WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: A new Gallop poll says the Democratic Party is no longer majority-supportive of Israel. Tobin says “there may be no road back.” Republican that I am, I plead with you grassroots Jewish Democrats not to accept that, but to work to restore within your Party that historic support. Dershowitz says Congressional support for our people’s homeland should be bipartisan, and on this I agree with him.
The Task for the Most of Us American Jews Who Are Democrats: Restore Support for Our People’s Homeland Within Your Party
I was there that extraordinary night a few years back at the 1200-attendee ZOA dinner in a hotel ballroom in New York at which three unlikely things happened: [1] the conservative Zionist Organization of America gave an award to liberal Harvard Law Prof. Alan Dershowitz; [2] Dershowitz showed up to accept it; and [3] he introduced the evening’s main speaker as the brightest law student he’d ever taught, conservative Senator Cruz.
Along with the other 1199 attendees, I didn’t agree with all that Prof. Dershowitz said in his remarks, but I agreed with this: he said support for Israel in America should continue to be bipartisan. JNS editor Jonathan Tobin wrote a piece last Friday, NY Post, 3/17/23, Progressives Turned Democrats Against Israel, lamenting, citing a new Gallop poll, that it no longer is.
Blaming “the rise of the intersectional left that falsely analogies the Palestinian war on Israel to the struggle for civil rights in the United States and depicts the Jewish state as an expression of ‘white privilege’ and an oppressor of Palestinian ‘people of color,” Tobin writes that never mind that Israelis are majority non-White, and that it’s the Palestinian Arabs who’ve consistently rejected peace offers, and darkly concludes:
“…from now on, it isn’t possible to pretend that both parties are equally committed to Israel’s defense.
“Thanks to the influence of the ideology to which even President Joe Biden bends his knee, the Democrats have reached a tipping point on Israel from which there may be no road back.” [emphasis added]
Gentle Readers of these weekly epistles who are of the Democratic Party persuasion, I – right-wing Republican and ardent supporter of both Donald and Bibi that I am – beg of you two things: Stay Where You Are and Do Not Accept This. Act to restore and reinvigorate your Party’s support of our people’s homeland of Israel.
Start with this: US support for Israel is one of multiple grave issues confronting us today as American Jews. On most of the others, your liberal views likely conform more to those today of the Democratic Party than of the GOP. Republicans mostly believe (here’s, e.g., fifteen positions, and see how you fare with them):
* in Election Day and citizens-only Voter ID;
* in energy independence for the U.S.;
* in secure borders, including the fence;
* in boys not in girls’ teams, showers, toilets and locker rooms;
* in marriage being between a man and a woman;
* in two-parent families with a mother and father;
* in any-time abortion being the abominable crime against nature;
* in most young child sex-change surgery being child-abuse;
* in enforcing the law against urban riots and not defunding police;
* in parental say in their kids’ education, sans CRT, LGBTQ+, etc;
* in the federal gov’t not taking over conducting elections;
* in not requiring low-income housing in every local zoning zone;
* in the Second Amendment;
* in allowing voluntary prayer at school and athletic events;
* in one don’t-kneel National Anthem at start of sporting events.
The Biden administration is applying substantial pressure on Israel on multiple issues, most dangerously, in my view, to accede to “two-states along the 1967 [1949] lines with mutually agreed land swaps.” Can you envision two parts to rip from Israel that would do it more harm than ripping from it its defensible Judea-Samaria hill country heartland and historic Jerusalem (Old City, Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all)? Make the case within your Party of our Jewish people’s historical and legal right to these inherently core parts of our homeland.
Yes, we American Jews are a small minority among American citizens. But the big majority of you who are Democrats is not without substantial influence. You’re centered in big states often having quite close elections. You contribute financially to your Party way way above your numeric percent. It’s partly about these ballots and these Benjamins, baby.