“Anybody who’s Jewish and loves being Jewish and loves Israel is a fool if they vote for a Democrat,” former President Donald Trump recently told an audience attending the Israeli-American Council summit in Washington, D.C. And if you’re a Jewish supporter of Kamala Harris, the former president went on, “You should have your head examined.”
Every four years, without fail, I’m assured that the Jewish vote is finally up for grabs. Every four years, the prediction turns out to be completely wrong. One strongly suspects 2024 will be no different — though it certainly should be.
The last Republican to win the Jewish vote was the great Warren Harding — and only because the socialist Eugene Debs took 33% of the vote. Franklin D. Roosevelt solidified the Jewish vote, and other than the Reagan-Carter contest in 1980, it didn’t budge much for decades. Bill Clinton, who took a deferment on the Vietnam War but vowed to pick up a rifle and die for Israel, if necessary, won 78% of the Jewish vote in 1992 and 80% in 1996. Al Gore won 79% in 2000. John Kerry won 76% in 2004. It didn’t soften any until Barack Obama followed up his 78% win in 2008 by losing 9 percentage points after his administration turned on Israel and embraced Iran. President Joe Biden also won 68% in 2020.
Growing up in the New York area, I doubt if I knew enough Jewish conservatives to put together a minyan. But like everyone else, Jewish political outlooks are products of environment and history. Each bloc of voters is disinclined to drop generational loyalties. So, I understand why many Jews couldn’t stomach voting for Trump. The fact that they accept the upsurge of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment within their own party is a different story.
First off, there’s little doubt Trump was good for Israel and, so, good for the Jews. The Trump administration helped forge a historic agreement between Israel and Sunni Arab nations, bypassing the intractable Palestinians. The Biden administration immediately returned the United States to the Obama-era coddling of the Islamic theocracy in Iran, opening vast resources that were plowed into proxy wars across the Middle East. Hamas and Hezbollah would never be able to engage in wars against civilians without the backing of Iran.
Trump also stripped funding of the terrorism-aiding United Nations Relief and Works Agency and designated the Iran proxy Houthis a terrorist organization. The Biden-Harris administration immediately reversed both decisions.
Trump moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, putting an end to the fantasy that the city will be shared with the Palestine Liberation Organization or Hamas or anyone else. Biden and Democrats, on the other hand, began pushing for a “two-state” solution a few weeks after Palestinians launched one of the most gruesome, medieval attacks on Jewish civilians in history.
But what if most American Jews don’t really care about Israel anymore?
For more than 70 years, Jewish political identity was wrapped up in the causes of Zionism and progressivism. A person can no longer choose both. While 82% of Orthodox Jews feel a connection to Israel, only 45% of Jews overall, most of whom are not ignorant of their culture but of the stark lessons of history, say that Israel isn’t essential to what being Jewish means.
While the self-hating Jew of the 20th Century proved his devotion to secularism by denigrating his faith and culture, today he just heads over to the New York Times editorial page to denounce Israel. It’s worse, really, because the Jewish progressive appropriates faith and turns it on his people. The concept that allegedly weds Judaism to Marxism, “tikkun olam,” meaning “repairing the world,” is a bit of mysticism that was excavated by leftists to reimagine Judaism as a social justice movement. It’s a false idol. If one were to listen to the teachings of the faux Jew “tikkun olam” denomination, he or she be might under the impression that abortion and Palestinian statehood were pillars of halachic thought.
For those who will accuse me of conflating Judaism and Zionism, yes, I do. “Never Again” isn’t a hashtag. Anti-Zionism is the blood libel of the modern age. It puts Jews in more danger than every cosplaying white nationalist march combined. It is the principal justification for the hatred of Jews everywhere in the world, including here in the U.S. Those who ignore it, as most Jewish Democrats do, allow it to flourish.
And the contemporary Democratic Party’s position on Israel is rapidly meeting Natan Sharansky’s “3D test” of antisemitism: delegitimization, demonization, and double standards. When Israel unleashed perhaps the most successful targeted wartime operation in military history, probably saving thousands of lives, numerous Democrats lamented that Israel was escalating the war with Hezbollah, the terrorist army that has been firing missiles at civilians for nearly a year. This includes Biden’s secretary of state. Leon Panetta, former CIA director and defense secretary under former President Barack Obama, called the pager operation “terrorism.”
Indeed, according to a Harvard University poll taken right after Palestinians killed 1,200 civilians, 36% of “liberals” and 31% of Democrats said they agreed that Hamas’s attack on civilians could be “justified.” It’s no accident that Harris feels the need to say those marching in support of groups that sexually torture, starve, kidnap, and murder Jews, show us “what human emotion should be.” Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), contends people who burn American flags and chant “from the river to the sea,” a literal call to genocide, are “speaking out for all the right reasons.”
You know who doesn’t speak up about any of this? Jewish Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) sits in silence, terrified that he may offend that America-hating Zoomer who’s working on that peace, conflict, and sustainability master’s degree at Columbia University or the pro-Hamas voter in Dearborn, Michigan.
There are consequences to mollifying the Jew-baiting propogandists who continue to lie about Israeli “genocide” and “apartheid.” According to the FBI, antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. spiked to 63% in 2023 — with the most incidents on record. Most of this is occurring in the bluest states in the country. There is a new Charlottesville virtually every week in the U.S., bolstered by thousands of Islamists and leftist fellow travelers. Virtually every trendy progressive movement from the Women’s March to Black Lives Matter to the cause of “Palestine” is infested with antisemites. If these people were merely “critical of Israel,” they’d be boycotting El Al, not targeting synagogues, Jewish students, Jewish campus groups, Holocaust museums, Jewish-owned restaurants, and performances of Jewish comedians.
No, the Left doesn’t have a monopoly on bigotry. A few weeks ago, for instance, every Jewish Democrat in the House signed a joint statement condemning Tucker Carlson for hosting a Nazi apologist on his podcast. They had a point. The former Fox News host’s online model, sadly, is highlighting bigoted pseudo-intellectuals in his chase for clicks from repressed half-wits with Pepe the Frog pictures on their profiles.
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But what standing do House Democrats, who say nary a word about the terrorism apologists and America haters in their own party, have to admonish anyone? Their words reek of cynical partisan posturing. Crackpot Candace Owens isn’t a member of congress. Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are.
And the ugly reality is that if elected Jewish Democrats don’t care about the unprecedented rise of Jew-baiting and blood libels on the Left, the chances that their constituents will care is slim to none. Which is a great tragedy.