The Trump administration is caught up in a controversy about Jewish victims of hate—again
LatestUPDATE, Feb. 21, 2016, 11:32 am: In remarks Tuesday morning at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, President Trump finally got specific, saying: “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community at community centers are horrible and are painful.”
Ivanka Trump, who holds no official post in her father’s administration, was the lone Trump World voice mentioning Jews (albeit obliquely) in remarks condemning threats on Jewish community centers across the country over the weekend.
On Monday evening, Trump tweeted:
The hashtag stands for Jewish community centers, which responded to 11 bomb threats on Monday, The New York Times reported, the latest in a string of such threats and a marked rise in anti-Semitic sentiments in the country. 54 centers in the U.S. and Canada have received 69 threats since January, according to David Posner, the director of strategic performance of the JCC Association of North America.
Although the White House released a statement condemning the threats, which forced evacuations at several centers, the administration again came under fire for not mentioning by name the people most affected: namely, Jews.
“Hatred and hate-motivated violence of any kind have no place in a country founded on the promise of individual freedom. The President has made it abundantly clear that these actions are unacceptable,” White House deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters said in a statement to press.
The White House’s bizarrely non-specific statement called back to the days-long dust-up over the administration’s Holocaust Remembrance Day remarks, which managed to omit any mention of the Nazis’ six million Jewish victims.