So far, over a thousand indictments have been filed against Americans who participated in the storming of Congress, an event that ended in the death of several police officers and is considered one of the low points of American democracy. “I wonder if the fate of the protesters against Israel will be similar to that of the defendants in the events of January 6,” he said. “A lot of property damage was caused here as well and a lot of people were seriously injured, but I can say right now what the result will be, and this is also why people have lost faith in our justice system.”
Trump’s claims about the damage caused by the protests are unfounded, even after students at Columbia University stormed a building on campus, smashing windows and causing property damage. Despite the harsh calls against Israel, some of which are seen in Israel as incitement and even anti-Semitic, so far the events have deteriorated into physical violence between isolated protesters and no casualties have been recorded.
Another thing that Trump chose to ignore is the seriousness of the charges against his supporters, compared to offenses that could be attributed to the protesters. Trump’s supporters are not accused of trespassing or vandalizing property – relatively low offenses on the criminal scale, but of the most serious attempt since the founding of the United States to damage the purity of the elections.
The demonstrators against Israel, on the other hand, cannot be prosecuted for the demonstration itself or the chants in it: in the United States, demonstration laws are extremely permissive, which sometimes border on the absurd and allow, for example, neo-Nazi groups to march in the streets and chant clearly anti-Semitic slogans – as long as they do not directly call for harm to such and other groups .
Also last week, Trump used the stormy demonstrations to downplay another difficult incident from his presidency when he said that “there is bubbling hatred there,” he said in a conversation with reporters. “The demonstrations in Charlottesville are dwarfed by what is happening there.”
In his words, Trump referred to the far-right demonstration that took place in Charlottesville in 2017, in which, among other things, American neo-Nazi organizations marched and shouted slogans such as “the Jews will not replace us.” During the event, there were clashes between the right-wing protesters and counter-demonstrators, which culminated in the death of a female counter-demonstrator.
In 2017, Trump had difficulty condemning the far-right protesters, who are an essential part of his base, saying that “there were good people on both sides of the fence.” Later he was forced to publish another statement in which he managed to condemn the manifestations of violence. During Trump’s tenure, there was a spike in hate crimes – not only against Jews, but also against Muslims and other minority groups.
The peak of violence came in 2018, when 11 worshipers were murdered at the “Tree of Life” synagogue in Pittsburgh. All of this did not prevent him this week from pointing an accusing finger at Biden, and saying that the increase in anti-Semitism stems from the conduct of current President Joe Biden – who condemned the demonstrations and has even provided broad support for Israel’s actions in Gaza since October 7th, despite his attempts to moderate them.