It’s loyalty.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been outspoken in his praise of Trump, and rarely misses an opportunity to compare him favorably to his predecessor, Barack Obama.The same goes for Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, one of Netanyahu’s closest advisers. In his own address in the Capitol on Tuesday, Dermer flattered Trump explicitly and derided the Obama administration implicitly by comparing their approaches to Syria.“History shows that indifference has been the rule, not the exception,” Dermer said. “The exceptions have been decisions like the one President Trump made this month to respond to a chemical attack by the Assad regime against innocent men, women and children. That decision was a defiance of indifference.”Obama, notably, did not strike Syria after a 2013 attack much worse than the one earlier this month that killed 89 civilians in rebel-held territory. Instead, his threats to strike led to negotiations that culminated in a deal in which Syria promised to divest itself of its poisonous gases.Dermer, however, took aim at Obama’s stated preference for “soft power” and seemed to allude to a campaign by Obama’s wife, Michelle, to raise awareness of victims of the Islamist Boko Haram group in Nigeria, who kidnapped 276 schoolgirls.“Those contemplating evil should know that they will face more than the soft power of self-righteous condemnations and feel-good hashtags,” he said.Trump was impressed and extemporized a thank you to Dermer in his speech that immediately followed.“We are privileged to be joined by Israel’s ambassador to the United States, friend of mine — he’s done a great job and said some wonderful words — Ron Dermer,” he said.Trump in his video address to the World Jewish Congress was similarly effusive in praising the group’s president, Ronald Lauder.“I want to thank Ronald Lauder not only for his many years of friendship — and he truly has been my good friend, he even predicted early that I was going to win the presidency — but also for his leadership of this organization,” the president said.Lauder, notably, was the only Jewish leader to give Trump a pass for his botching of the Holocaust remembrance message in January. An old acquaintance of Trump’s, the cosmetics executive has for decades been deeply involved in Holocaust remembrance. The message: Flattery may work better with Trump than confrontation.Stephen Bannon in the shadowsThe adviser to Trump most in sync with the “alt-right,” the loose-knit assemblage of anti-establishment conservatives where soft denial of the Holocaust has found a home, is Stephen Bannon, who is believed to have been behind the January statement.Trump recently demoted Bannon, pulling him off the National Security Council, and is said to be frustrated by Bannon’s hard-line ideological fixations, believing they are obstructing his efforts to pass legislation through an ideologically diverse Congress. Moreover, Bannon has clashed with Kushner, and Trump always sides with family first.Who needs the headache?Fairly or not, another Trump adviser, Sebastian Gorka, has been driven to distraction by allegations of his associations with the Hungarian far right. He stormed off a Georgetown University panel after students at the university confronted him with questions about those allegations.As Trump scrambles to name accomplishments in his first 100 days in office, distractions about what the Holocaust means is exactly what he does not need.Tensions between Trump and the wider Jewish community will not likely disappear anytime soon. A key lesson of the Holocaust for many Jews – one Dermer mentioned – is that they should keep their eyes wide open for any likelihood of genocide against any people. Other presidents marking Holocaust remembrance have noted contemporary threats; Trump spoke only vaguely of “stamping out prejudice.”“This spirit should not be restricted to Holocaust Remembrance Day,” Greenblatt said in his statement. “We very much hope the president will continue to use his bully pulpit to speak out against antisemitism, bigotry, and hatred in all forms. We urge the president and his administration to act to protect targeted communities against hate crime and discrimination.”