Jared Kushner
Jared KushnerReuters

Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, who on Wednesday clarified that his father-in-law is not anti-Semitic following the infamous “Star of David tweet”, is facing backlash from his relatives.

JTA reported on Thursday that two of Kushner's cousins, Marc Kushner and Jacob Schulder, took to Facebook to rap their cousin, a businessman married to Trump's daughter Ivanka, for invoking their grandparents' Holocaust experiences in an essay defending the Republican candidate.

Jared Kushner's essay appeared Wednesday as a response to a letter by Dana Schwartz, a writer at the New York Observer -- a paper Kushner owns -- who demanded that he speak out against anti-Semitic messaging in his father-in-law’s presidential campaign.

In his response, Kushner said Trump is neither anti-Semitic nor a racist, and has “another side” the media never sees. He also invoked his family’s Holocaust history, arguing that the issue “is not idle philosophy to me.”

“I am the grandson of Holocaust survivors … My grandmother’s brother Chanon, for whom my father is named, was killed along with about 50 others. My grandmother made it to the woods, where she joined the Bielski Brigade of partisan resistance fighters,” Kushner wrote in the Observer piece. “I go into these details, which I have never discussed, because it’s important to me that people understand where I’m coming from when I report that I know the difference between actual, dangerous intolerance versus these labels that get tossed around in an effort to score political points.”

In response, Marc Kushner wrote on Facebook: “I have a different take-away from my Grandparents' experience in the war. It is our responsibility as the next generation to speak up against hate. Anti-semitism[sic] or otherwise.”

Schulder, whose father, William, was targeted in the incident, commented on Marc Kushner’s post, Politico reported.

“That my grandparents have been dragged into this is a shame,” Schulder wrote, according to Politico. “Thank you Jared for using something sacred and special to the descendants of Joe and Rae Kushner to validate the sloppy manner in which you’ve handled this campaign.”

The background to the incident is, of course, the graphic featured on Trump's Twitter account calling his Democrat rival, Hillary Clinton, corrupt with what appeared to be a Star of David symbol superimposed on a pile of money.

The Clinton campaign said the image was blatantly anti-Semitic. Trump's campaign deleted the tweet and then replaced the star with a circle. The Republican presidential candidate also rejected the criticism and noted that he had not meant the six-pointed star to refer to the Star of David. Rather, he explained, the star could have referred to a sheriff's badge, which is shaped similarly except for small circles at the ends of each of its six points, or a "plain star."

Trump repeated his rejection of the criticism at an election rally on Wednesday.

“It was a star. A star. Like, a star,” Trump said, according to The Jewish Insider. “It’s a star! Have you all seen this? It’s a star. My boy comes home from school, Baron, he draws stars all over the place, I never said, ‘Oh, that’s the Star of David, Baron, don’t!’ And it actually looks like a sheriff’s star, but I don’t know.”

He said that his campaign should not have deleted the star meme in the first place because it’s “just a star” and those who think otherwise are “sick people.”

“I would have rather defended it, just leave it up, and say, ‘No, that’s not a Star of David. That’s just a star!” he asserted.