The Democratic Party and the progressive-left is becoming increasingly hostile toward the nation-state of the Jewish people.
This has been coming for decades.
If you look at this 2018 poll from the Pew Research Center you will see that currently, about 79 percent of Republicans favor Israel, while the great majority of Democrats do not. Only 27 percent of Democrats favor the Jews in the Middle East versus their racist, misogynistic, theocratic Islamist enemies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, if not the Palestinian Authority.
And we might keep in mind that many those same people are not just hostile toward Israel - for "social justice" reasons, no less - but toward the United States, as well.
In a recent Facebook comment, I referenced the fact that "it is definitely true that Republicans are more supportive of Israel than are Democrats. It's not even close." And I used the Pew Research Center image above as significant evidence of that fact.
Someone who I take to be an intelligent person responded with this:
Do you realize how 'incendiary' this is!!This is my response:
The idea [which Hadassah follows and AIPAC follows] is to be bipartisan.
And at this time in Jewish history, when there is such a division and almost a tear amongst the Jewish population, how utterly DUMB and counterproductive to dwell on it rather than mend fences. The word 'divisive' doesn't cut it. It is smug and moronic for Friedman to write this; he might as well just go whole hog up Trump's rear end. ...And by the way, I don't actually think it's true! The people who were at the Times Square 'afterparty' after the Celebrate Israel parade - they were not Republicans! Yes, they are firm believers and supporters of Israel, but they were the Tel Aviv crowd, the music lovers, the hip-hop liberal generation. If surveys were done there... wow, that would have been fantastic on who voted for Trump in that crowd. Would have been way less than u think.
Sandy, I believe that I understand your concerns and I agree with Dershowitz that it is preferable that pro-Jewish / pro-Israel support in the US continue to be bipartisan. But we cannot afford to avoid the truth.
And the truth is that the progressive-left and the Democratic Party has betrayed not only their Jewish constituency but their own alleged values in the process.
I am one of those who have left the Democratic Party due to its acceptance of hostility toward Israel within their ranks.
My stance is that we must not allow the Democratic Party to take us for granted... as they have Black people.
The Democrats need to understand that we Jews have political options that do not necessarily include donating to their coffers.
At the same time, I respect those of us (and our non-Jewish friends) who work within the party to stem a terrible anti-Israel / anti-Jewish trend within that party.
I wish you the very best, but Democratic Party trends are not in our favor.
What we need is a change in the voting system that cements the political duopoly in place. If we just get rid of plurality voting and replace it with the system that always counts the second choice votes, not like IRV that only counts second-choice votes if the first choice is eliminated, then Scoop Jackson like candidates will be viable.
ReplyDeleteThey're not gone, they're just not getting elected. There are several factors which together produced that outcome. One of them is the great sort of voters which led many conservative Democrats, the voters who used to nominate conservative Democrats, to become Republicans and liberal/moderate Republicans to become Democrats. That cannot be changed by simply passing a bill. However, none of that would be relevant if running for office did not require getting the endorsement of one of two parties. That is 100% the result of the voting system, which can be changed by just passing a bill.
DeleteIf the following propositions are true, then pairwise-ranked voting would result in Scoop Jackson like candidates getting elected. 1) There are people of a Scoop Jackson disposition willing to run for office. 2) The 79% of Republicans supporting Israel would favor such a candidate over a Democrat who does not favor Israel. 3) The ~50% (to say nothing of the ~30% with no clear favorite) of Democrats who favor the Palestinians would prefer such a candidate over a pro-Israel Republican. 4) The 27% of Democrats favoring Israel would favor such a candidate over all other candidates. 5) A definite majority of voters if forced to choose between a candidate with whom they agree on domestic issues and one with whom they agree on international issues would prefer the agreement on domestic issue. The result is that a majority of the 50% of pro-Palestinian Democrats would favor a Scoop Jackson over a Pat Buchanan.
Do you argue that any of the 5 are not true? Do you argue that the combination of all 5 is incompatible with the disappearance of moderate/conservative Democrats and moderate/liberal Republicans under the current voting system? Do you argue that the combination of all 5 would not result in a Scoop Jackson not having the support of a majority of the full electorate against other Democrats or against Republicans?
You see, Mike, it is all your fault, i.e., you, Friedman, and Trump, of course! Never mind that this has been going on well before Trump the presidential candidate was so much as a gleam in the public's eye.
ReplyDeleteYour friend is in deep denial to the point of being full of it. It just blows me away! I agree with your sentiments 100%.
"but they were the Tel Aviv crowd, the music lovers, the hip-hop liberal generation. "
WTF?
I'll speak for myself. I hate hip-hop. I love music. I hated what this guy said to you.
I find it insulting. Neither you nor I nor the DONALD made the Democratic Party turn on Israel. Sandy is complaining about a schism at this point is time and comes up with this b.s.? It's the relentless bashing by the radical Left and it's slanted and obscurantist narratives which come from a place of drug induced ignorance.
If there are Democrats today who truly support Israel and the Jewish people, not some Israelis and some Jewish people, then they ought to get to work on it.
Support for Israel is not and should never be dependent on whether someone is "down with" hip-hop or "Ferguson" or anything else. Its case is independent of those things. It has nothing to do with any of those things. It is worthy of support on its own merits.
"Hi, I'm one of the liberal centrist supporters of Israel, you know, the kind that hangs out at the library and listens to Mozart."
I mean really, who the hell cares.
None of this is reason not to take the following approach:
ReplyDeleteOppose the Republicans' plutocracy as though there was no Democratic antisemitism and oppose Democratic antisemitism as though there was no Republican plutocracy.
As the parties align now, it would be easier to make a coalition of Republicans in a small minority with anti-antisemitic Democrats than the converse of Democrats in a small minority with anti-plutocratic Republicans. That's just an empirical observation.
I got the memo too. In order to be a Republican you have to be worth at least 10 million dollars, not including the imputed value of slaves.
DeleteYou don't have to be a multimillionaire. You just have to support fiscal policies benefit multimillionaires, no matter what empirical evidence suggests about the effect of such policies on the economy. You have to believe that anyone with the indiscretion to get Hodgkin's Disease or a child with a congenital condition should suffer for that indiscretion by paying multiples more for their health insurance for the rest of their lives. You must believe that no matter how proud, sated, and tranquil society is, there is no public responsibility to strengthen the indigent.
DeleteYou can be a rank-and-file Republican without subscribing to that. But you can't get nominated for anything.
"You don't have to be a multimillionaire."
DeleteStill, I wouldn't mind. :0)
Keith Ellison, an anti-Israel Muslim, became
ReplyDeleteDeputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee
by a UNANIMOUS VOICE VOTE of DNC members,
according to Wikipedia.
=====================================
Links about the Democrats vs. Israel:
www.algemeiner.com/2017/03/23/with-only-two-democrats-voting-in-favor-senate-confirms-david-friedman-as-next-us-ambassador-to-israel/
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2017/04/how-senate-dems-went-anti-israel.html
www.jewishworldreview.com/0518/glick052518.php3
www.jns.org/opinion/losing-the-democrats/
CONCLUSION: Jewa ahould stop supporting anti-Israel political parties like the Democrats and stop buying anti-Israel newspapers like The New York Times.
Are you saying that Jews should cease to care whether Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, Miami, New Orleans, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle all get overrun by rising oceans due to polar ice cap melting? Are you saying that Jews should cease to care about the economic ethos of "pride, satiety, and tranquility, and not helping the poor?" Are you saying that Jews should cease to care whether health care access is treated as a right or as a privilege?
DeleteYou're free to believe those things for yourself. However, instead of trying to shove those positions down pro-Israel liberals' throats, why not promote options that would allow pro-Israel liberals to support both their domestic views and Israel?
I think Mr. Cohen is saying Jews should stop supporting the Democrats and buying the NYT. I don't think he's saying Jews should not care about any other issues they might care about.
DeleteI think the Democrats take jewish support for granted much in the same way they take for granted the support of black people in this country. Political parties are notorious for not wanting to lose votes and political support that comes through handsome donations. If the Democratic Party cares so much about the issues you list so hysterically, then maybe they should think twice about their chances of electability. It's the way politics works, even with Seattle on the line, blub,blub, blub.
Except that doing so has consequences for all the other issues.
DeleteI would like for the Democratic Party to nominate more pragmatic candidates, but I don't have that type of control and neither does the party committee. Read my first comment on this post for how to make that irrelevant.
Another suggestion, make a subset of committee chairmanships, say Ways and Means/Finance, Judiciary, and Foreign Relations, nationally elected positions. Doing so would mean that pro-Israel liberals would be able to vote Democrat for Ways and Means/Finance and Judiciary, giving them zero additional power to promote Palestinianist policy, and vote Republican for Foreign Relation, giving them zero additional power to promote plutocracy.
ReplyDeleteSo your way of maintaining support for Israel in the face of the Dems going south on it is to simply change the American system of government.
DeleteBut don't mess with the Democratic Party itself because the fate of the world is in the balance. Do I have that right?
Wrong on both counts!
DeleteThere is nothing in the Constitution that specifies how committee chairmanships are filled. Everything else stays the same.
It is not an attempt to preserve the current form of the Democratic Party, but a Plan B if attempts to do so fail.
Thank you for the clarification.
DeleteAt the top you were talking about changing the voting system. That was partly what I was referring to.
I believe we need better advocacy, which in part includes tearing down the Palestinian narrative.
I would mention another alternative to changing the Democratic Party, getting more Republicans like Chad Mays (Calif.) and Charles Baker (Mass.) nominated. That would give domestic liberals who are fed up with the Democrats' embrace of Palestinianism a tolerable alternative to the Democratic Party.
DeleteAs to changing the voting system, how is that changing the system of government? Also, how is that avoiding changing the Democratic Party? The change I propose is actually a tool to change both parties. Adopting it would give Democrats a say in the choice among Republicans and Republicans a say in the choice among Democrats, which would result in more members from both parties who concede issues to the other party getting elected.
I know I eat babies. How about you?
ReplyDeleteCould I get everyone to agree that Menendez deserves our support?
ReplyDeleteIf only to keep the state party from installing someone from the Muslim Brotherhood
ReplyDelete