By Abraham H. Miller, AMERICAN THINKER
The quip among Jewish Republicans about President Obama’s trafficking with anti-Semites was that he was so popular with American Jews that had he nuked Tel Aviv, he would have lost no more than 30% of the Jewish vote.
The affinity for American Jews for the Democrat Party has long been a political curiosity. The distinguished essayist Milton Himmelfarb observed that in America, Jews had attained the socioeconomic status of Episcopalians, but for some reason they continued to vote like Puerto Ricans.
Nothing seems to dissolve the sinew that ties Jews to the Democrats. President Obama’s association with the anti-Semitic Rev. Jeremiah Wright brought a collective yawn. Photos of Barrack Obama embracing the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, who compared Jews to termites, did not concern them.
The anti-Semitic diatribes of the so-called “Squad” have been dismissed as a minority voice among the Democrats that would be easily controlled by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The House resolution condemning boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel was showcased for having been passed, while ignoring that of the 17 votes against it, 16 came from Democrats.
The positions on Israel of Democratic presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders should send chills up the spine of the Jewish community, but they do not. Warren and Sanders would cut off aid to Israel and unless Israel returns to what Abba Eban appropriately called the Auschwitz Borders.
On college campuses, Jews are forbidden access to the marketplace of ideas unless they parrot leftist newspeak. The Arab/Israeli conflict is described in mythical terms of colonialism, ignoring that the Arabs ethnically cleansed Jews from Jerusalem and the territories, and by the end of the 19th century, Jerusalem was a Jewish, not a Muslim city.
The faux colonial model is the product of leftist intellectuals, an oxymoron because scholarship and ideology are inherent contradictions. It is leftists that perpetuate the banality of the activist scholar so eagerly embraced in what once passed for higher education.
Much of the Jewish community either buys into this or ignores it. Given a choice between preserving their Jewish identity or embracing the ideology of the left, many Jews would prefer to be Democrats than Jews.
President Franklin Roosevelt’s abandonment of Europe’s Jews is rationalized as a three-term, popular president’s inability to control his own Department of State. Roosevelt was a racist and an anti-Semite. He incarcerated loyal Japanese who subsequently proved their patriotism and courage on Europe’s battlefields. His incarceration order was a function of his own phobia of Asians and was protested even by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Roosevelt abandoned the Jews for similar reasons.
Jews have bought into the Democrats’ obsession with President Donald Trump as a racist and anti-Semite. Trump, whose daughter is an observant Jew and who has Jewish grandchildren, is labeled an anti-Semite. In contrast, hatemonger Al Sharpton is honored in a New York synagogue during the recent high holidays, and Congressman Hank Johnson’s allusion to Jews as termites, invoking a medieval and Nazi stigma resurrected by the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, barely causes concern.
The future of Jews in the Democratic party is already written in the workings of the British Labour Party, which is infused with a virulent anti-Semitism enhanced by its leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Dame Louise Ellman, who has been a vocal critic of Corbyn’s venomous anti-Semitism, faced an ouster vote, which the local party members scheduled for Yom Kippur eve, the holiest night of the Jewish calendar. The timing was hardly coincidental. Ellman eventually quit.
It is facile to dismiss the current anti-Semitism within the Democrat Party as the rantings of a few peripheral members. The Democrat Party is moving left. It is increasingly oriented toward making decisions based on the ideology of intersectionality, meaning that professed victims of the white patriarchal oppressor must share a common political outlook.
Ironically, within this ideology, Jews, historically the most oppressed people enduring the world’s oldest hatred, are part of the privileged classes, and Muslims, no matter how many countries they control or how they oppress women and their own people, are victims.
It will not end well for the Jews. The British Labour Party is transmitting that message. Will Jews recognize their political self-interest before it is too late? Those of us who think that if Barack Obama had nuked Tel Aviv, he would have lost far less than 30% of the Jewish vote, think otherwise.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the Hyam Salomon Center.
@ Michael S:
Turns out Puerto Ricans have completely different parties in Puerto Rico and don’t vote in National elections but have a heavy voter turnout. Puerto Ricans in the mainland mostly don’t vote.
https://aldianews.com/articles/politics/puerto-ricans-voting-puerto-rico-vs-us-mainland-philadelphia-case-study/55653
I don’t think I need to provide evidence that Jews tend to turn out and vote in America.
So, it’s a great quote, but counterfactual. Jews have everything in common with Episcopalians and nothing in common with Puerto Ricans. Except for Puerto Rican Jews like Jeraldo RiveraNice try, though.
@ Michael S:
There is also a sizeable Jewish minority living in poverty.
“The percentage of Jewish households earning less than $30,000 is between 16 and 20 percent, according to two major national studies; seven percent of Jewish households earn less than $15,000.
New York City and the surrounding region has the largest number of low-income Jewish households in the United States and is an outlier when compared to the ranges included above. According to 2011 data, 20 percent of individuals in Jewish households in New York lived in a household with an income below 150 percent of the federal poverty level, accounting for 361,100 individuals.
Jewish poverty is concentrated among older adults, Hasidic Jews, individuals with lower levels of educational attainment, individuals who are employed part-time, individuals with disabilities, single women, immigrants, and those who identify as “Just Jewish,” secular, or have no Jewish denomination.”
https://hjweinbergfoundation.org/blog/what-do-we-know-about-jewish-poverty-in-the-united-states
19 percent of Episcopalians make less than $30,000 a year. Another 13 percent make less than 50.
16 percent of Jews make less than 30 and another 15 make less than 50 so, yes, I guess the Episcopal comparison is apt, in a way, except roughly a third of both groups are living in poverty or close to it.
But, the reality is that the not only are the income patterns similar but so are the voting patterns between Jews and Episcopalians.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/10/11/how-income-varies-among-u-s-religious-groups/
@ Michael S:
https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/jewish/party-affiliation/
@ Michael S:
The quip, though witty, is also dated in another way. Most Episcopalians, today, are Democrats. 49 to 39 percent with 12 percent undecided. https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-denomination/episcopal-church/party-affiliation/
Among Jews it’s 64 to 26 percent Democrat with 9 percent undecided though you also have to factor in the fact that the Republican party doesn’t really exist in New York and that many Chasidic Jews are on public assistance.
@ Arthur Wellesley:
“Although the majority of us now earn like Episcopalians, too many of us still vote like Puerto Ricans.”
I agree with you, Arthur, though you may not have gone far enough. Many Puerto Ricans may have a self-interest in voting against the US President and his party, but US Jews have no excuse. There has never in our history been a group more anti-Israel (and, in fact, anti-Jew) than the current leaders of the US Democratic Party.
The author left out that the Jews ignore 2334, which revoked 242’s position against total withdrawal, and the Reform and Conservative movements’ own misleading letter to Trump calling for return to Eban’s Auschwitz lines – “hew precisely” to “the 1967 borders” [just 1949 ceasefire lines] except for agreed “adjustments.”
Still, liberal Jews (abortion, no border fence, etc) should stay in the Democrats and fight Bernie etc., while voting in 2020 in their own interest, for (Golan, Jerusalem, Embassy) Trump.
@ Lorensacho:Some Jews vote GOP because they realize the Free Market has been the greatest success for the most people and that socialism is a steady historical disaster.
The GOP is now clearly the party that supports Israel. The DEM POTUS candidates all appear to see how they can punish Israel if they do not give their land to terrorists or are willing to split Jerusalem.
@ Lorensacho:
You mean empathy like promising all kinds of free stuff that the politician never intends to give because they can never confiscate enough wealth to actually fulfill their empty promises? That kind of empathy?
The trouble is that at a more intimate level the Republican and UK Conservative parties are NOT necessarily inclusive of an outsider community like the Jews. Re-read Exodus on the… “Pharoah who knew not Joseph.” Further apart from M. Zuckerberg the Jewish Community is relatively well off but not serious money nor serioous Establishment and remember how Jews in Germany and other European countries were abandoned as soon as Depression street jealousies led people to fall for kicking Jews rather than reforming taxation and the economic distribution. I very much doubt if Roosevelt was the only factor in keeping quotas down to refugee Jews in the 30’s. Establishment Republicans were also in that as Episcopalians business and press owners and the majority seeking to remain so behind the Quota Acts.
Although the majority of us now earn like Episcopalians, too many of us still vote like Puerto Ricans.
If Republicans had one ounce of empathy for ordinary people, Jews would vote for them.