A few years ago I spoke on a national U.S. talk radio show – and on Israeli airwaves as well – treating a topic that strangely rarely now captures the world’s attention: the Rwandan genocide. I’d queried the planet’s experts in modern African history and one at Harvard University answered me quite plainly. “Yes, believe it or not there were in fact some very few Tutsi supporters of the Parmehutu party.” But he then added, “Of course, though, that was before the machetes came out.”
And that’s precisely the question to put before Jewish-American voters: are you to wait until the machetes come out, or have the recent months of overt, public, mob-like “river to the sea!” affronts finally forced open the Jewish community’s eyes as concerns their utterly inexplicable choice in political party affiliation?
Those weren’t Libertarians ripping down posters of Hamas’s kidnap victims. It isn’t Republicans chasing down Jewish students on college campuses and preventing them from attending class. It’s the Democratic Party which unapologetically demanding that Jews get used to their near-pariah status, and yet Jews somehow favor it to the tune of a massive 75%.
Jewish-Americans bizarrely find themselves rebuked by a party they’ve supported in lockstep for an entire century. In spite of their loyalty, though, Democrats have had a “Jews not welcome” sign out for many decades, repeated year after year by party notables like Linda Sarsour, Al Sharpton, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and others. The stiff-arm pushing Jews totally beyond the pale came in 2017 when Keith Ellison, former Louis Farrakhan lieutenant, was elected as DNC Deputy Chair, a stinging slap in the face to all Democrats, but what can only be considered a fatal and irrevocable offense to Jewish Democrats.
Except that it wasn’t. In the very next midterm election in 2018, Jewish-American voters cast their ballots, as they always had, 75% for the Democrats. In any normal world, adding insult to injury and piling on the threats, slurs and indignities suffered by American Jews from October 7 to the recent election weeks ago would have been more than enough. And with so many traditionally Democratic constituencies waking up to what their party has become and fleeing from it, one certainly could have expected to see the Jewish contingent leading the way, or at minimum joining the exodus.
Except that they didn’t. Jewish-Americans cast their ballots almost three to one in favor of Kamala Harris, as they always have, and it must seem now always will. The Jewish electorate saw the Republican candidate with the Jewish grandchildren, the former president who moved the U.S. embassy to Israel’s capital in Jerusalem, the staunchest of supporters of Israel, and on the other side a party whose gatherings very often are accentuated with a few perfunctorily burned Israeli flags, and opted overwhelmingly for the latter.
And how is that? What is the scientific or social reason to explain how an entire people can turn on themselves? Well, there really is none, except that history rarely does twist itself into knots to produce such a thing. The Byzantines tore at their culture, smashing icons and battling each other, each defeat at the hands of the Turks proof of their supposed unworthiness. And Roman sumptuary laws in 400 AD forbade the new, chic custom of dying one’s hair blonde and wearing furs, in the manner of their barbarian enemies – who’d be sacking Rome only a decade later.
So it’s happened before. The only thing is, Jewish-American voters, it’s never yet had a happy ending.
