After President Donald Trump told the Israeli American Council's 2019 national summit they have "no choice" but to vote for him, the Jewish Democratic Council of America vowed to continue to work to do exactly the opposite.
"American Jews do have a choice, and they're not choosing President Trump or the Republican Party, which has been complicit in enacting his hateful agenda," Jewish Democratic Council Executive Director Halie Soifer said in a statement Sunday, according to The Hill.
"An overwhelming majority of Jews are both pro-Israel and anti-Trump because of his incendiary rhetoric targeting our community and others, and because his symbolic gestures on Israel have not made America or Israel more secure."
Jewish groups had raised ire this weekend after Trump had told the Israeli American Council they should drop their hatred of him and vote for him because it helps them economically.
"You're not nice people at all, but you have to vote for me," Trump said. "You have no choice. You're not going to vote for Pocahontas, I can tell you that. You're not going to vote for the wealth tax!"
The Jewish Democratic Council, which has called Trump the "biggest threat to American Jews," attacked this weekend's remarks as "deeply offensive" because they share "negative stereotypes that have been used historically to target Jews."
“We strongly denounce these vile and bigoted remarks in which the president – once again – used anti-Semitic stereotypes to characterize Jews as driven by money and insufficiently loyal to Israel," Soifer said in her statement.
"He even had the audacity to suggest that Jews 'have no choice' but to support him, and that we should 'get people out of [our] country' in order to increase support of Israel."
But Trump's words were: "We have to get the people of our country, of this country, to love Israel more; we have to get them to love Israel more. Because you have people that are Jewish people, that are great people – they don't love Israel enough."
Liberal Jewish advocacy group J Street added an attack on Trump's remarks on Twitter.
"The president of the United States is incapable of addressing Jewish audiences without dipping into the deep well of anti-Semitic tropes that shape his worldview," J Street tweeted.
"We're not going to hold our breath waiting for Trump's supporters to speak out," J Street added in an ensuing tweet. "We are going to work tirelessly to defeat this president and those who've enabled him 11 months from now."
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