The Stark Choice Facing Jewish Democrats

By Josh Hammer

Daily Wire

March 8, 2019

The week of March 4, 2019 will go down in history as the week that the Democratic Party wholly, completely, and unequivocally sold out its Jewish supporters.

There is truly no other possible conclusion.

The Democrats' profound moral cowardice and shameful obfuscation this week was, at its core, not about criticism of the State of Israel's (entirely lawful and morally just) presence in the historical Jewish heartland of Judea and Samaria. It was not about what Sen. Bernie Sanders (Communist – VT) so mendaciously and disingenuously calls "legitimate criticism of the right-wing, Netanyahu government in Israel." It is not even about "anti-Zionism" — a legitimate academic debate in the half-century between Herzl's initial formulation and Ben-Gurion's ultimate declaration, but which now serves as the thinnest of all thinly veiled ruses for genocidal aspirants who want to throw all the Juden into the Mediterranean.

No, what happened this week was qualitatively worse. It was worse not merely in degree, but in kind.

What the Democratic Party did this week was refuse to condemn one of its own for relentlessly trafficking in at least two of the oldest, most pernicious canards used to defame the Jewish people. What the Democratic Party did this week was whitewash, deflect, and (oftentimes) openly apologize for open, transparent Jew-hatred.

What the Democratic Party covered for this week was not mere criticism of Israeli government policies. Indeed, what the Democratic Party covered for this week was not even criticism of Israel's existence. But what the Party of Truman covered for this week is a rogue misanthrope who peddles Judeophobic screeds about financial control and "dual loyalty" so blatant and unvarnished that they might make some "blood libel" dolts blush.

The Democrats' remarkable — and yet, paradoxically, all too predictable — betrayal of the people who George Washington so lovingly called "the Children of the Stock of Abraham" ought to have profound ramifications for their obstinately loyal Jewish supporters. As Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro wrote yesterday, in summarizing this most lamentable of sagas: "This week, the Democratic Party proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is willing to not only countenance but embrace anti-Semitism, so long as the anti-Semitism comes from members of their intersectional coalition." And as David Harsanyi of The Federalist powerfully put it, "In the progressive worldview, Jews, who are successful and predominately white, should put up with a little bigotry for the common good."

 Tough as it may be for inveterate leftist Jews to process, true Corbynization — the metastasization of the once-pro-Israel Democratic Party into a U.K. Labour Party-esque leftist outfit that routinely shills for Jew-haters — continues apace. How far — and how quickly — we have fallen from Islamic Republic of Iran Sycophant-in-Chief Barack Obama's egregious description of a 2015 Parisian kosher supermarket shooting executed by Islamic State jihadis as "a bunch of folks [randomly shot] in a deli." Four years later, Obama's party cannot bring itself to support a toothless, anodyne, non-personalized resolution that is merely condemnatory of the world's oldest, bloodiest, crudest, most systemic bigotry.

The time has come for Jewish Democrats — or at least those Jewish Democrats who are proudly Jewish and/or proudly pro-Israel — to do some deep thinking. Don't take it from me — heck, take it from far-Left Batya Ungar-Sargon of the Forward.

The issue is no longer about support for Israel — though that once-manageable partisan divide has transmogrified into a monumental chasm. 

The issue, instead, is whether Jews can find a political home in a major party that refuses to condemn Jew-hatred. Unfortunately, it really is that simple. Can Jewish Democrats who are proud of and secure with their Jewish identity properly call the Democratic Party a political home when that same Democratic Party refuses to condemn an unrepentant bigot in its ranks who smears Jews with accusations of undue financial control and "dual loyalty" — smears which have been proffered as excuses to persecute Jews for centuries, if not millennia? Is it, indeed, time for a "Jexodus?"

Far be it from me to try to directly persuade all Left-leaning Jewish Democrats — those with whom I would disagree on any number of other issues, from borders and sovereignty to life and gun rights — to register as Republicans. And to be sure, the Republican Party has a myriad flaws of its own.

The question, instead, is much simpler. Can Jewish Democrats who care about their Jewish identity and Jewish/Israel-related issues proudly and properly remain Democrats? Increasingly, it seems that the answer may be "no.”