The announcement by President Donald Trump in late March that Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) would not be the next ambassador to the United Nations was disappointing to many Israel supporters. Since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the congresswoman has emerged as a leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, both in the fight against antisemitism and in support of Israel, perhaps becoming the most visible leader in those battles.
What’s more, she vowed to continue those efforts at the world body when she appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in January. Her criticism of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was not only necessary but a breath of fresh air.
But one would be greatly mistaken to think that she will pause in her efforts to combat Jew-haters and anti-Israel terrorists.
Her return to the House could see more steps in the growing outline of what might be called “The Stefanik Doctrine.”
It contrasts sharply with the policy approach of the Biden-Harris team, which left even their own supporters in the liberal camp—and many others—outraged by what could be described as their propensity for inaction against anti-Israel extremists on campuses and beyond. It was an inaction that suggested to Hamas supporters that they would face little federal opposition, no matter how outrageous and illegal their activities became.
Deborah Lipstadt, the longtime historian and Emory University professor who served as the only U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism during the Biden presidency, was quoted in The New York Times on March 4, saying: “ … there were too many moments that were met with silence.”
That is an understatement.
What’s worse is that now that the Trump administration has changed course in that it is removing anti-Israel extremists from the country, groups like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace are attacking these actions. A J Street press release issued on March 10 stated: “The Trump Administration’s arrest, detention, and threat of deportation of Columbia protest leader and permanent legal resident Mahmoud Khalil, in violation of existing law and without due process, is an affront to the constitutional right to free speech … .”
For many American Jews, these arguments are eerily reminiscent of the rhetoric used by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) during one of the darkest periods in American Jewish history: when neo-Nazis threatened to march on Skokie, Ill., a community that was home to an extremely large number of Holocaust survivors.
But what a difference 48 years makes: Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, former House representative from Illinois, and most recently, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, opposed the haters in his state in the 1970s. As Emanuel explained in a 2017 interview in The Times of Israel, “You’re talking to a person who started his own political awareness opposing neo-Nazis in Skokie and then in Marquette Park in Chicago when I was 16 or 17 years old.”
It’s no longer liberals like Emanuel leading the charge to protect Jews from Jew-haters; now, it’s Stefanik and others on the other side of the aisle.
What’s changed?
On one hand, groups like J Street and the Jewish Voice for Peace did not exist when neo-Nazis pushed to march in Skokie.
Another thing is that many clear-thinking Americans of all faiths see that Hamas is really no different than Al-Qaeda or the Nazis.
A year ago, Stefanik stated in reference to campus antisemitism at Columbia University on New York’s Upper West Side: “Fueled by hatred and ignorance, unchecked antisemitism has become commonplace on Columbia’s campus: Nazi-era antisemitic propaganda litters the grounds, Swastikas graffiti school property, and mobs assaulting Jewish students, professors openly supporting Hamas and calling for genocide of the Jewish people. Meanwhile, despite claims otherwise, Columbia’s leadership refuses to enforce their own policies and condemn Jewish hatred on campus, creating a breeding ground for antisemitism and a hotbed of support for terrorism from radicalized faculty and students.”
Views towards the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (referred to as the West Bank Settlements) are still another way that Stefanik (and her doctrine) stands in stark opposition to the views of J Street and the Jewish Voice for Peace.
At those same hearings, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who has been a recipient of financial support from JStreetPac, questioned Stefanik’s support for Israel’s rights to Judea and Samaria.
Stefanik stood firm in her response to his challenge, affirming her belief that, after being questioned by Van Hollen, Israel has a biblical right to the entire West Bank. She responded quickly and simply with a definitive: “Yes.”
JStreetPac has boasted on its website that “Senator (Van Hollen) is one of J Street’s closest allies in Congress.”
Thank goodness that the would-be shepherds of the Jewish community, like J Street, do not go unopposed.
