Reexamining a Century of Loyalty

Times of Israel, September 13, 2024

My lifelong voting history has been a perpetuation of my family’s Democratic loyalty going back to the second decade of the 20^th century.  Like a great many liberal American Jewish families, the roots of this loyalty spring from my grandparents’ toiling in sweatshops on the Lower East Side, identification with the Bund (Jewish labor movement), membership in the Workmen’s Circle, and reading the once-vibrant socialist Yiddish press.  I myself had a subscription for many years to the weekly English-language remnant of The Jewish Daily Forward.  But a few years ago I felt it drifting away from support of Israel, and so canceled my subscription.

I’ve been witnessing that same change of course within the Democratic Party, spurred on by the rise of the overtly anti-Semitic “Squad.”  During the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the Biden-Harris administration’s slow-walking or withholding of essential munitions in Israel’s time of greatest need–during an existential war–felt like a betrayal.  This last straw has led me to reexamine my lifelong loyalty to the Democratic Party.

Although I still support traditional Democratic issues such as abortion rights, living wages, and antidiscrimination,  I will now assign them secondary status as I decide which party to vote for.  I’ll reserve primary status for the much more pressing issues of anti-Semitism careening out of control and the survival of the State of Israel.

Judging by her public statements, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris supports the anti-Semitic, pro-Palestinian protesters who disrupted American campuses last spring and are resuming their protests and overt harassment of Jewish students and faculty now.  Her reaction to those protesters: “They are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.”

Exactly what “emotion” was she referring to?  Should Palestine be free of Jews from the river to the sea?  Are murdering, raping, burning alive, and beheading civilians an acceptable form of warfare?  Are harassment of and physical violence against American Jewish students a permitted form of protest?

Regarding her stance on the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, she participated in formulating the current administration’s policy.  In her recent interview with CNN she declares her unwavering commitment to Israel’s defense and its right to defend itself.  That’s intended to reassure us Jews.  Indeed, the current Democratic administration has dispatched massive naval assets to the Middle East.  So far they have been used to  help Israel only defensively by intercepting incoming missiles from Iran and Yemen, but not offensively to deter Hezbollah from launching salvos of rockets daily at northern Israel.

In the next breath she undercuts her “unwavering” commitment to Israel’s self-defense by cautioning, “And how it does so matters,” then laments, “Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed and we have got to get a deal done.”  The innuendo is that Israel has been intentionally bombing civilians.  But this is defamatory because she knows that Israel has been going to great lengths to keep civilians out of harm’s way to an extent unprecedented in urban warfare, all the while neglecting to condemn Hamas for systematically putting Palestinian civilians in harm’s way.

Getting “a deal done” she repeats six times.  This deal would essentially coerce Israel into surrender, allowing Hamas to regroup and rebuild its war machine in preparation for the future massacres and atrocities that it has promised to commit repeatedly until the annihilation of Israel.  Is this her vision of Israel defending itself?

Likewise, in a recent interview Harris’ vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz said of the war in Gaza that “what we saw on October 7 was a horrific act of violence against the people of Israel” with no mention of the perpetrators.  Then he utters the formulaic “…the people of Israel …have the right to defend themselves, and the United States will always stand by that.”  In the next breath he undercuts the formula, “But we can’t allow what’s happened in Gaza to happen…It’s a humanitarian crisis.” Implicit in this is the same defamatory innuendo against Israel while conspicuously omitting to condemn Hamas for causing the crisis by stealing most of the humanitarian aid.  He closes with the predictable call for “…getting a ceasefire…” which, as mentioned above in Harris’ call for a “deal,” would be seen in the Middle East as Israel surrendering to a victorious Hamas.  Is this Walz’s idea of Israel defending itself?

A telling way of predicting VP Harris’ future policy in the Middle East is to vet her advisers.  Philip Gordon is Harris’ current National Security Adviser.  In 2015 he “harshly criticized Israeli policies and indicated that the government was not committed to peace.”  He has publicly expressed the delusion that “[Mahmoud] Abbas [president of the Palestinian Authority]…has shown time and again that he’s committed to non-violence and co-existence and cooperation with Israel.”

Candidate Harris has recently appointed Ilan Goldenberg as her campaign’s liaison to the Jewish community.  He is not an expert on the Jewish community at all but a foreign-policy expert.  As such, he has opposed moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and US recognition of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory.  He advised “the presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren, one of Israel’s loudest and most ignorant critics in the Senate.”

Her liaison to the Muslim community is Nasrina Bargzie, who has defended groups involved in fanning the flames of anti-Semitism on American campuses.

With such a team of advisers and VP choice I foresee a Harris administration not just continuing but intensifying the Biden administration’s duplicitous and deceitful policy of hamstringing its ally Israel in its war of survival against radical Islamic terrorism.  As well, I foresee feeble measures at best to contain the snowballing wave of anti-Jewish racism in colleges and universities.

As if to prove my point, VP Harris snubbed Prime Minister Netanyahu when he was invited to speak to a joint session of Congress last July, refusing to preside as she should have done.  She was joined in the snub by about half of the Democratic senators and representatives.

Contrast this with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s accomplishments on Israel and anti-Semitism.  During his tenure as president he transferred the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan, cut off funding of UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority’s pay-for-slay program, brought to fruition the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab countries, closed the Palestinian Authority office in Washington, and the list goes on.  He signed an executive order extending Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to include anti-Semitism, exposing universities where this form of racism is tolerated to cuts in federal funding.

In 2015 future president Donald Trump was honored at the Algemeiner Jewish 100 Gala for his “continued support of Israel and the Jewish people.”  At that event he said, “We love Israel, we will fight for Israel 100 percent, 1000 percent, it will be there forever.”

In his speech at the recent Republican Jewish Coalition, he declared his unequivocal support anew:

“When I am president, the United States will once again stand shoulder to shoulder with the State of Israel.  I will support Israel’s right to win its war on terror and we will win fast.  You have to win and you have to win fast…You have peace through strength…I will put every single college president on notice the American taxpayer will not subsidize the creation of terrorist sympathizers on American soil.  Colleges…must end the anti-Semitic propaganda or they will lose…federal support…Militant anti-Semitism and support for terror has no place in a civilized society…we must reject anti-Semitism in our schools, reject it in our foreign policy…”

To be sure, anti-Semitism can be found in the right wing of the Republican Party as well as in the left wing of the Democratic Party.  But it is currently much more virulent in the latter.  That could change as the winds shift and our vote should change accordingly.

My grandparents always voted for Democratic presidential candidates ever since they were naturalized American citizens, and so did my parents. But now, having lived through Czarist Russia, Bolshevism, and the Holocaust, they would instantly recognize the changes sweeping over the Democratic Party for what they are and they would recoil, other issues notwithstanding.

I can think of three ways to express disapproval at the ballot box.  The first and most effective, of course, is simply to vote Republican.  If that’s a line you viscerally cannot cross, the second way is to vote for Robert Kennedy Jr, the third-party candidate, if he is still on the ballot in your state.  Third, continue to vote Democratic but write in the name of a more palatable politician instead of voting for the official Democratic presidential nominee.  For example, write in John Fetterman, D-Pennsylvania or Ritchie Torres, D-New York, both staunch supporters of Israel and opponents of anti-Semitism.  These alternatives in sufficient numbers could send an unequivocal message to the Democratic Party not to take the Jewish vote for granted.

Regretfully, we liberal Jews must face this menacing resurgence of anti-Semitism.  Close ranks with me and a rapidly growing number of unnerved others to counter it by voting for our self-preservation.