By Masha Gessen<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Donald Trump has a knack for taking some of humanity\u2019s most problematic ideas and turning them on their head to make them even worse. He has done it again. On Wednesday, he signed an executive order that will allow federal funds to be withheld from colleges where students are not protected from anti-Semitism\u2014using an absurdly defined version of what constitutes anti-Semitism. Recent precedent and the history of legislative efforts that preceded the executive order would suggest that its main targets are campus groups critical of Israeli policies. What the order itself did not make explicit, the President\u2019s son-in-law did: on Wednesday, Jared Kushner published an Op-Ed in the Times<\/em><\/a> in which he stressed that the definition of anti-Semitism used in the executive order \u201cmakes clear what our administration has stated publicly on the record: Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both Kushner and the\nexecutive order refer to the definition of anti-Semitism that was formulated,\nin 2016, by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance; it has since been\nadopted by the State Department. The definition supplies examples of\nanti-Semitism, and Kushner cited the most problematic of these as the most\nimportant: \u201cthe targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish\ncollectivity\u201d; denial to \u201cthe Jewish people their right to self-determination,\ne.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavor\u201d;\nand comparing \u201ccontemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.\u201d All three\nexamples perform the same sleight of hand: they reframe opposition to or\ncriticism of Israeli policies as opposition to the state of Israel. And that,\nsays Kushner, is anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To be sure, some people\nwho are critical of Israeli policies are opposed to the existence of the state\nof Israel itself. And some of those people are also anti-Semites. I am\nintimately familiar with this brand of anti-Semitism, because I grew up in the\nSoviet Union, where anti-Zionist rhetoric served as the propaganda backbone of\nstate anti-Semitism. The word \u201cZionist,\u201d when deployed by Pravda<\/em>, served as incitement to violence and\ndiscrimination against Soviet Jews. All of this can be true at the same time\nthat it is also true that Israel has effectively created an apartheid state, in\nwhich some Palestinians have some political rights and the rest have none.\nHuman-rights organizations such as Breaking the Silence and B\u2019Tselem\u2014Israeli\ngroups, founded and run by Jews\u2014continue to document harrowing abuse of\nPalestinians in Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In August, I went on a tour designed by Breaking the Silence<\/a> that aims to show\nIsraelis and foreigners what the occupation looks like. This particular tour\nended in a Palestinian village which has been largely overtaken by an Israeli\nsettlement that is illegal under international law. One of the Palestinian\nhouses ended up on territory claimed by the settlers, so the settlers built a\nchain-link cage around the house, the yard, and the driveway. A young\nPalestinian child, who is growing up in a house inside a cage, waved to us\nthrough the fencing. Comparing this sort of approach to Nazi policies may not\nmake for the most useful argument, but it is certainly not outlandish. The\nmemory of the Holocaust stands as a warning to humanity about the dangers of\ndehumanizing the other\u2014and invoking that warning in Palestine is warranted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One does not have to be\nan anti-Semite to be an anti-Zionist, but one certainly can be both an\nanti-Semite and an anti-Zionist. Trump, however, has inverted this formula by\npositioning himself as a pro-Zionist anti-Semite. He has proclaimed his support\noften for the state of Israel. His Administration\u2019s policies, which have\nincluded moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and, more recently, declaring\nthat the U.S. does not view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal,\nhave pleased the state of Israel, especially its most militantly expansionist\ncitizens. Over the weekend, however, at the Israeli American Council National\nSummit, in Florida, Trump gave a speech<\/a> that brimmed with Jewish\nstereotypes: Jews and greed, Jews and money, Jews as ruthless wheeler-dealers.\n\u201cA lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well,\u201d he\nsaid. “You\u2019re brutal killers, not nice people at all.\u201d It was the kind of\nstuff that requires no definitions, op-eds, or explanations\u2014it was plain,\neasily recognizable anti-Semitism. And it was not the first time that Trump\ntrafficked in anti-Semitic stereotypes. The world view behind these stereotypes,\ncombined with support for Israel, is also recognizable. To Trump,\nJews\u2014including American Jews, some of whom vote for him\u2014are alien beings whom\nhe associates with the state of Israel. He finds these alien beings at once\ndistasteful and worthy of a sort of admiration, perhaps because he ascribes to\nthem many of the features that he also recognizes in himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It should come as no\nsurprise that anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. increased by sixty per cent\nduring the first year of Trump\u2019s Presidency, according to the Anti-Defamation\nLeague. The current year is on track to set a record for the number of\nanti-Semitic attacks. The latest appears to have occurred on Tuesday<\/a>, when shooters\nreportedly connected to a fringe group targeted a kosher supermarket in Jersey\nCity, killing four people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The new executive order\nwill not protect anyone against anti-Semitism, and it\u2019s not intended to. Its\nsole aim is to quash the defense\u2014and even the discussion\u2014of Palestinian rights.\nIts victim will be free speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n