Fearing that Jews will wake up and realize that the Democrats and their allied interest groups will confront every bias except Jew hatred, a group of Jewish Democrats has vowed to confront anti-Semitism and anti-Israel policies in their party.
Being pro-Israel isn’t just for Republicans, opines Democratic Party strategist Ann F. Lewis, seeking to assure the faithful that prominent Democrats are now willing to confront their party’s rising anti-Semitism and anti-Israel policies. One wonders where they were hiding when President Obama was reshaping Iran into the hegemonic power in the Middle East, creating an existential threat to Israel.
Lewis’ statement showcases that Jews and Democrats have traditionally been in the vanguard of support for “minority” rights; but it refuses to confront that increasingly, “minorities” do not support Jews or Israel’s right to exist.
It’s no accident that it isn’t just Muslims that presage the extermination of the Jews by chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” it is also progressives and the various “minority” groups that mindlessly embrace intersectionality.
As gays in Berkeley carry signs proclaiming, “Gays for Palestine,” one wonders how the demonstrators would be received in Ramallah.
Intersectionality posits that Muslims generally and Palestinians specifically are members of the oppressed class and deserving of unfettered support.
Muslims have been oppressors as well as oppressed. The Jews of the Arab world, who preceded Islam by more than a thousand years, were ethnically cleansed after Israel’s establishment. And now, in areas of the Middle East where Christianity once flourished, Christians barely exist.
The trans-Saharan slave trade exists today in North Africa as Sub-Saharan Africans seeking to escape from war and famine find themselves prey to modern-day Arab slave traders.
But none of this concerns the followers of intersectionality, the “oppressed” American minorities, or the Democrats who are the self-anointed champions of the socially and politically marginalized. The leftists have become obsessed with the only democracy in the Middle East where gays can live openly and where all religions can be freely practiced.
The Left has built a wall of silence around bigotry directed at Jews. The Congressional Black Caucus fumes about Virginia Governor Ralph Northam’s insensitive black-face escapade, but it shows neither shame, remorse, nor outrage about its members proudly posing for photographs with the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, an unabashed anti-Semite and racist.
Anti-Semites in the Democratic Party threaten to erode the party’s natural base. Even Jewish liberals, not to be confused with “leftists,” will wake up one day to the reality that the groups they support do not support them.
All four announced Democratic presidential candidates have opposed the Senate’s anti-Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions resolution on the specious grounds of freedom of speech. The resolution prohibits behavior, not speech.
The ACLU used the same logic as found in the anti-BDS resolution to support gay rights, but now it has entered the courts to undermine the legal precedence for gay rights in order to find a legal justification for supporting BDS. Such is the institutionalization of anti-Semitism by the Left.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar crudely alleges in her latest anti-Semitic rant that AIPAC buys votes. AIPAC is a bottom-up lobby that represents the interests of American Jews. For all of Representative Omar’s fixation on AIPAC, the strongest lobby in Washington is arguably the Saudi lobby.
The Saudi lobby does not represent the interests of U.S. citizens but those of an extraordinarily wealthy and powerful foreign government.
Representative Omar knows less about who dominates Washington than whom to hate.
As Jews become increasingly aware that the Democratic Party no longer represents their interests, it will take more than a public relations campaign to win them back. It is time for the Jews to recognize that save for their votes and their campaign contributions, the Democratic Party has no use for them.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him @salomoncenter