Donald Trump On Anti-Semitism: President’s Comments On JCC Threats Too Little, Too Late, Say Critics

As a Jewish Community Center in San Diego became the latest to be targeted in a nationwide wave of bomb threats, President Donald Trump broke his silence Tuesday on the string of anti-Semitic attacks. Some, though, have already criticized Trump’s condemnation as amounting to too little too late.

The Lawrence Family JCC in the seaside community of La Jolla was the recipient of an emailed bomb threat, with a package also found inside, according to San Diego’s CBS8. Police investigated Tuesday morning and told people inside to leave.

The incident came a day after the total number of bomb threats to Jewish centers across the country since the start of the year reached 69, targeting 54 JCCs in 27 states, according to the JCC Association of North America. The same day, the FBI said that, along with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, it was investigating the threats for possible civil rights violations.

The White House also released a statement condemning the threats, while the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, who converted to Judaism shortly before her wedding to Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew, spoke out on Twitter.

However, the president had remained silent on the issue until Tuesday. When asked by a Jewish reporter at his press conference last week about the attacks, Trump told him to “sit down” and to be “quiet, quiet, quiet,” while claiming to be “the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life.”

But speaking after a tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., he directly addressed the bomb threats for the first time.

“This tour was a meaningful reminder of why we have to fight bigotry, intolerance and hatred in all of its very ugly forms,” he said. “The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible and are painful and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil.”

To many, though, those comments fell short of what was required. Just minutes after he spoke, the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect, which has become a frequent and fierce critic of Trump’s policies, not only said that the condemnation was insufficient but that Trump’s own administration was breeding anti-Semitism.

"MR. PRESIDENT, YOUR TOO LITTLE, TOO LATE ACKNOWLEGMENT OF #Antisemitism TODAY IS NOT ENOUGH," Steven Goldstein, executive director of the center wrote on Facebook.

“The President’s sudden acknowledgement is a Band-Aid on the cancer of Antisemitism that has infected his own Administration.”

A similar feeling was later shared by Rep. Keith Ellison, a candidate to lead the Democratic National Committee and the first Muslim elected to Congress.

“Why has it taken @realDonaldTrump so long to even say the word ‘anti-Semitism?’” he wrote on Twitter. “Perhaps it has something to do with placating his base?”

Trump was also criticized for the White House releasing a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day last month that failed to mention Jews.

Meanwhile, Trump's chief strategist is Steve Bannon, the former publisher for Breitbart.com, a website which Bannon himself described as the platform for the "alt-right,” an umbrella term encompassing white nationalists.

As well as the bomb threats, there have also been numerous instances in recent weeks of swastikas being posted in public. Earlier this week, a Jewish cemetery in Missouri had up to 200 headstones overturned by vandals.