Donald Trump has had trouble getting along with most world leaders. While the facade of politeness masks any explicit conflict, one only has to look at the faces of Theresa May, Shinzo Abe, and Justin Trudeau upon meeting Trump – it’s the face you would make if you had to convince an angry gorilla to return your child. One obvious exception is the prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. Even amid fresh accusations of anti-Semitism in Trump's inner circle and among his supporters, the leader of a Jewish state seemed to feel right at home next to an angry gorilla.

It’s hard to keep track of which minority groups Trump hasn’t offended at this point. But while his misogyny, Islamophobia, etc. may arguably exceed his anti-Semitism, he and his administration have still exhibited plenty of the latter, from a tweeted photo calling Hillary Clinton “the most corrupt politician ever”, written on a star of David against a background of money, lifted off a neo-Nazi message board, to deliberately refusing to mention Jews as victims of the Holocaust in their statement on Holocaust Memorial Day.

“Luckily, we aren’t all that gullible. The overwhelming majority of American Jews voted against Trump and the Republicans”

Much has been made of the fact that not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic – but conservatives still seem to rely on the opposite argument, that their support for Israel makes accusations of anti-Semitism irrelevant. While this claim is just as absurd as its contrary, even Netanyahu seems to agree with it. Asked whether Trump's omission of Jews from the Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was worrying, he called concerns “misplaced”, while praising Trump’s plan to build a wall on the Mexican border and intimidate Iran.

The appointment of Steve Bannon as chief strategist and to the National Security Council should also raise eyebrows. Steve Bannon’s ex-wife testified in court that he complained over the number of Jewish people at his son's school. He also ran Breitbart, a far-right website peddling alt-right style white nationalism and deranged conspiracy theories about “international bankers” and “global elites” controlling the world. The followers of Bannon’s alt-right politics have been the primary causes of hundreds of bomb threats to Jewish community centres all around the world and desecrations of Jewish graveyards.

From conservative circles, the response to these accusations is always the same: Trump or Bannon simply cannot be anti-Semitic, since they are both ardent supporters of Israel. Trump harshly condemned the “disrespectful” actions in the last weeks of the Obama administration, when the US declined to vote on a motion in the United Nations that would have condemned the expansion of Israeli settlements into Palestinian land. Breitbart is famously pro-Israel, despite the anti-Semitic undertones of its coverage of 'globalist' conspiracies, and both Trump and Bannon appear to have the confidence of Netanyahu.

This is, of course, yet more of the exculpatory conservative rhetoric that conflates the interests of all Jews with the right wing of Israeli politics. Jews who oppose right-wing Israeli policies of expanding settlements, like Noam Chomsky or Jon Stewart, are consistently labelled as “self-hating Jews.”

Politicians like Trump, and many in the Republican Party, whom American Jews consistently vote against, are able to score points as ‘friends of the Jews’ simply by supporting right-wing Israeli politics. This picture is beneficial for those on the right who can cast attacks on Israeli politics as anti-Semitism, while retaining their own traditional bigotry against ‘New York liberals’ and ‘coastal elites’ who conspicuously happen to be Jewish.

Bannon's approval by Netanyahu is the logical conclusion of this dishonesty – a man with crystal-clear anti-Semitic motives, who is nevertheless labelled a friend of the Jews by a surface-level friendliness to Israel’s right wing – and a prime minister fully willing to accept bigotry as long as it doesn’t affect his political party. The gorilla may take marching orders from a white nationalist who clearly has personal problems with Jews, but as long as this doesn’t translate into condemnation of Netanyahu’s policy, he seems to be fine with that.

Jews have always been the scapegoat of history

Luckily, we aren’t all that gullible. The overwhelming majority of American Jews voted against Trump and the Republican Party. Netanyahu’s approval ratings among non-Israeli Jews have been low for a long time, but they seem to be sinking among Israelis, too. The Trump administration, its supporters and Steve Bannon are a genuine risk to Jews of all political persuasions everywhere. Anyone who is willing to overlook that in order to build more settlements in Palestinian land, intimidate Iran or score whatever political point convenient to them is no friend of mine – and no friend of the Jews