'It Was the Jews': U.S. Antisemites Spin Conspiracies Blaming Israel …

The assassination attempt on former U.S. President and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Saturday during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania led to a tidal wave of reactions on social media, with arguments over who was to blame for the shooting itself, as well as the creation of the political landscape that precipitated it.

A significant number of these posts carried with them anti-Zionist or antisemitic overtones, as users accused Israel and "The Jews," of orchestrating and/or executing the shooting.

Not long after Trump was whisked off-stage by his Secret Service detail, conspiracy theories about who was responsible for the failed assassination attempt began circulating online, many of them pointing to Jews and Israel and Zionists as the culprits, the Anti-Defamation League reported in a blog post on Sunday night.

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Among far-right commentator Nick Fuentes' long list of possible culprits, he posted several theories relating to Israel – one claiming Israeli intelligence carried out the operation in order to replace Trump with a candidate who would "support Gaza/West Bank Annexation and expansion of the war into Lebanon and Iran."

Another, in a Spaces session, X's version of a live audio conversation, Fuentes further expressed his suspicions that Israel was responsible for the shooting because they want a "more favorable advocate in the White House."

In a separate post on X, he drew a connection between "the intelligence failures of October 7 and July 13," suggesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have been involved in Saturday's shooting as a way to keep himself in power. Fuentes also hinted at a theory anti-Zionist activist Sulaiman Ahmed stated explicitly on his X account, "Opinion: Israel shot Trump to install Nikki Haley."

The Goyim Defense League, a small network of vocally antisemitic provocateurs, also hosted a Spaces session, this one entitled "Jews Try to Assassinate Trump" with one user who joined the conversation posting, "Jews have a very long history of political assassination," and another who wrote, "I can't believe it, Jews were mad because they couldn't beat him with cheats this time lol, Amercia [sic] is screwed."

Far-right conspiracy theorist and Holocaust denier Stew Peters initially pointed a finger at Mossad, Israel's CIA equivalent, calling the organization "an early suspect" in one of his first X posts after the shooting. When the identity of the shooter was released, 20-year-old kitchen worker Thomas Matthew Crooks, Peters pivoted, reposting a photo that had already begun circulating on social media that features a man who looks similar to Crooks wearing a kippah, suggesting he was Jewish, which Peters captioned, "It was the Jews."

According to the ADL, many users on Telegram and X claimed Crooks was seen wearing a red string, a recognizable symbol of the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism) movement, at the time of the shooting. Others accused a Secret Service sniper who they say "hesitated" before shooting the would-be assassin of wearing the same bracelet.

Both before and after the shooter was identified, some social media accounts claimed the assassination attempt was done by a "Zionist," labeling it as an "ATTEMPT TO HIDE THEIR WAR CRIMES IN GAZA TODAY," as one user posted. One social media influencer, who calls himself "Dr. Ash," called the shooting a "murder attempt on the next US President Donald J Trump, most likely by the Biden supporting Zionist Israelis."

Alongside Israel, Zionists and Jews, "the Left" also incurred the wrath of social media commentators, who placed blame squarely on their shoulders. Noted antisemitic conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles, in a post on X, hinted that U.S. President Joe Biden might have been responsible for trying to assassinate his opponent. "SCOTUS gave total immunity to U.S. Presidents for official acts," Wiles tweeted. "The Court heard legal arguments that it included assassination of opponents. We have entered into a dangerous era."

Far-right political activist, Laura Loomer, echoed this claim, writing that the Democrats and President Biden "have been planning to assassinate President Trump for a long time now." And white nationalist sympathizer, Jack Posobiec responded to the news by writing on X, "These leftists won't stop until Trump is dead."

According to the ADL report, many users on platforms like X, patriots.win and Telegram, responded to the assassination attempt with calls for violence and a civil war. On X, one user wrote, "Fuck every single one of you fucking worthless Democrats…Now, we are going to fucking destroy you." Another Telegram post read,"Bring it on…now we mobilize."

"So let's shoot them back. Play time is over," a user posted on patriots.win, home to many extreme Trump supporters. "The only way this will be solved is through violence." Another wrote on the same platform, "They will have blood all over themselves when we go after them. Their blood," and then added in a different thread, "You missed, but we won't. Retaliation is coming. Someone hired the assassin, a professional…We will hunt down that someone."

Replying to the same thread, another user wrote, "Looks like the Civil War just started, you dems are fucked."

While politicians from both sides of the aisle publicly condemned the shooting, and urged Americans to "lower the temperature," as Biden phrased it in his address from the Oval Office on Sunday evening, many on social media were quick to point out what they saw as the hypocrisy of denouncing the attempt on Trump's life but not the ongoing violence in Gaza.

Author and journalist Lydia Kiesling posted to her X account, "Democrats are about to post more sympathetic messages about Donald Trump than 40,000 massacred Palestinians." In a series of social media posts, journalist Margaret Kimberley echoed the same sentiment, tweeting, "I'm making a list of folks who pray for Trump but say nothing about the ongoing genocide" and "186,000 dead in Gaza. If you pray for Trump but not for them just STFU."

Several social media users posted side-by-side comparisons of Trumps' bloody ear, which either grazed by the sniper's bullet or hit by glass from a teleprompter that was struck by the bullet, according to conflicting reports, and graphic photos of those injured or killed in Gaza as a result of Israel's military campaign, pointing out the difference in outcry over the two images.

"Trump's minor ear injury grabs more world headlines than the Israeli mass murder of over 90 Palestinian civilians & children in Gaza," Pro-Palestinian activist Sarah Wilkinson wrote.