’s overriding goal is to have Israel destroyed,” said Randy Silver, a businessman from Glenview, Ill. “He puts steps in motion to bring about the destruction of the State of Israel.”
One New Yorker who insisted on anonymity said, “He’s not a Hitler in the sense that he’s anti-Semitic and wants to put every Jew into a concentration camp — at least not as we see things right now.”
Noah, a physician from the New York’s Westchester County suburb who asked that his full name be withheld, told JTA: “I will admit to serious questions about whether he’s a Muslim and whether he hates Jews. It’s a possibility. I’m very uncomfortable with him.”
Such views constitute a minority viewpoint even among Obama’s Jewish detractors. Moreover, the U.S. Jewish community has been — and largely remains — a stronghold of support for Obama.
In 2008, Obama won an estimated 78 percent of the Jewish vote. Even though his popularity in the Jewish community has dwindled, it has declined far less among Jews than among the general U.S. population.
A Gallup poll released four months ago showed Obama with a 55 percent approval rating among Jews, though an American Jewish Committee poll released at approximately the same time showed the president with a 45 percent approval rating.
Still, the AJC poll showed that Obama would win the Jewish vote against any hypothetical Republican candidate by at least 18 percentage points.
Obama is hardly the first president to be called an anti-Semite or hostile to Israel. In 1991, Republican George H. W. Bush received withering criticism when he sought to delay $10 billion in loan guarantees for Israel unless Jerusalem agreed to a settlement freeze in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman, said he remembers holding a news conference to denounce Jewish characterizations of Bush as Satan and evil.
But the rhetoric and conspiracy theories against Obama seem to constitute an unprecedented level of vitriol, say many longtime observers of the Jewish political scene.
“I’ve never seen as much enmity toward a president by American Jews as I do toward Obama,” said Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America. “I’ve never heard people say, as they say to me, ‘I hate him.’”
Klein himself called on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to disinvite Obama from its annual policy conference last year. He blames the hostility on the president.
“Among those who care about Israel, he surely is to blame for it,” Klein said. “Every chance he gets he blames Israel.”
Foxman says extreme hatred of Obama is less about the president’s policies than about U.S. economic troubles, the sense that Israel faces greater threats today than at any time in the last 30 to 40 years, and the Internet, which amplifies radical voices and conspiracy theories.
“All of these add an anxiety element that intensifies fear and anxiety,” Foxman told JTA.
Then there’s Obama himself — a black president with the middle name Hussein who has been accused even by some Jewish Democrats of not being able to show sympathy for Israel in his kishkes (guts).
“Here’s a president who doesn’t show emotion on anything, and the Jewish community is used to emotion,” Foxman said.
Democrats blame the Republicans for the vitriol. Republicans say Democrats are practicing divisive politics.
Obama’s most vehement Jewish critics are not the only ones who accuse Obama of being a secret Muslim, a socialist, and a threat to America. Many Tea Party activists have sounded similar themes, with some claiming his administration is pursuing Nazi-like policies.
But Obama’s most extreme Jewish critics also accuse him of seeking to erase Israel’s Jewish character and of plotting to wage war against Israel. They see anti-Semitic overtones even in Obama’s hiring of Jewish advisers.
“A Jacob Lew or a Rahm Emanuel is a danger to the Jewish people because they make treif look kosher,” Silver said of the current and former Obama chiefs of staff. “I think these are anti-Jewish Jews. They make Obama look like he’s not a threat, but he’s a clear and present danger to Israel.”
Pamela Geller, a Jewish writer whose blog, “Atlas Shrugs,” is a popular source of information for anti-Obama conspiracy theorists, says Obama is trying to stir up Muslim enmity toward Jews.
Obama administration officials repeatedly have called these sorts of accusations patently false. They also campaign in the Jewish community to highlight the president’s record on issues of Jewish concern, ranging from domestic issues to his pushes for Iran sanctions and endorsement of unprecedented U.S.-Israel military cooperation.
But for that subset of the Jewish community that sees ominous signs in Obama’s record, the concern isn’t so much what Obama has done so far as it is what he might do in the future.
“He takes baby steps and is slowly putting things in play to do Israel damage in the long run,” Silver said. “There’s a strategy behind this.”
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