The Trump State Department recently held a virtual conference to combat anti-Semitism, but seemingly ignored the threat to American Jews posed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and others, while concentrating their criticisms on the advocates for human rights in Palestine, which is under the total control of Israel and its apartheid laws and regulations.

Palestinians have only those privileges that Israel allows them and those privileges are few. The citizens of the Gaza Strip have, for generations, lived as refugees in the places they are allowed to live in the West Bank, piled into a small area. But the U.S. special envoy whose charge it is to fight anti-Semitism globally has singled out those who advocate for Palestinian rights as the principle offenders, according to observers, including Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

Said Rabbi Alissa Wise, deputy director of JVP, on Oct 23, “Yesterday I saw the news that Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, was pressuring the State Department to slander trusted human rights organizations like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as anti-Semitic because of their work for Palestinian rights. Make no mistake: this maneuver has nothing to do with Jewish safety. It’s straight out of Trump’s playbook; Carr is attempting to wield accusations of anti-Semitism as a weapon to undermine Palestinian activism for the administration’s political gain.”

Deutsche Welle (DW), Germany’s international broadcaster, noted last summer that anti-Semitism in the U.S. hit a four-decade high, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which reported that 2019 was the worst year for anti-Semitic attacks since the ADL began keeping records. “This included a massive uptick in violent assaults.” DW went on to report: “The ADL’s annual audit published last summer found that more than 2,000 acts of assault, vandalism, and harassment had occurred, the most since the group started keeping track in 1979. ‘The record number of incidents came as the Jewish community grappled with vicious and lethal anti-Semitic attacks against communities in Poway, Jersey City and Monsey, and a spree of violent assaults in Brooklyn,’ the ADL noted in its report.”

There have been, as of last summer, 96 victims of violent assaults, including five fatalities, across the U.S., 25 of which were targeted in Brooklyn alone. The area is home to many Hasidic and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. The total of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. was 2,107, according to the ADL, a startling increase in all states, except Hawaii and Alaska.

Yet, according to Rabbi Wise, special envoy Carr was pressuring the State Department “to slander trusted human rights organizations like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International as anti-Semitic because of their work for Palestinian rights. Make no mistake: this maneuver has nothing to do with Jewish safety. It’s straight out of (President) Trump’s playbook; Carr is attempting to wield accusations of anti-Semitism as a weapon to undermine Palestinian activism for the administration’s political gain.”

The Trump Administration hardly recognizes the existence of Palestinians in their own country, but puts its seal of approval on anything Israel does, including virtually total suppression of the rights of a people removed from their homes and villages after World War II and kept in refugee status, many within a few miles of their former homes, villages, and farms. Gaza, with its approximately two million inhabitants, is described by many outside observers as the biggest open-air prison on earth.

Gaza is the most densely populated place on earth and its people have little control over their lives. Israel controls what and who can enter and leave the strip every day and, after the “war” that was perpetrated on Gaza, the people there were left with very little in the way of public services, including hospitals, medical clinics, water treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, electricity generating plants, schools and higher education.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has documented violations of human rights in Palestine over the past several years, since the war on Gaza in 2008, in which there was a lop-sided assault of one of the world’s most powerful militaries on what was akin to an all-out attack on a prison. HRW did acknowledge that there were some attacks by Gazans on Israel via rockets and other low-level methods such as incendiary kites and Molotov cocktails. But HRW declared that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians needed to be investigated by the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. will not allow.

These are some of the issues of human rights and crimes against humanity that groups like JVP are trying to stop, all the while stating that it is working toward peace for all sides. The powerful political parties that are in control of the U.S. are not much concerned about Palestinians and their plight. For his part, Trump has rewarded Israel, whatever it does, by moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, claiming that it is the capital of Israel, disregarding that it is also the purported capital of a Palestinian state, as well. He and his Republican Party have declared that the Golan Heights and much of the West Bank are Israel’s, upending decades-long agreements and treaties that such lands cannot be acquired as the result of war.

JVP and others are peacefully trying to right the wrongs against Palestinians at every level, with the stated goals of bringing peace to all in the violently troubled region. Advocates for Palestinian human rights are not the ones threatening American Jews and perpetrating violence against American Jews. Rather, it is the violent white supremacists, “militias,” neo-Nazis, and others who are perpetrating the violence, but they are given a free pass by the president, who has yet to condemn a single act of violence against an entire people trapped in Gaza and most of the West Bank. For Trump, they simply don’t exist.

Therefore, he can encourage his anti-Semitism envoy to go after peaceful advocates of Palestinian rights and supporters of the movement to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Israel until that nation takes positive action to relieve the suffering of an entire people. Make no mistake about it; Israel is the only one that can make the determination to do that. It has complete control and uses its economic and military might to enforce its every edict, law, and regulation to ensure that the Palestinians are kept inside the narrow and deadly confines of their Bantustans.

U.S. elected officials at every level, since they support Israel’s every action against Palestinians, need to address what their country has created in the Middle East. The U.S. has supported Israel with money, diplomacy and, if need be, its military might, so without a full-scale effort to free Palestinians, those in control of the U.S. make a mockery of their country as a land of freedom, liberty, equality, opportunity, and democracy.