RUTHFULLY YOURS

A few weeks ago, U.S. President Barack Obama went on The Daily Show to tell its viewers that “the people” supported the Iran nuclear deal and that one should not get silenced by “the money” and “the lobbyists” trying to convince them otherwise.

Despite these, and other strenuous efforts by the White House, thousands of people from across the political spectrum gathered in New York’s Times Square to protest the deal, calling upon Congress to undo the damage.

At this point, Obama sent Secretary of State John Kerry to make sure the message was received. Kerry went on CNN to say that if the deal was blocked by Congress, it would be because Congress had been influenced by the Israel lobby, alluding in not-so-subtle ways that anyone opposing a U.S.-Iran alliance was in the pocket of “Big Jew” and thereby corrupt and disloyal.

Sound familiar?

If it does, it is because this theme of dual loyalty has been around as long as Jews have existed. It has proven to be an effective method of intimidation, as it speaks to our history of living off the goodwill of our hosts throughout the Diaspora. Before the creation of the State of Israel, we relied on the kindness of strangers and neighbors for our safety and survival, always being just one recession or plague away from flight.

America used to be the exception to that rule. There, immigrants were Muslim-American, Indian-American, Chinese-American, Jewish-American — and this hyphenated symbol of acceptance connoted a melting pot mentality, allowing individuality alongside inclusion, with neither surpassing the other. When Jews across the world were forced into assimilation, America told them they did not have to be. But the minute the Obama administration started implying that opposition to the Iran deal was un-American and disloyal, that inclusiveness got fitted with strings.

Putting the burden of proof on the afflicted, having to choose between safety and self, evokes something very profound in the Jewish psyche. Obama may be speaking in code, but it is easily decipherable, at least to those for whom the message was intended.

American Jews are being called upon by the president and his administration to prove themselves, and the one way of doing so is to embrace a deal that poses an acute and dire threat to the one country — Israel — that would save them when no one else would.

Critics of the Iran deal are said to represent “Jewish special interests,” but unless survival is seen as a special interest that simply is not true. As we have witnessed in the past month, outrage and refusal is coming from Left to Right and back again, with Sen. Chuck Schumer being the deal’s latest and perhaps most noteworthy detractor. In his furious fight for a legacy, Obama is using classic anti-Semitic tropes, petulantly demanding that American Jewry fall in line behind him, no matter the stakes and no matter the final tally. In this “separate but equal” approach, the Obama administration and its supporters are telling the Jews of America that it is time to pay the piper, and that the lodging they have enjoyed is far from free. Only by distancing themselves from Israel, or creating “daylight” between the two, as Obama himself put it, can they truly earn their keep.

When I recently brought up this issue at an international Jewish conference, the reaction from the audience was that arguments like these do more harm then good, and that calling someone or something anti-Semitic is a dangerous thing when coming from within the Jewish community. We must not be seen as overreaching, they said, or as playing the victim to drum up unnecessary hysteria. This very sentiment is what the Obama administration is tapping into and what we as a community need to combat. Contrary to popular belief, as Jews we are not born with a limited amount of “anti-Semitism cards” in our back pocket, to be divvied up carefully throughout our lives, nor are we responsible for protecting the feelings of whomever warrants that such a card be played. I have little doubt that Obama is deliberately and quite skillfully using anti-Semitic rhetoric to get this deal approved by Congress, and the fact that the world is letting him get away with it should be a cause of great concern among Jews and non-Jews alike.

It would be naive of me to suggest that Obama’s strong-arming will change the historically homogenous voting habits of American Jews, but perhaps the swiftness with which the Democratic establishment resorts to racist rhetoric will at least give them pause. Being forced to choose between their Jewish and their American identities is not only a racist policy, but it is a telltale sign that in the eyes of this president, they never really had the latter.

Annika Hernroth-Rothstein is a political adviser, activist and writer on the Middle East, religious affairs ‎and global anti-Semitism.‎ Follow her on Twitter @truthandfiction.