Abraham Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that President Donald Trump shouldn't be blamed for the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday.
Foxman told the newspaper that he hasn’t spoken to Trump since his election, although he had been in touch with Trump for years before then. He said that he does not believe Trump is anti-Semitic, and that he does not understand that bigot use his rhetoric to rationalize their beliefs.
“We need to not blame Trump but engage him,” Foxman told the Post. “He has said the right things on anti-Semitism this week. But he needs to change the rhetoric he uses to explain his policies, which gives millions of bigots a rationale for their bigotry.
"I think this is doable, but we won’t accomplish it if we put the blame for Pittsburgh on him. We need to sensitize him, so he’ll realize his words can harm his [Jewish] children and grandchildren.”
He noted that “Trumpism legitimized the bigots to come out of the sewers and gave them a platform to play on. Trump is part of the problem but not the problem. We have to make him not the problem because we don’t want to politicize anti-Semitism, which is a disease of both the Left and the Right.
“The memory of the Shoah protected Jews from anti-Semitism because it added to its containment,” Foxman continued. “But ‘Never again’ was never a mandate. It was a wish. No survivor would say ‘Never again’ was guaranteed, and the further you move away from the Shoah, the less it’s guaranteed.”
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