Walking and chewing gum. Nixon and China. Fighting against the British in Palestine while fighting with the British in Europe.

All are cliches signifying two seemingly contradictory actions that are possible — and potentially preferable — to do at the same time. And all were cited this week by Jewish critics of Donald Trump as apt metaphors for what they are doing this week in the wake of Trump’s successful brokering of a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

Jewish Americans are reeling as a president many blame for undermining democracy brokered a deal that appears poised to return the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. Unlike many jubilant Israelis, some reliably liberal Jews here are having a hard time praising Trump and his team for the kind of diplomatic breakthrough that his Democratic predecessor couldn’t bring about. But they are largely figuring out how to do it.

“It’s important to recognize that the vast majority of American Jews, just as Israelis, want a return of the hostages, and they want this war to end, and if Donald Trump and his team can help to bring that about, they deserve credit for doing so,” said Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, the leading Democratic group in the community.

Trump in his second term is deeply unpopular with American Jews. Prior to the announcement of a long-awaited ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, his backing for Israel did not dent the disapproval he draws from a demographic that votes overwhelmingly Democratic.

A poll in April found 72% of Jewish voters disapproved of Trump. A robust majority opposed his signature policies, including deportations and retaliating against political enemies. A majority even opposed his efforts to combat antisemitism.

At the same time, Trump also has not hidden his disdain for legacy Jewish groups: The FBI earlier this month cut off all ties with the Anti-Defamation League, and its director, Kash Patel, likened the group’s tracking of right-wing extremists to terrorism.

Abe Foxman, the former ADL CEO, was appalled by Patel’s actions against his former colleagues and campaigned in 2020 for Joe Biden, the Democrat who ousted Trump after his first term. But he said the community should praise Trump for the peace deal, and he was surprised the praise was not more robust.

“The American Jewish community needs to walk and chew gum at the same time. We should be able to differentiate and say, ‘Thank you, Mr. President’ and ‘No thank you, Mr. President,’” Foxman said in an interview. “He did something so many of us yearned for in the last two years, and he made it happen, and Biden didn’t make it happen.”

Rabbi Jonah Pesner, who leads the Reform movement’s advocacy arm, the Religious Action Center, said there was a Jewish ethical obligation to thank Trump, based on the Jewish imperative to publicly “recognize the good,” hakarat hatov, even if the administration does not reciprocate.

“We would look at it through the lens of Jewish learning and Jewish wisdom,” Pesner said. “We have a president who has done exactly what we asked, bring the hostages home, end the war and the suffering in Gaza, both for the sake of the innocent in Gaza, but also for [Israelis], and get back on a path to a sustainable, lasting peace so that both sides can live in peace.”

That does not mean opposition to Trump’s domestic policies should flag, Pesner said, noting the Reform movement’s activism in opposing the deportations and Trump policies targeting transgender people.

“Our people are in the streets in Los Angeles and Chicago, trying to be a human buffer between troops that are being deployed [to arrest undocumented migrants] and the people who will be impacted,” he said.

Pesner’s predecessor at the RAC, Rabbi David Saperstein, said Trump “deserves to be commended for an extraordinary achievement” – but the Trump administration’s strident hostility to groups that might disagree on some issues made it hard to express. (Earlier this month, Trump shared on social media a meme calling Democrats “THE PARTY OF HATE, EVIL, AND SATAN.”)

Saperstein lamented the passing of an era when Jewish organizations would be comfortable working with a president whose policies they mostly opposed. He recalled being present at the White House, as RAC CEO, when President George W. Bush signed RAC-backed bills on human trafficking, on Sudan and on prison rape.

“While we staunchly supported a number of the efforts of the [Bush] administration, both domestically and in terms of Iraq, one always knew that the White House would accept that dichotomy as a norm of how American politics functions, and wouldn’t stop that from working collegially in places we could find common ground,” Saperstein recalled. “This administration is woefully different.”

Joel Rubin, a deputy assistant secretary of state during the Obama administration, drew two historical analogies to explain why Democrats and Jews should more robustly praise Trump on his Mideast diplomacy: Richard Nixon, who brokered peaceful relations with China while under even as he faced investigation for spying on Democrats, and David Ben-Gurion, who in 1939 said Jews in Palestine should resist British oppression with the same dedication they showed in joining the British in fighting Nazis.

“I think it’s been a very, very difficult thing for Democrats to admit that, you know, Nixon went to China on this one,” said Rubin, who in 2020 was the Jewish community liaison for the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the de facto leader of progressives.

Trump, Rubin said, was able to do what Biden was not: pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to defy his far-right coalition partners and make a deal by enticing him with unfettered military and diplomatic support.

“Biden didn’t have the leverage to pressure Bibi [Netanyahu], the way that Trump has the leverage to pressure Bibi.” Biden, he said, “failed to capitalize on the window that he had opened after Oct. 7,” when the Democratic president expressed unalloyed support for Israel. “He kind of sat passive, and he just didn’t know how to do it. And Trump didn’t take any of the recommendations from the ‘pressure Israel’ crowd. He didn’t cut off military aid. In fact, he accelerated it. And that built up huge equity inside the Israeli body politic.”

Jewish political conservatives have been beyond effusive in their praise. The Republican Jewish Coalition has not only called for Trump to win the Nobel Peace Prize, it said the prize should be renamed for Trump.

Jo-Ann Mort, a public relations consultant who has worked with liberal Jewish and non-Jewish groups, said Trump deserved thanks, but the deal was not the game changer that Trump and his acolytes were claiming. Its terms have been on the table since the Biden administration, she said, and keeping the peace in the Middle East has been part of the presidential brief since at least Israel’s inception.

“It was an agreement that was on the table a year ago that Bibi didn’t take,” she said. “This is what the president of the United States is supposed to do in a place where the U.S. has so many interests and is so deeply involved –  it would have been contrary to his role as president if he hadn’t tried to solve it.”

Soifer, the Jewish Democrats’ CEO, said that even as the deal deserves praise, its elements needed further scrutiny, particularly the ensuing enhancements in security cooperation between the United States and Qatar, a country that has backed Hamas. She noted for instance a deal he brokered with Yemen’s Houthi militia earlier this year that stopped attacks on U.S.-flagged ships – but allowed them to continue on Israeli flagged ships. On Friday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Qatar would establish a military installation within the United States, which has also offered Qatar security assurances designed to prevent Israel from striking Hamas leaders living there.

“Israel’s security has not been a part of every calculation in terms of foreign policy of this administration and the Houthis are one example,” Soifer said. “This deal with the Qataris may be another, and we do need to consider Israel’s security. His tunnel vision may serve his short-term interests” of securing a Nobel Peace Prize, “but it doesn’t necessarily serve our long term national security interests as well as that of Israel.”

Betsy Sheer, a leading Florida-based fundraiser for Jewish causes and for Democrats, said praise for Trump’s deal should be unstinting — as should be resistance to his domestic policies.

“Trump has figured out a way, unlike his predecessor, who I thought was extremely supportive of Israel – he’s figured out a way through knocking heads and embarrassing people and promising God knows what that got us to this moment, and I don’t think we can overlook that,” she said.

“His domestic policies are abhorrent, and you know, I’m not going to let up on that at all,” Sheer said. “You still have to look at the shutting down of civil liberties and voting rights and the authoritarian stance and the punitive way of suing everybody that’s ever been an enemy.”

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(JTA) — In the days before his murder, Charlie Kirk was frustrated — and he wasn’t hiding it from his friends. The conservative influencer complained in a WhatsApp group that his “Jewish donors” were “playing into all the stereotypes” and said they were pushing him to “leave the pro-Israel cause.”

Those messages surfaced and were confirmed as authentic this week, giving new insight into what was on Kirk’s mind before his death.

“I cannot and will not be bullied like this,” Kirk wrote in the group WhatsApp conversation, which included Jewish associates.

The messages, along with the recently revealed full text of a letter Kirk had sent to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several months before his death, provide additional evidence that Kirk’s frustrations with the behavior of Israel and its supporters were boiling over.

Kirk’s views on Israel and Jews have become one of the most scrutinized aspects of the millennial pundit’s legacy in the wake of his assassination on a Utah college campus. They also reveal the deepening trenches on the right over Israel, as young conservatives are showing signs of turning against its conduct of the Gaza war and some have percolated conspiracy theories alleging that Israel played a role in Kirk’s murder.

Pro-Israel backers of Kirk, including Netanyahu, rushed after his death to label the pundit as an unwavering friend and supporter of Israel — even as Kirk, during his life, was on record as supporting aspects of the Great Replacement theory and making other comments disparaging Jews. Netanyahu also posted his own video just prior to Kirk’s funeral refuting the idea that Israel was involved in the influencer’s murder.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson, a friend and associate of Kirk’s who has leaned more heavily into anti-Israel and conspiratorial rhetoric in recent years, alluded to Kirk’s assassins “eating hummus” during a eulogy at the pundit’s funeral that was also attended by President Donald Trump.

Carlson and fellow conspiratorial right-wing personality Candace Owens, also a longtime friend of Kirk’s, are at the center of the leaked texts as well. In them, Kirk discussed what he implied was Jewish blowback to his associations with both of them, including plans to invite Carlson to an event staged by his group Turning Point USA.

“Just lost another huge Jewish donor. $2 million a year because we won’t cancel Tucker,” Kirk wrote, adding, “I’m thinking of inviting Candace.” Another member of the thread, whose identity has not been revealed, responded, “Ugghhh”; later someone adds “Please don’t invite Candace.”

The text messages don’t name any donors, but the New York Times reported earlier this month that Robert Shillman, a tech mogul and supporter of pro-Israel causes, grew angry at Kirk and canceled a $2 million donation to TPUSA over Carlson’s participation at a TPUSA event.

The texts were first revealed this week by Owens, on her YouTube show. Their authenticity was later confirmed by Andrew Kolvet, a spokesperson for TPUSA, in his appearance on Kirk’s own eponymous show Wednesday.

At least one pro-Israel Jewish associate of Kirk’s, Newsweek opinion editor Josh Hammer, has confirmed he was on the text thread.

Owens, who claimed the texts were sent “48 hours” before Kirk’s murder and that their recipients included “a rabbi,” sought to paint the texts as evidence that Kirk had recently made powerful enemies in the pro-Israel sphere. On X, she has insinuated that Hammer may have had foreknowledge of Kirk’s murder.

Kolvet was more sanguine about what they revealed.

“I actually am really excited that the truth is out there,” Kolvet said on the show, adding that Kirk’s texts were “consistent with public frustrations he voiced many times” about the pro-Israel movement.

“What is the truth about the way Charlie felt about Israel? Well, it’s complicated and it’s nuanced, and it was a wrestle that was going on for months,” Kolvet said. Later, he added, “Charlie was wonderfully defiant. He was wonderfully independent, and he believed in the freedom of speech, and he felt like he deserved, as a friend of Israel over many years, the right to speak out and have criticisms.”

Kolvet noted that Kirk tended to strike “a more moderate tone in public” on the subject of Israel than the way he came across in the texts, while also sharing past interviews in which Kirk had expressed frustration that some pro-Israel circles were portraying him as an antisemite. Prior to his death, Kirk had sent a letter to Netanyahu warning him that Israel was “losing support even in conservative circles.”

Hammer, addressing the texts, wrote on the social network X on Thursday that Kirk “was blowing off steam in a private group chat setting.” He spoke with Kirk about Israel hours later, he said, adding, “Charlie sought out our advice for how to better communicate the Israel issue on campus so as to be most effective with a younger Gen Z audience.”

“Donors have every right to withhold donations, and organization CEOs/chairmen have every right to then be upset when donors withhold those donations,” Hammer wrote by way of explaining the emotions behind the texts. He added, “the notion that Charlie Kirk was ‘turning’ on his career-long friendships with the Jewish people and the Jewish state of Israel—as opposed to (sarcastically!) blowing off steam in a private group chat setting—is an egregious lie and is belied by the facts.”

On Kirk’s show, Kolvet discussed Israel with Blake Neff — a former writer on Carlson’s Fox News show who resigned from the network in 2020 after it was revealed he had written numerous anonymous racist posts.

Neff on Wednesday continued the Israel discussion by holding up a copy of “Righteous Victims,” a 1999 book about the Arab-Israeli conflict by prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris whose scholarship on the origins of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict casts significant blame on Israel.  Neff said that he had finished reading it just before Kirk’s shooting in Utah.

“I read this book because Charlie said, ‘Blake, get really well versed on this so you can help me whenever it comes up,’” Neff recalled.

No evidence has been shared linking the only suspect to be charged with Kirk’s murder to Israel. Yet Kolvet, adding fuel to the conspiratorial fire, stated that he had turned over the texts about “Jewish donors” to the FBI in the wake of the shooting.

“We wanted to leave nothing unturned,” he said, later suggesting that speculation on Kirk’s relationship with his Jewish donors could wind up “tainting a jury pool.”

The post ‘Jewish donors play into all the stereotypes,’ Charlie Kirk wrote in leaked text messages before his murder appeared first on The Forward.

(JTA) — The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Jewish president, Sally Kornbluth, became the first university leader to reject the Trump administration’s offer to adopt a policy deal in exchange for funding benefits.

The administration extended its proposal, titled the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” to nine universities this month that it said were “good actors.” The deal would require the schools to cap international student enrollment, limit employees’ political speech, and make other changes in line with the administration’s policies — including “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

In exchange, the schools would gain “priority” federal funding – a potentially potent carrot at a time when the Trump administration is more often slashing schools’ funding in an effort to retaliate against them and force changes.

One school, the public University of Texas system, said it was honored to be considered without yet accepting. Kornbluth’s rejection makes MIT the first of the schools to reject the deal.

“In our view, America’s leadership in science and innovation depends on independent thinking and open competition for excellence,” she wrote in a letter to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon Friday. “Therefore, with respect, we cannot support the proposed approach to addressing the issues facing higher education.”

The rejection could make Kornbluth a target of conservative ire nearly two years after she dodged criticism in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. After she and two other university leaders appeared before Congress in December 2023 to answer questions about their schools’ handling of campus antisemitism, the other two were widely maligned for their responses and soon resigned.

But Kornbluth, who had built strong ties with Jewish leaders at MIT and her previous university, Duke, retained the support of her community, despite concerns about responses to pro-Palestinian student protesters.

Now, Kornbluth could reignite right-wing anger — while shoring up support among those on her campus who might see her as resisting an inappropriate intrusion into the university’s governance.

In the letter, Kornbluth added that the “compact” included principles that would “restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”

While MIT has gone largely unscathed by the Trump administration’s campaign against antisemitism on college campuses, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that it had “allowed an anti-Semitic climate to persist.”

The other seven colleges offered the deal were the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia. Other than the University of Texas, the other schools have not yet commented. It was not clear how the White House selected them.

The post MIT’s Jewish president rejects Trump’s offer of ‘priority’ funding in exchange for policy changes appeared first on The Forward.