Today I was among the ranks of devastated Americans mourning what I had hoped would be a new era for my nation, one that would be led by an intelligent woman and, more importantly, one which would not involve Donald Trump.
My devastation was compounded when I saw the celebratory responses of numerous Jews – American and British – to Trump’s victory, and realised how many of them had voted for or supported the disgraced former president solely because of the stance he has taken on Israel.
Listen: I am an American Jew. I work for a Jewish newspaper, I had a bat mitzvah, I’ve spent time in Israel – I'm a full-on Zionist Jew, and I’m proud to be one. But I’m also a woman, an American woman, built of strong liberal values and a desire to see people of every gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnic origin and religion treated with equal respect and compassion.
And I believe it would be an utter betrayal of these other aspects of my identity to vote for a misogynistic egomaniac, climate change denier and literal convicted criminal in this all-important presidential election simply because he has branded himself as a pal of Israel.
I’m disgusted by how many Jews have forsaken so many of their fellow Americans at the altar of one or two policies Trump has promised to uphold, and by how many British Jews seem to think they’d do the same given a go at the American ballot box.
Have we all collectively forgotten the myriad wretched things he has said and implied about women, people of colour, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people? Not to mention his plans to cut spending on green energy and withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, reverse a major federal gun safety law, continue to restrict women’s access to reproductive healthcare, and defund or even shut down the Department of Education?
Perhaps this past year – during which our community endured so much hate – we discarded the Jewish value of Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. But I don’t think that’s really who we are, much as that hate we endured may have caused our empathy for others to curdle.
Because, at our core, Jews want the world to become a more tolerant place, yes? We want to see the end of antisemitism and bigotry of all kinds, yes?
Then explain to me the extreme act of cognitive dissonance at work in those who decry the ill-treatment of Jews while simultaneously applauding the election of a man who has called immigrants “animals” and “not human”, labels which were just as easily thrown at Jews in Germany not so long ago.
While I understand the need to close rank, to protect our under-fire diaspora community and our families in Israel after this terrible year, rising antisemitism and even anti-Israel sentiment do not offer up enough of an excuse to lend our support to a demagogue who incited a near-coup after refusing to concede his loss in the last election.
Before Trump was elected in 2016, his whole schtick felt like a bit of a joke. My two best friends and me, then just 17, stayed up late to watch the results roll in, eating popcorn and laughing, the prospects of a Trump presidency still vague and seemingly out of our comprehension. I knew there was a growing number of Americans who liked him – I saw ‘Trump 2016’ signs on some of my neighbours’ front lawns and a few of the football players at my high school wore t-shirts of the same ilk – but I didn’t know and couldn’t have known what the reality of this man’s ascendancy actually meant.
How could my friends and I have known then that, in a few quick years, while we were busy growing up, Trump would facilitate the overturn of Roe v. Wade and one of us would end up needing an abortion? That dozens of women would come forward to accuse Trump of sexual assault, but none would crack his reputation as an all-American everyman, misconduct allegations be damned? That several pregnant women and at least one teenage girl would die because of extreme abortion bans that his justices opened the door to?
What much of this comes down to is how much I think the US hates women. I am weary of saying this so bluntly; the “angry feminist” trope is as ripe as ever. But this realisation hit me hard today: Americans would rather have an elderly felon in charge of the nuclear codes than a woman. My heart is broken for the young girls in America who came so close to seeing a version of themselves represented in the White House for the first time in history, an example of the heights they could reach one day, only to be reminded that such places were not made for them after all.
And yes, I voted for Harris because I wanted to see a woman in charge for the first time. I believed in her, faults and all, and I believed she would treat the Jewish community with fairness and respect, just like every other minority group in America.
Fairness means being critical of Israel, too: it is a country with flaws, just like the UK, just like the US, just like any country that has ever existed.
And yet, the cards have been dealt: our next president is the convicted felon who has been impeached twice. I am not one to discredit the democratic process by which a president is elected. This is who America chose.
But to anyone saying how beneficial Trump will be for Israel and its aims in the Middle East: think how much that matters to an American woman being denied a life-saving abortion because she was born in Texas or South Dakota, thanks to Trump. I care about Israel’s security, but why does it have to come at the expense of the security of my loved ones back in the US and the rights of women to receive reproductive healthcare?
When good people grant an evil man amnesty again and again in favour of a single political issue he purports to champion, they might just be throwing millions and millions of others to the wolves.
