In a 60-second video ad, JDCA recalls the tragedies of the past several years, including the 2017 violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, at which 32-year-old Heather Heyer was killed. At that march, participants chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
The video shows scenes from the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and highlights the affidavit posted by the shooter, in which he quoted Trump’s sentiments about immigrants calling them, “immigrant invaders” and “infestation.”
Eleven people were killed in the Pittsburgh massacre and six more injured.
The ad goes on to claim that now the president “is directly aiming his dangerous rhetoric at Jews," quoting his statement earlier this year that, “Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat - it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.”
JDCA chairman Ron Klein said that Jewish Democrats have “an obligation to work to defeat Donald Trump in 2020,” saying that he believes the president’s “bigotry and lies directly contribute to increased violence and antisemitism in our country.”
Similarly, Halie Soifer, the council's executive director, said that “antisemitic dog-whistles, conspiracy theories, bigotry and hateful rhetoric and policies [that are] permeating through the GOP begin with him.”
JDCA has identified 14 key states and regions in which to focus its efforts, including vital swing states such as Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan, North Carolina and Wisconsin.
According to a poll by the Jewish Electorate Institute, 73% of Jewish voters feel less secure than they did two years ago. And 59% of Jews blame Trump for the Pittsburgh and subsequent Poway attacks.
Some 88% of American Jews said that they feel antisemitism is a problem, as reported by the American Jewish Committee in its 2019 Survey of American Jewish Attitudes about Antisemitism.
Meanwhile earlier on Monday, Jason Greenblatt, Trump’s former special envoy to the Middle East, announced that he had joined the Republican Jewish Coalition's board of directors.