A Jewish view on Jewish views, part II
This is once again about a poll
We’re back!
Housekeeping notes: Next Monday, paid subscribers should be getting this month’s ET Ask Home, a monthly questionnaire. But I was slow in lining up a guest, and so you’ll be getting it the following week. We at ET Write Home (it’s just me) thank you for your patience.
All subscribers now get The Political Cycle, the podcast I co-host. This week, Rohan and I talked about Trump and what other world leaders have learned about his art (or lack thereof) of the deal.
With that! Onto news, views, and Jews.
THE NEWS
For Slate, I wrote about the "nonprofit killer bill" clause in the GOP tax bill and how, unlike the last time this came up, we don't imagine how Trump et al might use it as we're already seeing them use tax exempt status and NGO funding to attack civil society.
Relatedly, from Politico EU: “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party submitted a controversial bill to parliament Wednesday in what critics see as an attack on civil society.”
I hope you’ll take the time to read Mahmoud Khalil’s letter to his newborn son, whose first two weeks of life Khalil has missed as he’s been detained by our government.
From Mother Jones: “While testifying before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) about the HHS budget, Kennedy told anti-abortion stalwart Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) that he has asked Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary to “do a complete review” on mifepristone following a report from an anti-abortion group that purports to show dangers from the pill. But there’s a problem with that report: Experts say it’s pretty much bogus.”
From Common Dreams: “A high school runner in Maine who finished second to a transgender competitor at a recent track meet said this week that a Republican state lawmaker's "hateful" crusade targeting trans athletes—not the fact that she had to compete against one—dampened her sporting joy.”
From the BBC: “New York University (NYU) has withheld the diploma of a student who used his graduation speech to accuse the US of supporting ‘genocide’ in Gaza.”
MY VIEWS ON…
…majority Jewish views!
A new poll came out this week. I’ve put a link to the JTA writeup in the section below, but you can read the full thing here. It was conducted by GBAO Strategies and put out by the Jewish Voters Resource Center.
The survey found that, while the vast majority are concerned about antisemitism in the United States, 64 percent disapprove of what Trump’s doing to fight it. Over 60 percent think that arresting and attempting to deport people for pro-Palestinian speech actually increases antisemitism; by comparison, 20 percent think it’s helping make things better. Half of American Jews, per this poll, think that Trump himself is personally an antisemite. (Less relevant to this little essay but still maybe of interest: It also found that roughly two thirds of American Jews have an unfavorable view of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that those who say they are very or somewhat attached to Israel is down from 82 percent before Oct. 7 to 69 percent.)
With the caveat that no poll is perfect and polls on antisemitism are particularly tricky, because we don’t agree on how to define it or what necessarily counts as antisemitism or etc.: In a way, this one tells us what we already knew. I don’t mean that we knew it in a sort of “vibes” sense, but that this is not unlike what the Jewish Electorate Institute’s poll from last month said: that most American Jews do not approve of Trump’s handling of antisemitism, with particular umbrage taken over attempts to anti-democratically deport people.
The Jewish Voters Resource Center’s study also found that younger Jews—those 18 to 34, i.e. the group that includes Jewish students—are less concerned (and, perhaps more importantly, less strongly concerned) about antisemitism on college campuses than their older peers. The group most concerned is those over 65. And this, too, reinforces earlier findings: A poll from November 2023, also by the Jewish Electorate Institute, also found that younger American Jews were less concerned about antisemitism on campus.
I know there’s a degree to which this all sounds like, “actually, I’m the rule, not the exception.” And maybe there’s some of that going on.
But while that may be what I’m accidentally revealing about myself, it’s not the point I’m trying to make, which is this: I wonder sometimes how many polls it will take before what’s shown in polls like this week’s are presented—not only in ~ the media, ~ and not only in politics, but in Jewish spaces—as the prevailing narrative, not a counter one.
AND SOME STUFF ABOUT JEWS
From JTA: “About half of American Jews describe President Donald Trump as antisemitic, while only a minority think his campus crackdown is reducing antisemitism, according to a new survey.”
From NPR: “NPR has identified three Trump officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, including a man described by federal prosecutors as a ‘Nazi sympathizer,’ and a prominent Holocaust denier.”
Haaretz has a long report on how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mainstreamed Kahanist politics.
Also from Haaretz: “Israeli officials said Friday there has been no progress in the indirect negotiations for a hostage deal and cease-fire with Hamas in Doha, and the delegation may return as soon as Friday.”
-ET
"survey" by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0.