Comment of the Day

Mike L.

I found this comment under a Tablet Magazine piece about why some prominent Jewish Democrats who have been highly critical of Barack Obama are endorsing him anyway.

It nicely sums up my feelings, as well.

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JRapp:

Prominent Jews endorse Obama because their Jewish identity is intimately tied up with their Party identity. When the Democratic President and an increasing number of Democrats are prima facie hostile to the Jewish state they can’t vote against the Democratic Party even if it’s hostile to Jews because to do so would oxymoronically strike at the heart of their Jewish identity. Israel is, of course, not the only issue important to Jews, but liberal social causes and “social justice” are not the only important Jewish issues either. If you believe that one half of the Jewish people are facing the imminent threat of Genocide, like Dershowitz and Koch believe, then securing their safety should trump all other Jewish issues – as well it should.

The President is a man who has been all too comfortable building personal relationships with people who don’t much like Jews, and this comfort also manifests in a foreign policy uniquely hostile to Israel for an American administration. The sad reality is that the left is becoming increasingly Anti-Semitic, singling the Jewish state out for scorn, mainstreaming canards about Jewish control, and even more recently a movement to ban Circumcision. The political right too has a history of Anti-Semetism, but whether you want to admit it, or not, Conservatives have done a much better job confronting Anti-Semitism in their midst and expunging it than the Left has. The response of prominent Jews has been to either ignore, or discount this trend because it’s not easy to admit that your ideological fellow travelers might bear an age’s old animus towards you simply because you’re Jewish.

You won’t be able to ignore it much longer.