Hadash attacked far-right Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, August 21, for refusing to condemn US President Donald Trump’s comment that Jews who vote for the Democratic Party show “great disloyalty.”

“I don’t know what is more repugnant, the anti-Semitic statement of US President Donald Trump or the hypocritical silence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” Joint List chairman MK Ayman Odeh (Hadash) told The Times of Israel site.

Netanyahu and Trump at the capitalist World Economic Forum summit in Switzerland (Photo: GPO)

The Likud declined to respond to Trump, saying, “it is not a campaign issue.” One senior Likud figure said, “The last thing we want to do is interfere in American politics, other than to say is we are friends with both parties.”

Joint List MK Ofer Cassif (Hadash) asserted that since Trump had cast aspersions on the loyalty of Jews voting for the Democratic Party, for whom the large majority of Jewish Americans vote, the US president was essentially accusing the majority of Jewish Americans of being disloyal.

“In a normal world, a president who spoke like that about the Jews of his country would receive severe condemnation from the Prime Minister of Israel, but not in the case of Netanyahu. While Trump is inciting antisemitism, when his supporters are implementing the racist manual of their leader, Netanyahu is silent,” said Cassif and continued: “That same Netanyahu also hosted the president of the Philippines, who compared himself to Hitler,” referencing a 2016 remark made by Rodrigo Duterte in which he likened himself to the Jew-baiting Nazi-fascist leader who headed up the state responsible for mass Judeocide during the first half of the 1940s.

In addition to the Likud, none of the leaders of Zionist parties, Blue and White, Yisrael Beytenu, United Torah Judaism, Shas, Labor and the Democratic Camp have responded to The Times of Israel’s request for comment on the matter. The Foreign Ministry and the Jewish Agency for Israel similarly did not respond.