“As both a Jew and an African American, I recoil from the white supremacy and anti-Semitism on display this week. I have been gratified to hear Jewish leaders and organizations call for the destruction of racism, speaking eloquently about the shared history of oppression Jews and African Americans have faced. Yet, I confess to a certain discomfort in the many appeals to recognize the twin evils of anti-Semitism and anti-black racism in Charlottesville. I’ve thought about this a lot over the past week, and here’s  what I’ve realized: for Jews, Nazi symbols evoke a terrifying, traumatic past. For African Americans, they evoke a terrifying, traumatic, unending present,” writes Lesley Williams.

When President Trump claimed in an unhinged, angry press conference on Aug. 15th that there were “very fine people on both sides” in Charlottesville, he endorsed a group of neo-Nazis and white supremacists whose stated goal is to create an ethnically cleansed, white-only state. A mashup video by Matthew Taylor.

President Trump’s initial statement on Charlottesville, which blamed violence “on many sides,” has taken on a life of its own. All of this has made various Israeli leaders rather uncomfortable because while Israel is supposedly engaged in combatting anti-Semitism, it is more truly in an international ideological fight against the left. And Trump is making it difficult to make this argument without looking like a Nazi.

Jonathan Ofir compares Donald Trump’s weak and vague statement on the Charlottesville white supremacist attack with his earlier failure to address a specific question on anti-Semitism. Fir says Trump doesn’t notice bigotry because he fosters it.