Jews Rally, Counter-Rally outside Hoenlein’s Group’s Hanukkah Party at Trump’s DC Hotel [video]

More than 150 Jewish young adults yelled anti-President-Elect Trump slogans and sang traditional Hanukkah songs with anti-Trump twists marching from Freedom Plaza to the Trump International Hotel in Washington DC Wednesday night, during a pre-Hanukkah party that was being held inside by the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations, the Washington Post reported.

Another, albeit smaller group of about 15 Jews called Jews Choose Trump held a counter-protest nearby. Lee Green, a Jewish member of the electoral college from North Carolina, traveled from his home state to voice her objection to the idea that US Jews demonstrate against Trump.

The group opposing Trump and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, was made up of the usual leftwing, Reform-affiliated suspects, including Rabbi Rick Jacobs, head of the URJ, who called Hoenlein’s decision to celebrate Hanukkah at a Trump owned joint “tone-deaf at best, naked sycophancy at worst.” The protest was organized by If Not Now, a leftwing, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian Jewish group.

Hoenlein told the Post a week ago that the Trump hotel was picked for the party “purely on a pragmatic basis,” and that “the reasoning behind it was nothing to do with the Trump name.” He explained that the Azerbaijani Embassy, which co-hosted the party with the Conference of Presidents, planned it close to a month ago, and couldn’t find a venue that was able to accommodate a kosher gathering.

The counter-protesters sang patriotic Israeli and American songs, and at one point, according to the Post, pro-Trump protester David Goldberg yelled at Sharon Kleinbaum, the clergywoman of New York City’s LGBT Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, “What is it that you think we celebrate on the festival of Hanukkah?” adding, “You would have been on the side of Antiochus rather than Judah the Maccabee.”

Back in 2014, Kleinbaum was chastised by many in her own congregation for reading the names of Arab children who were killed in the Gaza war, alongside the names of Israeli soldiers who gave their lives in the same war, creating the impression that the latter bore responsibility for the former. She is also infamous for her statement: “I do believe that Israel violates the human rights of Palestinians every single day. Both things are true.”