There is almost nothing Democrats can do to damage America, or Israel, that would change most American Jews’ political leanings.
The latest example took place just last week. A college student speaking to the vice president of the United States, a Democrat, condemned America for supporting Israel, and charged Israel with committing “ethnic genocide” against Palestinians.
Harris’s response?
“Your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth cannot be suppressed, and it must be heard.”
It was indeed the student’s truth – which means it was a lie. “Your truth” always means “a lie.” When a person says something that is true, people don’t say, “that is your truth.” They say, “that’s true.”
And indeed, what the girl said to the vice president was a complete lie. Not a partial lie, a complete lie. As a rule – except on the Left with regard to Israel – groups that are victims of genocide decrease in number. Yet the Palestinians have had one of the highest population growth rates in the world. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 1991, there were 2,783,084 Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza. In 2021, there were 5,227,193. This number does not include another 2 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. How many other national or ethnic groups have doubled in size in the last 30 years?
Yet, despite this revealing incident, it is hard to imagine that one American Jew will in any way rethink his or her commitment to Biden-Harris.
One reason is that few Jewish Democrats even know it occurred. I googled “new york times kamala harris george mason university” and the following results came up (in this order): New York Post, Politico, Times of Israel, JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency). Next came the New York Times – an article from 2020: “Kamala Harris Makes History as First Woman and Woman of Color as Vice President.”
I could find nothing about the incident in the news sections of the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times either.
Some of the most powerful forces in the Democratic Party (the reason for the $3.5 trillion spending bill) are indistinguishable in their hatred for Israel from Hamas, Hezbollah and the Iranian regime. Does this disturb American Jewish Democrats?
Not nearly as much as Donald Trump disturbed them. Most American Jews loathed Trump despite the facts that he was the most pro-Israel president since Harry Truman; that his daughter and grandchildren are religious Jews; and that he engineered the Abraham Accords, a peace agreement between the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and Israel, which was followed by normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel and between Morocco and Israel.
Most American Jews believe the Democratic Party is a good and moral party and that the Republican Party is immoral and perhaps even evil.
This view is entirely emotional, which is why it is difficult to imagine it changing.
Most American Jews identify Republicans with the right and they assume “the right” means “fascist” or even “Nazi.”
Most American Jews identify Republicans with the rich and powerful and the Democratic Party with the poor and downtrodden, even though the rich and powerful are overwhelmingly Democrats.
Most American Jews identify the Democratic Party with secularism and the Republican Party with religion (religious Christians and Orthodox Jews). And they are as committed to secularism as Christians are to Christ.
Most American Jews have signed on to just about every secular substitute for Judeo-Christian religions: feminism, environmentalism, “anti-racism,” humanism, socialism. Jews, I have often noted, may well be the most religious people in the world – but for the great majority of them, Judaism is not their religion. And the Democratic Party is the party of all these secular religions.
This is all a great tragedy – not just for America but especially for American Jews.
America has always been the best country Jews have ever lived in outside of Israel. That is why a Jew wrote “G-d Bless America” (and did so at a time when antisemitism was much more prevalent and accepted in American society than it is today). That is why the most influential religious Jew of the 20th century, the Chabad leader, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, described America as a “medina shel chesed” (a country of kindness). Coming from Europe, he did not compare America to Utopia but to all the other countries Jews lived in.
Yet, something happened to American Jews after World War II. They veered more and more left – becoming able to support America-hating movements (like the Black Panthers, for whom Leonard Bernstein and other prominent Jews in music and Broadway threw an infamous fundraiser).
And why did that happen? Because Jews became less and less committed to Judaism, substituted the New York Times for the Torah and went to college in greater proportions than any other ethnic or religious group in America. Colleges corrupt most students’ values. Jews are no exception.
That helps explain why a Democratic vice president could praise a student who just told her that Israel commits ethnic genocide – and have it mean nothing to most American Jews.