Jean Anne Kiewel is an attorney in Brattleboro.
BRATTLEBORO-The Iran war is just as much Trump's war if not more than Netanyahu's.
This week, Joe Kent, sympathizer of Nazis and white supremacists and head of the National Counterterrorism Center under President Donald Trump, resigned from the administration in protest of the Iran war, saying "it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby."
In his resignation letter to Trump, Kent also wrote, "Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran" and blamed "a war manufactured by Israel" for killing his first wife, U.S. Navy Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, who died in an ISIS bombing in Syria in 2019 while serving under the Joint Special Operations Command.
Trump denies that Netanyahu manipulated him into starting this war. As reported in The Guardian, Trump told reporters, "No. I might have forced their hand."
We should take Trump at his word on this.
At The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg wrote: "Setting aside its potentially anti-Semitic undertones, [Joe Kent's] argument fails on the facts. In reality, Trump telegraphed his bellicose intentions toward Iran for decades, and once in office, he escalated conflict with the country at every opportunity."
Rosenberg cites a number of examples dating back to 1980, during the Iran hostage crisis, where in a TV interview, Trump said that "we should have gone in there with troops," and said that doing so would make America "an oil-rich nation."
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Kent's resignation letter accurately points out that Iran is Trump's war. Unfortunately, it is replete with antisemitism.
"Reading Kent's resignation letter, I was reminded of that infamous Onion article that makes the rounds every once in a while - "Worst Person You Know Is Right About Something," said Emily Horne, who was a member of the National Security Council under President Joe Biden after a long career at the State Department, in an interview with The New Republic podcast host Greg Sargent. "The letter has some incredibly ugly antisemitic tropes. It evokes some really nasty rhetoric that I frankly recoiled at while reading it."
I believe Netanyahu and the Israeli right are responsible for the war on and genocide in Gaza. Israel as a whole is not.
Israel, like the U.S., is not a political monolith. Many in Israel support peace and justice in Gaza, Iran, and the entire region and oppose the wars there.
"We must not accept war as the only answer or the default option," Alon-Lee Green, national codirector of Standing Together, wrote recently. "Especially when it comes from politicians who have shown time and time again that they do not care about their own people and basic human rights.
"This situation is not normal, and all of us across the region deserve better. We must resist this reality and fight for a future of life, for all of us."
Painting all Israelis and Jews with the Israeli right's hate brush is akin to saying all of us are MAGA supporters - highly offensive, if not antisemitic.
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Meanwhile, from the manosphere, the new media trend of misogynist and far-right extreme podcasters and social media influencers, we get this.
"Superficially, these men are selling their audiences bizarre and extremist ideas - women shouldn't vote; covering one eye in a photograph is a reference to a satanic plot - against the backdrop of the babes and Lamborghinis they 'possess,'" writes Jessica Grose of The New York Times about a new documentary, Inside the Manosphere, on Netflix.
"There's a whole section of the documentary where it seems like every conversation [English filmmaker and host Louis] Theroux has devolves into an antisemitic conspiracy theory involving the Rothschilds, citing 'the Jews' who control the one- world government and/or the media and/or Theroux himself. These specific conspiracy theories have been appearing in pamphlets - the old-timey version of viral videos - since the 19th century."
And don't forget the claims that Israel killed Charlie Kirk, who promoted antisemitic views, or the Charlottesville marchers with torches chanting "Jews will not replace us," amplifying the "great replacement" theory.
Antisemitic conspiracy theories and hatred of Jews are insidious, centuries old, and alive and well. Please read and think critically.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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