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Larry Hart

Not all Democrats have a problem with Jews

Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York State, in an address to an Orthodox Jewish audience the other day, said he would take a trip to Israel in support of Jews and the Jewish community and in response to the rise in anti Semitic incidents in the last month or so. That is a refreshing comment from an American politician especially one from the Democratic Party.

Jews who are identifiably Jewish, practice their religion on whatever level, attend shul, support Israel and believe in varying degrees in the laws of Moses, have for the past eight years felt abandoned by the Democratic Party. The Obama administration had allowed daylight to form between Israel and the United States for the first time since President Kennedy declared it a “special relationship” almost 60 years ago.  This helped to translate into less support for Jews, the Jewish State and all Jewish issues across the board in Democratic politics.

The hard left wing of the party, Keith Ellison, Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters et al., have taken up alliance with the Left wing Jews of the party, Bernie Sanders, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chuck Schumer et al and have built an exclusivity that at the very least leaves out this part of the Jewish community. The Jews appear to be the only minority not included in Democratic Party inclusion politics.

A 2016 poll found for the first time that a majority of Democrats no longer support all aspects of the state of Israel

“Three quarters of highly educated, high income, publicly active US Democrats — the so-called ‘opinion elites’— believe Israel has too much influence on US foreign policy, almost half of them consider Israel to be a racist country, and fewer than half of them believe that Israel wants peace with its neighbors. “

With the vast majority of support coming from the Republicans a reversal  has occurred in the United States since the 1960s. The numbers were reversed back then with a vast majority of Democrats supporting the Jewish cause and a minority of Republicans supporting the same issues.

So, it is a nice surprise to see a leader of the Democratic Party, not Jewish, actually stand with the Jewish people at a time when it is definitely needed. The current spate of anti Semitic crime sweeping across the American landscape has opened some eyes even if others continue to remain closed.

There is no proof of who is committing these attacks but all sources point to the hard Left and their Muslim allies in the Democratic Party as the culprits. Yet today Left wingers like Bernie Sanders  deflect this notion by wagging his finger at the Trump Administration accusing them of remaining silent in the face of these current attacks.

Isn’t this one of Sol Alinsky’s rules to revolution? Well apparently it is more, the third, seventh and thirteenth rule apply to Bernie’s accusation. Good goin’ Bernie.

Bernie made his comments to J-Street another anti-Israel group which is devoid almost entirely of any right winged extremists reminiscent of Nazi era Germany. At least,  I don’t know of any.

It will also be recalled:

“We all remember the 2012 Democratic Convention, former mayor of Los Angeles Anthony Villaraigosa taking an up and down vote to decide whether their platform should be revised to support Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to re insert “God” into the Democratic Party platform. The vote from the floor clearly did not have the two thirds majority required to pass, but Villaraigosa passed it anyway.”

But, Cuomo isn’t buying into that kind of distortion. He stops short of accusing his own party of the attacks, but alludes to it close enough. And, I got to give him credit for it.

In addition to his other supportive comments in the same article he brought up his executive order from last June for New York to “drop investments linked to the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign.”

No less than J-Street, BDS is clearly a left winged university organized boycott, anti semitic by all reasonable standards. It’s  supported by Left wing Jews, Blacks and Muslims across the land and in recent years had made some headway in their quest to delegitimize and weaken Israel. At least, until some reasonable Democratic Party leaders like Cuomo had struck at them to level their karma a bit.

I doubt very much that J-Street, BDS, or the Democratic Party hard left would agree with Cuomo’s executive order.

Cuomo is no small fish in the Democratic Party either. He belongs to a special dynastic class like the Kennedy’s or the Bush’s. His father was Mario Cuomo, a long time party leader and also former governor of New York.

One can only hope that this kind of Democrat can build on this and save their party and the country from certain political disaster.

I wonder if he will get in any trouble with the DNC for this?

About the Author
Larry Hart has been writing and commenting on Jewish issues since 1985. His body is in the U.S., but his heart is in Israel.