Jewish Americans Say GOP's Phony Charges of Antisemitism Only Empower Trump's Authoritarianism

A video shown at the beginning of a hearing on antisemitism held by the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday set the tone for the Republican Party's approach to the issue, with the GOP-led panel featuring images of student protesters against Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza—but none of Elon Musk, a top adviser to President Donald Trump, publicly displaying a Nazi salute at an inauguration event in January.

Beth Miller, political director for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) Action, said she was "shocked" by the omission, but argued that "the Trump administration and its allies in Congress are operating under the guise of fighting antisemitism, while actually working to attack the Palestinian rights movement, universities, and civil liberties."

The hearing, said Miller, is consistent with the threat Trump issued Tuesday to student organizers who take part in protests like those that spread across the U.S. last year in support of Palestinian rights, when he said he would "jail and deport" students and pull federal funding from schools that allow what he called "illegal protests."

"The GOP does not care about Jewish safety," said Miller. "This is political theater."

One witness called by the committee Democrats was Kevin Rachlin, Washington director of the Nexus Project, which promotes government action against antisemitism. Rachlin testified that while seeing Musk display a Nazi salute at an event for the president was "beyond terrifying for American Jews," what was "most troubling" about Musk's actions was the "lack of condemnation" from Trump's own party.

Republicans called three people to testify: Adela Cojab, a legal fellow at the National Jewish Advocacy Center; Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law; and Asra Nomani, editor of the Pearl Project. All three witnesses suggested students who oppose Israel's violent policies in Palestine, not the far right, are the propelling force behind antisemitism in the U.S.—despite the fact that many Jewish students organized, participated in, and supported the campus protests that spread nationwide last year and reported that pro-Israel counter-protesters were largely responsible for making demonstrations unsafe.

Nomani warned that antisemitism "has become an industry," but the advocacy group Bend the Arc: Jewish Action suggested her words carried little credibility considering she was "talking about student protesters... not Trump, Musk, and their enablers in Congress who are actively wielding the machinery of antisemitism and making Jews in America less safe."

Cojab called for the official adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, which uses examples of antisemitism including "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, i.e. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor," and "drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis"—suggesting that statements by Israeli officials calling for the "cleansing" of Gaza and Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza should never be referred to as genocidal actions.

Miller noted that the IHRA's definition is "opposed by Jewish, Palestinian, and Israeli groups, as well as civil liberties organizations like the ACLU," and urged viewers to tell their senators to oppose the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify the IHRA's definition.

Barry Trachtenberg, presidential chair of Jewish History at Wake Forest University and a member of JVP's academic advisory council, warned that "distorting the meaning of antisemitism and making Jews the face of a campaign to crush free speech is deeply dangerous to Jewish Americans and all of us who work for collective liberation."

JVP Action warned that although the hearing "will do nothing to promote Jewish safety, it will expand authoritarian policies to dismantle civil liberties, and enable the MAGA Right to score cheap political points."

Bend the Arc credited Ranking Member Sen. Dick Durbin for pointing to Musk's amplifying of the far-right, Nazi-aligned Alternative for Germany political party ahead of February's elections, the promotion of the antisemitic Great Replacement conspiracy theory by Trump and others on the far right, and the president's dismantling of the Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights as evidence that "Trump administration actions do NOT make Jews safer."

Meirav Solomon, a Jewish student at Tufts University and co-vice president of J Street U's New England branch, testified that "Congress and the Trump administration are abandoning the most effective tool the government has to fight antisemitism in all of its forms."

"The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) handles cases of discrimination and harassment against Jewish students, providing a crucial avenue for Jews and other minorities to advocate for our rights," said Solomon. "This administration has suspended thousands of OCR investigations and no longer allows students or their families to file complaints, and now the office's future is uncertain."

Solomon called on lawmakers on the committee to "be honest about the most urgent threat to the Jewish community. It is not student protesters but the bloody legacy of Pittsburgh and Poway, Charlottesville and the Capitol riot."

Ahead of the hearing, Bryn Mawr College student Ellie Baron told JVP Action that organizers must "continue working to dismantle real antisemitism while also defending our friends and community members who are falsely accused of antisemitism. The only way forward is through forging greater solidarity with all people who are targeted by fascism and supremacist ideologies, including antisemitism and anti-Palestinian racism."