Former President Donald Trump said Saturday night that there has “never been a more dangerous time since the Holocaust” to be Jewish in the United States.
The Republican presidential candidate made the remarks at a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where he claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris decided not to choose Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate because he is Jewish.
“They turned him down because he’s Jewish,” Trump told a packed house at Mohegan Sun Arena.
“They rejected him for other reasons, but the main reason is that he’s Jewish,” the former president continued, adding that “any Jewish person who votes for him” [Harris] or a democrat has to go out and have his head examined.
“What’s happening with Israel and the Jewish people, there’s never been a more dangerous time since the Holocaust if you’re Jewish in America,” he said.
Shapiro rejected allegations that he was passed over because of his faith, saying that after Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz told him that “anti-Semitism had no impact” on the decision.
There has been a surge in anti-Semitic hate crimes across the country since Hamas launched its attack on Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 Israelis and sparking a grueling war in the Gaza Strip, now in its 10th month.
New York City has seen a particularly worrying increase in anti-Semitic incidents: 30 anti-Semitic crimes were investigated by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force in July alone. In June, 45 crimes targeting Jewish individuals were recorded.
According to the latest available data, 229 anti-Semitic hate crimes were reported to the New York Police Department as of August 4, 2018. At the same time last year, only 126 such incidents were reported.
Last week, a hateful cyclist beat up a 70-year-old man in Central Park in a hateful attack. The thug called the elderly man a “f**king Jew” and threatened to kill him while he was walking his daughter’s dog before punching him multiple times.
The war in Gaza has sparked large-scale protests across the country, including on many university campuses last spring, leading to hundreds of arrests.
New York City has seen anti-Israel protesters take to the streets of Manhattan almost every week, often disrupting the city’s major transportation hubs.
Michelle Ahdoot, communications director for End Jew Hatred, told the Post last month that “the most significant hate we’ve seen in New York since October 7th has overwhelmingly been hatred of Jews.
“Almost every day we see groups of radical Hamas supporters – some even waving the Hamas flag – marching through the streets of the city and calling for genocide of the Jews. We do not feel safe,” she added.
