Why Are Jews Freaking Out About Trump’s Latest Executive Order?

Is Trump really trying to define Jews as a nationality? We break it down.

By 
trump executive order

Last night, The New York Times reported that President Trump is set to sign an executive order targeting “anti-Semitism and Israel boycotts on college campuses.” The article stated, “The order will effectively interpret Judaism as a race or nationality, not just a religion, to prompt a federal law penalizing colleges and universities deemed to be shirking their responsibility to foster an open climate for minority students.”

Now that we’ve actually been able to read this executive order, it seems like the NYT got this wrong. But before we get into all that, let’s break down the basics.

What’s an executive order?

An executive order is a rule issued by the president that has the force of law. So, if Trump releases this EO, it becomes, in effect, law.

What does this executive order intend to do?

The proposed Executive Order is meant to make the Civil Rights Act of 1964 apply to Jewish college students. Why? Under Title VI of that act, the Department of Education can withhold public funding from a school or university that discriminates “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” Not included? Religion.

Therefore, by classifying Jews as part of a “nationality” with a “shared national origin,” they can become a protected class under this.

Okay, so why do this?

All roads lead back to Israel… By classifying Jews as a “nationality,” thus making them protected under Title VI, the Trump administration will be able to say that boycotting Israel on college campuses is harming Jews, and then they will likely try to withhold funding from schools that promote the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Trump uses the definition of anti-Semitism cited in 2016 by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, which defines certain types of anti-Israel activity as anti-Semitic, but also says not all Israel criticism should be classified as anti-Semitism.

What does the Executive Order actually say?

This morning, Jewish Insider obtained a draft of the EO that Trump will sign. Nowhere in the order does it explicitly define Jews as a nationality, but calls for the enforcement of “Title VI against prohibited forms of discrimination rooted in anti-Semitism as vigorously as against all other forms of discrimination prohibited by Title VI.” So, the text implies: Jews can be perceived as a race or having a common national origin, in order to receive protection under Title VI.

However, this was super unclear in the Times report, so we are still going to go through the reactions to the concept of Jews as a nationality, and why people perceive it as dangerous, because it sparked a ton of conversation.

Wait. Are Jews a nationality? Aren’t Jews sometimes referred to as a “nation”?

This is super complex! The idea of “nationality” as we understand it in 2019 is a modern concept; it relates back to the rise of the “nation-state,” which we can trace back to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Essentially, definitions of modern nation-states are not easily agreed upon: Some define them as states where the people in the state shares the same culture, or where people are united by language or common descent. This led to a rise of nationalities. Not gonna get into it all here. Go read some government theory or history!

Jews, as we know, have a history that extends way back before the rise of “nation-states,” which made Jews a problem in the “Westphalian system.”

(Read the whole thread here.)

We can conceive of the Jewish people as a “nation,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean they share a nationality. A nationality is “a legal relationship between an individual person and a state.” (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

As Ben Faulding (@TheHipsterRebbe) points out on Twitter: The biblical idea of a nation is not equivalent to the modern idea of nationality.

Essentially Jewish identity is complex.

Okay, I’m with you.

 How did people react?

Again, even though no one had seen the actual text of the EO last night, the Times article was enough to cause many, many people to react to it on Twitter.

Let’s get in to them?

1. Judaism is not a nationality is the main argument that is circulating on Twitter. The argument is essentially: Jews are an ethno-religion, and come from a wide variety of nationalities.

I am American, was the point of many of these tweets. I am an American Jew.

2. The idea dives into concepts of “dual loyalty,” an anti-Semitic trope that implies Jews will never be loyal to the country they are living in.

Because guess who are the type of people who don’t think Judaism is a religion? People like David Duke, leader of the Ku Klux Klan:

Which brings us to…

3. Oh yeah, and Trump has white nationalist ideas and white nationalist supporters.

4. Many drew comparisons to the Soviet Union, where Jewishness was a nationality and a religion. This also fed into the dual loyalty trope:

5. And comparisons to Nazi Germany, where German Jews were no longer defined as German.

6. Yet others pointed out that this is another way Jews are being used as a pawn to stifle free speech, especially by pro-Palestinian activists.

7. Just YIKES.

Did anyone support it?

Glad you asked! Yep.

1. Some argued it will push forth a law to hold colleges accountable for anti-Semitism (implied as BDS), where bipartisan legislation has tried (and failed).

2. Jews are a nationality, went a whole other argument.

“Set aside first amendment concerns” is probably not a great way to start a tweet, but, we’re gonna share it anyway:

3. Others argued it’s just meant to help fight anti-Semitism on campuses, and the only way to do it is to affirm that Judaism isn’t just a religion.

4. President Obama set the precedent, so why are you freaking out now, others asked.

Back up: If Obama already applied Title VI to Jewish students, why do we need this executive order?

To make Trump’s base happy, essentially. It’s political pandering to do all the things we discussed above — basically, fight BDS.

But yes, anti-Semitism was already covered, per the Obama administration. This EO seems to just… say the same thing.

Jared Kushner took to the New York Times to reject claims that his father-in-law’s executive order defined Jews as a nationality. In an opinion piece, he wrote: “It merely says that to the extent that Jews are discriminated against for ethnic, racial or national characteristics, they are entitled to protection by the anti-discrimination law.”

So why was the reaction so intense?

Trump’s history of invoking tropes and themes that have echoes in anti-Semitism did not help. And, historical precedent has undeniably made people wary about classifying Jews as a nationality, and un-linking them from the current country they live in.

Gotcha. Anything else?

Many American Jews did turn to humor, and we’d be remiss not to include the funniest tweets:

1. Imagining an American Jewish nationality:

(Read the entire thread. Seriously. You won’t regret it.)

2. Tradition, tradition!

3. Thank u, next 

4. New Yorker > American, obviously.

Which is how we’ll end, because they made us smile.

Header image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

Read More