Is the anti-Trump resistance also anti-Israel?

You didn’t have to hate Israel to be among the millions of Americans who turned out for the “No Kings” rallies held in a reported 3,300 locations around the United States last weekend. Many liberals of all faiths sympathize with the “resistance” to President Donald Trump but aren’t anti-Zionist. Many of them are not interested in spreading the blood libels about “genocide” and “apartheid” that have been the hallmark of the pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses and in the streets of American cities in the wake of the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Indeed, the main issues addressed at this past rally on Saturday were opposition to the Iran war and the administration’s efforts to enforce immigration laws. Those are positions an individual can take without also engaging in smears of the Jewish state or regurgitating intersectional leftist doctrines that treat Israel as an example of racism and “white” oppression of people of color that merits destruction.

A descent into antisemitism

But as the presence of Palestinian flags and other insignia of the anti-Israel movement at some of the rallies demonstrated, the distinction between anti-Trump and anti-Israel isn’t always easy to maintain. Indeed, a key question to be asked about this upsurge of anti-Trump activism is whether the “No Kings” events can avoid the descent into anti-Israel extremism that marked other movements that played the same role in opposing his first administration.

The Women’s March, which turned out more people for a counter-inaugural weekend protest against Trump in January 2017 than those who attended his swearing-in, was initially pitched to the public as merely a defense of women’s rights. It soon became apparent that its motivation wasn’t merely a partisan effort to “resist” the new administration rather than acting as a loyal opposition. Its organizers were directly involved in antisemitism. They systematically sought to exclude Jewish women and became inextricably tied to anti-Israel agitation.

The Black Lives Matter movement was another key element of the resistance to Trump 1.0. It began in 2014 as part of an effort to promote the myth that white police were deliberately targeting and killing large numbers of African-Americans in the United States. There were hints of untruths even then that the police gained such skills from training with the Israel Defense Forces, itself a blood libel against Jews. BLM reached its peak in the summer of 2020, following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis. A closer look revealed that it, too, was directly linked to Jew-hatred, as well as hostility to Israel, Zionism and Jews.

Democrats and Trump opponents can argue that the domination of those groups by Jew-haters didn’t necessarily compromise the effort to oppose the president and shouldn’t prejudice the latest iteration of the resistance. And, in theory, they are correct. Opposition to Israel doesn’t have to be part of their movement. Not all adherents are particularly interested in demonizing the Jewish state or mainstreaming the antisemitic narratives, tropes and blood libels that have become commonplace on the political left since Oct. 7.

The shift to the left

Still, if anything, anti-Israel activism is far more deeply embedded in the anti-Trump movement of today than it was from 2017 to 2020.

That’s largely a function of the way the opposition to Trump has shifted even further to the left than it was in the last decade. Political liberals had clearly become less enthusiastic in their support for Israel in the last quarter-century than they had been in past generations. The turning point was the presidency of Barack Obama. He was perpetually engaged in spats with the Jewish state and often hostile to its government. Just as important, he took up appeasement of Iran in the form of his 2015 nuclear deal as the signature foreign-policy achievement of his administration. When support for his idea of a rapprochement with Iran and downgrading the alliance with the Jewish state and Saudi Arabia became a litmus test of support for him, it marked a seminal moment in the relationship between the Democrats and Israel.

Like hostility to Russia and support for Ukraine, which were bound up in the first attempt to impeach Trump, being soft on an Iranian regime—the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism—that has been at war with the United States since 1979 has become second nature to Democrats.

Since then, the dominance of progressives in education and popular culture, which are the backbone of liberal and leftist activism, has made Israel even more unpopular in these sectors. That accelerated after Oct. 7 as narratives about Israel being an “apartheid” state engaging in “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs in Gaza have become ubiquitous on the left and mainstreamed by the liberal legacy media that serves as the cheering section for Trump’s political opponents.

The fact that part of the impetus for the latest “No Kings” rally was opposition to a war that the United States is fighting side by side with Israel against the Islamist regime in Iran puts the remaining liberal supporters of Israel in an even more precarious and isolated position. The war to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon to blackmail the West and destroy the Jewish state is almost universally rejected as an unnecessary “war of choice” by Democrats and those obsessed with stopping Trump. Under the circumstances, hostility to Trump’s partner in this entirely necessary conflict is growing—and that’s not even taking into account the willingness of many on both the left and the right to believe that Trump was dragged or even blackmailed into launching the war by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In this context, the fact that Democrats are taking up conspiracy theories about the Jeffrey Epstein case previously floated by the far right to demonize Trump also remains a factor. Signs about Epstein were ubiquitous at “No Kings” rallies. It is an easy leap of imagination to go from concern about that scandal to fictional antisemitic claims that Israel used supposedly secret information about Trump’s involvement to force him to attack Iran.

That the man left-wingers denounce as a “king” exercising unconstitutional authoritarian power in the most powerful nation on earth is also being depicted as a weak puppet of a small nation of 10 million people is obviously a contradiction in terms.

Who’s the real authoritarian?

But it’s no more ridiculous than the whole notion that Trump’s presidency is fascist or an attempt to create an authoritarian state, if not a despotic monarchy.

Let’s concede that Trump’s egotism is on a level that exceeds his predecessors, all of whom were, almost by definition and the nature of the office, egotists who strove for power. His unseemly desire to name things after himself or to put his signature on currency validates some of the “kings” narrative.

However, few of those protesting the president’s egregious actions or statements ever stop to consider that the reason he does it is to drive them up the wall. Trump’s nonstop trolling of his opponents is unpresidential, but it also delights the half of the country that voted for him. That’s especially true for working-class voters, who regard the torment of the credentialed elites about Trump as great entertainment, if not balm for their souls. And that’s not to mention the fact that it seems to always distract and undermine the ability of his opponents to think clearly about him, their political interests or those of the country.

That the same people who took to the streets against Trump were likely supportive of the Biden administration is deeply ironic. For it colluded with Silicon Valley oligarchs to censor free speech, punish opponents of draconian and often-misguided COVID-19 pandemic policies; ignored the Constitution when it came to enforcing laws it didn’t like or to impose those that it did on the country; and also sought to bankrupt and jail Trump, its principal political opponent.

And that’s despite the fact that it was their party that has largely stifled opposition to their establishment’s picked candidate in the last three presidential election cycles (just ask Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) about how he lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to Biden in 2020). And then, Democrats deposed the candidate who had won their primaries in 2024 and replaced him without a single vote being cast. Yet they think that they are the defenders of democracy, while Trump, who doesn’t interfere with their right to protest him, is a fascist and would-be king.

Both sides are guilty of hypocrisy when it comes to attacking their foes and ignoring the mistakes and crimes committed by their side.

Soros-funded ‘astroturfing’

The worrisome element of “No Kings” (principally organized by a Jewish man, Ezra Levin, a co- founder of the group Indivisible) is not the foolish partisanship and hyperbole about democracy that convinces no one who voted for Trump of the justice of their cause. Nor is it their foolish belief that the public is interested in the opinions of celebrities like Robert DeNiro, Jane Fonda or even Bruce Springsteen, who have been railing against Trump for years. It’s the way that toxic attitudes toward Israel and antisemitism that were once confined to the fever swamps of the far left and right have become part of mainstream political discourse.

The danger becomes obvious when you consider who is funding these protests, which were bankrolled by the same left-wing sources that were behind the Women’s March and BLM. The various foundations funded by left-wing Jewish billionaire George Soros were a principal source of support for “No Kings.” The network of philanthropies he and his family control is behind a vast array of left-wing causes, including many dedicated to attacking the State of Israel and promoting its destruction.

Moreover, the manufacture of signs and scripted speeches heard at these events all point to evidence of “astroturfing.” That’s a term that describes what happens when large donors like Soros pile on cash to pay for materials, logistical support and even protesters to give the impression that events that are more a function of a national political strategy are the result of grassroots activism.

Right-wing podcasters and political commentators like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, conspiracy theorist Candace Owens and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes have adopted these big lies and libels about Israel. But as the polls about both support for Israel and the war in Iran show, there is little sign that most Republicans or conservatives agree with them, as the overwhelming majority of those on the right continue to back Washington, Jerusalem and even the war against Iran.

Yet on the left, opposition to Israel and the war is not marginal. It’s painfully obvious that hostility to Israel is taken for granted as one of the laundry list of causes that command the backing of most on that side of the political aisle. Their premature predictions of doom for the U.S.-Israeli campaign to stop Iran are primarily examples of wishful thinking for those who hate Trump and Israel more than they care about the defense of the West against Islamists or genocidal terrorists.

At the moment, “No Kings” and “No Israel” are not the same thing. The priority for many of those who turned out for rallies this past weekend may be support for open borders and opposition to the enforcement of immigration laws. It may be rising gas prices, dissatisfaction with the policies of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. or something else entirely. Still, you don’t have to count the Palestinian flags or other hateful symbols of the red-green alliance against Israel to understand that the antisemitic virus that has taken hold of much of the left continues to spread.

© JNS