I’ve been wondering why President Donald Trump has developed such a tender concern about antisemitism. Figuring the way he thinks, there’s got to be something in it for him, and I figure it’s got something to do with his domestic agenda and also with ways he can use Israel.

I can see no gain for Trump by standing up for Jews as Jews. Why would he feel the need to curry favor with them? Still, he clearly promotes himself as a champion of Israel and an opponent of Hamas and, recently, the Houthis. However, given his nearsighted view of American greatness, this position doesn’t seem genuine.

So what is his campaign against antisemitism about? Be sure he has a goal here, a purpose. Does he really care that students have demonstrated for the Palestinian cause and against the actions of the Israeli government? I doubt it. Is he Islamophobic? I doubt that too, even if he’s capable of remembering as far as back the Twin Towers/Pentagon attacks, or cares to. Why, for him, should being a Muslim be less acceptable than being a Jew?

He has a strategy here, but a twisty one. The goal: to destroy liberal higher education by using Jews and charges of antisemitism. Decrying universities, largely liberal East Coast ones, for failing to protect Jewish students from threats and harassment opens a way to cutting their funding and weakening their power to shape and nurture liberal democracy.

There is no question that Jews have and are continuing now to be targets of hate by certain elements of our society. Sadly, there were certainly Jewish students during the demonstrations last spring who were harassed, but no tally was made of the actual nature and extent, or the source, of the harassment. Also, no tally was ever made of abuse to Palestinian students.

Schools are responsible for protecting their students from other members of the school communities, but that mustn’t extend to curtailing appropriate free speech and exchange of ideas. In fact, such exchange is the basis of higher education.

But the government, first Congress and then the president and his team, has other ideas. Accusing universities of antisemitism in the demonstrations last spring, while ignoring the Palestinian position, is, first of all, dishonest. Secondly, it makes the charge of antisemitism a tool to limit debate.

And thirdly, it uses the charge of antisemitism as a means of controlling higher education. How ironic.

Jews are traditionally among the strongest supporters of education and debate. That they should be used as a means toward this end seems meanly unscrupulous. But that’s what Trump and his crowd are. This is what is important: that we stand up for important distinctions and not allow people to use blunt ideas as blunt instruments.

It is not antisemitic to oppose the policies and actions Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government employ against the Palestinians under the guise of fighting terrorism. The true and bitterly ironic goals of that government are now in plain sight. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism denies legitimate comparisons of what has been done to Jews, especially in the 20th century, to what Jews aligned with Netanyahu’s goals are doing to Palestinians today.

The tangled history of Palestine makes sorting out an acceptable solution for both people supremely difficult, but we can’t lose sight of the fact that both have rights to the land. Both.

Religious belief cannot determine modern statehood. And that distinction is not antisemitic. In terms of the Trump agenda, the accusation of antisemitism is simply a club to keep those who don’t do his bidding in line. No one should believe his commitment is genuine or deep. He is not their protector, as he stated while haranguing Jews for not voting for him.

He has dined with and is seen with antisemitic supremacists. American Jews should not feel safe from him. Instead, they should be outraged that he is using them to further his destruction of higher education.

Kathy Gregg lives in Amherst.