Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump is scheduled to give a speech next Monday at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference. Forty or so rabbis have declared they will not be attending.
The concerns being expressed by many Jewish leaders go beyond Trump’s controversial pledge to be “neutral” during peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians — and extend to fears of Trump’s style and approach to power. [...]
“These are the darkest days for Republican Jews like myself,” former George W. Bush speechwriter Noam Neusner wrote in a column this month in the Forward, a Jewish newspaper. He wrote that Trump “has built within our party the nearest thing America has ever seen to a European nativist working-class political movement. Such movements, to put it mildly, have never been good for the Jews or allies of free thought and the free market.”
Merely boycotting the speech is apparently itself a compromise position, as others wanted to go farther.
[Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin] said the effort was an attempt to head off “more radical” protest suggestions, including walkouts and jeers, and provide an outlet for those “both nauseated and terrified” by Trump.
In other news, white supremacist David Duke continues to promote Trump heavily on his radio show, arguing on Wednesday that critics’ comparisons of Trump to Hitler might help rehabilitate Hitler's image.