Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters at his primary election night event at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., Tuesday, March 15, 2016. “You want to control your politicians”, he said.
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AIPAC bills itself as nonpartisan and has never endorsed a candidate.
The group of about 40 rabbis say they’re boycotting because of hateful rhetoric.
“What cognitive bypass enables them to recognize the potential fascism of Trump, but not the existing tyranny of Israel’s rule over the Palestinians, under the decade-long leadership of Netanyahu?” asked Isacowitz.
A third organization, Come Together Against Hate, which said in a press release that it represents rabbis, cantors and Jewish leaders who hope to convince thousands of attendees to stage a silent walkout before Trump speaks and then gather at a separate location for a discussion about human rights and dignity.
But the reactions to the protest showed that political differences among Jewish religious leaders are not much different from disagreements in the general electorate.
Rabbi Zeplowitz said there is a “big debate among rabbis as to what to do [at the conference]”. And many in AIPAC are probably wondering, as the hours tick down to his Monday evening address, which will be worse: the GOP front-runner casually extemporizing something so outrageously untenable as to horrify that record crowd, or making such empathetic remarks as to have them on their feet, clapping and cheering, providing all of America with clips of this divisive candidate’s ostensibly warmly supportive Jewish audience. But on Sunday, he promised ABC’s George Stephanopolous that he would lay out his vision of what a good solution would be for Israel when he speaks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s annual Policy Conference. “That doesn’t mean people listening agree with all of his views”.
“Our history, our faith and our values teach us that we can not sit idly by when others are singled out for derision and when intolerance is fed”, Greenblatt said in an article published in Time.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Rabbi Steven Pruzansky of Teaneck’s Congregation Bnai Yeshurun called the planned protest “disgraceful”. She delivered an address created to appeal to conservatives in both parties for whom national security issues are at the forefront and took aim squarely at candidate leading the Republican nomination race. All presidential candidates were invited to take the stage Monday.
Trump has previously said he would stay neutral between Israel and Palestine to broker a peace deal – a position that had drawn the ire of his pro-Israel critics. “There is nobody more pro-Israel than I am”.
TRUMP: I know. I know what you’re saying. If Trump thinks he can drag his usual shtick into tonight’s speech and buffalo his way through a conversation about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he is wildly mistaken.
“A lot of what they say to me is what I would expect to hear from him”, he said.
TRUMP: I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain. “Talk about trivializing the Holocaust”. Most recently, it worked hard to try and scuttle the Iran nuclear agreement, putting the group at odds with ardent deal supporters Clinton and Democrat Bernie Sanders, and to a certain degree, with Kasich, the lone Republican who has not said he would automatically rescind the pact.
He questioned whether Israel really wants a peace deal, telling the coalition in December that he didn’t know “if Israel has the commitment”.
In a statement to NPR, the Republican front-runner’s campaign said he’ll be announcing his foreign policy advisers in the near future.
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Clinton will say the USA can’t ever be neutral about defending Israel, or consider the US relationship with Israel negotiable, a pointed reference to his claim during a February town hall event hosted by MSNBC that he’d be a “neutral guy” when it comes to Israel and the Palestinian territories. “I’m no Trump fan, but his opponents are fools to do a demonstration like this”. I think it would be more effective to be in the room rather than walk out.
