The DNC hosted a press conference on Zoom Friday morning with U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, D-Newton, and Margy Feldman, head of the Nevada Chapter of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, to call out Republicans and former President Donald Trump regarding anti-Semitism and Israel.
The press conference call was planned as a pre-rebuttal to the 2023 Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Summit set for Friday in Nevada.
“Donald Trump is a disaster for American Jews and for Israel,” Auchincloss said at the start of the press conference.
Auchincloss listed several examples, including Trump’s 2016 campaign promise to get Israel to pay the United States back for past aid, his refusal as president to speak out against neo-Nazi protesters in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 and Trump’s Mar a Lago meeting with Nick Fuentes, an infamous, anti-Semitic white nationalist last November.
“Donald Trump has continued a pattern he exhibited while president, which is to uplift neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” Auchincloss said. “Donald Trump is a disaster for American Jews, he is dangerous for the security of Israel, and his ascension to a second term in office would make our closest ally in the Middle East less secure and make American Jews less safe.”
Asked about his fellow Democratic House members who have spoken out against Israel’s military operations in Gaza this week in response to Hamas carrying out a large-scale terror attack in Israel earlier this month and refused to vote for a resolution backing Israel’s military operations, Auchincloss called them “outliers” and said “They don’t speak for the Democratic party.
“Hakeem Jeffries, the party leader in the House, speaks for the Democratic party. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, speaks for the Democratic party, and most of all, Joe Biden, the leader of the Democratic party, speaks for the Democratic party on his position on Israel,” he continued. “And we oppose an internationally recognized terrorist organization, we support Israel’s right to defend itself, and we support the military objective of destroying Hamas and rescuing the hostages, some of whom are children.”
On Oct. 7, members of Hamas carried out an elaborate and gruesome terror attack, storming into Israel from Gaza and killing more than 1,300 Israeli civilians in what is the biggest mass-murder of Jewish people since the Holocaust.
In response, Israel’s government has carried out thousands of airstrikes in Gaza over the past two weeks. Thousands of Palestinian civilians have been killed so far, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health.
Photos, videos and verbal accounts of the carnage in Israel and Palestine have gone viral across social media, and there have been reports of an increase in both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia all over the world as the Gaza conflict continues.
Auchincloss, 35, was first elected to represent the Massachusetts 4th congressional district in 2020. He was raised in Newton and served in the U.S. Marine Corps before he returned home and was elected to the Newton City Council in 2015 and reelected to that seat in 2017 and 2019.