Is Jexodus a real thing?
Seems possible, although it’s difficult to know how widespread it is:
Jewish voters furious at Democrats’ defense of Rep. Ilhan Omar say they’re done with the party that has held their support for generations.
“We felt we had a home there,” said Mark Schwartz, the Democratic deputy mayor of solidly blue Teaneck, NJ. “And now we feel like we have to check our passports.”…
Mark Dunec, a consultant in Livingston, NJ who ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2014, says, “I’m physically afraid for myself and for my family,” adding, “I see my own party contributing to the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.”
The reference in the title of this post is to this movement, a sort of #WalkAway for Jews, which has been labeled fake by the Trump opposition (much as WalkAway itself was originally attributed to Russian bots). This article at Vox by good old Matthew Yglesias, for example, sports the headline “‘Jexodus,’ the fake departure of American Jews from the Democratic Party, explained: It’s not happening, but it’s fun to pretend.” One reads it in vain to discover some facts about this purported fakeness. But one looks in vain.
Now, it certainly may be that Jexodus amounts to nothing much in terms of numbers. That wouldn’t surprise me—because, as we know, a mind is a difficult thing to change, and party loyalty is very very strong, especially for identity groups with long traditions of being part of one party or another. But that doesn’t make something fake or “fun to pretend”—although when you have no facts about a group, like Yglesias seems to have no actual facts about how many people are part of Jexodus right now, it’s “fun to pretend” that you do, especially if you’re writing propaganda of the “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” variety.
As far as I can see from looking at Yglesias’ article, his reasoning for saying it’s a fake movement is that Jews have previously been loyal to the Democrats. Then he also proceeds to say that long-term trends for Jewish allegiance to the party have been in the downward direction. He also manages to write the entire piece without referencing the fact that one of the things that has sparked this is the very very recent post-2018-election doinsg by Ilhan Omar and the party’s defense of her remarks. The only time he mentions those remarks is this:
The contention that Jews should vote Republican because Republicans are stronger backers of the Israeli government isn’t identical to the “dual loyalties” issue that got Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in trouble earlier this months, but it’s not entirely unrelated either.
Oh, so Jews are not allowed to have interests in Israel? And actually, the contention is that Jews should consider leaving the Democratic Party not just because Democrats don’t support Israel anymore, but because they have supported anti-Semitism now. Obama certainly showed a lack of support for Israel (and a real detestation for Netanyahu) compared to previous presidents, but he never (to the best of my recollection, anyway) publicly mouthed any anti-Semitic rhetoric, and things like that smiling photo of him with Farrakhan were suppressed for a long time.
Omar, however, is quite up-front about her anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments, although she’s tried to backtrack a tiny bit (a very tiny bit). Her statement just may have gotten the attention of a significant number of Jewish voters, and that doesn’t have anything to do with dual loyalty.
So, is Jexodus a real thing? I have no idea. As I’ve written before, Jews are such a tiny percentage of the electorate, and are clustered in such reliably and overwhelmingly Democratic strongholds, that they can probably be safely ignored by the Democratic Party except in very very close races—and except for the fact that they donate disproportionately to the Party. If the donors start running away in significant numbers, that will be getting some attention from Democrats.
There are an awful lot of secular Jews who will not pay attention to the growing anti-Semitism, just as they do not in Britain.
But I gotta believe there are some, perhaps few, Jews who do have their fingers to the anti-Semitic wind.
Dr. Phyllis Chesler, a Jewish, second-wave feminist of some note, has parted ways with her sisters over today’s anti-Semitism and Islam in general. She has written a book:
“The New Anti-Semitism ”
https://www.amazon.com/New-Anti-Semitism-Phyllis-Chesler/dp/9652298093
This is not the least bit related to politics, but the fact that the subject is Jews prompts me to suggest an Israeli TV show that people here might enjoy. It’s called Shtisel, and is about a so-called “ultra-Orthodox” Jerusalem family. I’ve read that “ultra-Orthodox” is considered pejorative, which makes sense, and that “haredi” is the correct term.
Anyway, it is really, really good. It’s a very low-key family drama, or drama-comedy–more drama than comedy, but often funny. “Shtisel” is the family name. The central characters are the patriarch Shulem and his children and grandchildren, especially his slightly wayward (by Shulem’s lights) son Akive. It treats their religion without either sneering or condescending (or at least it struck me that way). And it’s just a good story, or series of stories, about people you quickly grow to care about. And it’s *really* well-executed, especially the acting. It’s streamable on Netflix. (You do have to be willing to deal with subtitles, which I personally don’t mind, but I know some people do.)
Two of the most interesting theories for the strong Jewish attachment to the Democrats and to leftist causes are that the abandoning of religion left a vacuum which has mostly been filled by progressivism as a secular faith, and that the high Jewish enrollment in universities leads to uncritical acceptance of the prevailing academic ideology.
Don’t think it’ll matter much.
Over the long-run, it’s a reasonable wager that the residual Jewish population will cease to have any particular association with the Democratic Party. Due to widespread inter-marriage and low fertility, the Jewish population outside the ranks of the orthodox is boiling off into the general population. The residue will be the people most interested in preserving Jewish life and promoting that life through G_d given fertility. That’s the orthodox in general and the haredi in particular. A great many will remain Democrats because you have to negotiate with the authorities in order to defend your community, and the authorities in New York and South Florida are not Republicans.
That’s the Keynesian long run. When we’re all dead.
“Republicans are stronger backers of the Israeli government”???
The issue is backing Israel’s right to exist, not one particular set of politicians versus another.
Two of the most interesting theories for the strong Jewish attachment to the Democrats and to leftist causes are that the abandoning of religion left a vacuum which has mostly been filled by progressivism as a secular faith, and that the high Jewish enrollment in universities leads to uncritical acceptance of the prevailing academic ideology.
Alternative thesis. From 1890 to 1975, the Republican Party was conceived of as the electoral vehicle of the blueblood establishment. After 1975, it was conceived of as the electoral vehicle of evangelical voters.
I hope so. Being a non-Democrat voting Jew, I am often vilified and ostracized for my views. Omar’s obvious bigotry was no surprise to me,and most of my community is clinging stubbornly to their historically ignorant sheep mentality. A few of my closer friends, however, have told me privately they are either disappointed (and yet still will vote for their preferred non-Trump) or angry (though they still pretend the anti Semitism is a right wing phenomenon).
While I like the idea of jexodus, it won’t change anything.
N.B. The Rev. Jesse (“You got to go down to Jewtown if you can’t negotiate the suits down, and start negotiating with Hyman & Sons”) Jackson in his prime was a good deal more influential in the Democratic Party than Tlaib and Omar. Jackson, the ambulance-chaser of American politics, was once asked by an Israeli official to remonstrate with one particular African government which had interdicted the movement of the Falashas, preventing their travel from refugee camps to Israel. Jackson’s reaction was to ask the official if the Falashas would (having migrated to Israel) be a ‘military asset’. Why of course, Mr. Jackson, all men serve in the IDF. Jackson decided he didn’t need to be in front of the cameras for a while.
While we’re at it, about 40% of America’s Jewish population lives in the 19 counties around Manhattan. Al (“Freddie’s Fashion Mart”) Sharpton is treated deferentially by the Democratic Party.
All this no effect on the Democratic Party’s standing among Jews. If anything, the Jewish population today is more inclined to vote Democratic than it was in 1984.
What MikeK said. As informed and reinforced by Ben Shapiro’s analysis of, and reflections on, just who can really be considered a Jew in any meaningful sense.
What might impel collectivist minded atheists who don’t have any particular identification with Israel to walk away from Democrats, seems obscure to me.
Perhaps there might be some sense of resentment or fear that would cause some to seek what they think of as a safer sociopolitical haven
But I would imagine that the Republican Party itself (conceived of as a supposed representative of a freedom-values position) would not benefit the cause much by welcoming such persons: as, apart from an interest in their personal safety, the life-way preferences of such persons would would obviously fail to align with anything resembling the principles of constitutionalists, and rule of law types, or libertarians or classical liberals. In fact, the vast preponderance of their sociopolitical aims and preferences would probably remain antagonistic to the supposed aims of the Republican party.
The same principle would operate in the case of the New Agey, homosexual corrupted minds of Kumbaya “all are welcome” type Catholics who gather together to congratulate themselves for worshiping an image of themselves.
Basically, you are subverting your own aims by bringing them in. You aint gonna magically turn them into libertarian cowboys, by slapping them on their flabby shoulders and saying “Welcome pardner!”.
I can’t help but wonder whether Jerusalem, Ivanka and Jared, and the pro-business effect of Trump might not begin to chip away at the blind democrat loyalty.It doesn’t mean a big wave away from the Dems, but it might affect some in the voting booth. I’m an ocean away from NY, so I am really uninformed, but I can hope.
In my opinion that stinks and frankly, undercuts the very – or at least publicly announced and promulgated – principles of mid 20th Century “liberalism”
You know that WWII “We are Americans” style of propaganda which films of the time at least tried to convey: a vision which included freedom of speech, religion, worship, and conscience along with the idea of unity and “community”.
I wish that there were someway to get an unvarnished, plainspoken explanation, or an argument out of such persons as to why, after having seen so many of the social and political transformations they voted for realized, they cannot live and let live, nor accept that in good conscience someone may have legitimately said: “This far, is far enough”
DNW:
I think you’re ignoring one of the ways political change can work. A person leaves the party for a single reason—let’s say, in this case, fear of the growing anti-Semitism seen among today’s Democrats. That can cause the person to start thinking: what other bigotry are the Democrats hiding? That can cause the person to then think: what other things are Democrats misrepresenting about themselves? What else are they hypocritical about? That can lead to explorations in media on the right, on YouTube, all sorts of things, that can lead to a series of cascading “aha!” moments for that person.
Art Deco:
1984 was thirty-five years ago, and Reagan was running. Reagan was relatively popular with Jews, and represented a modern high point of sorts for the Jewish Republican vote. See this chart for the trends, and you’ll see that Roosevelt got an especially high percentage, as did Gore and Bill Clinton to a somewhat lesser extent than Roosevelt. There is a real up and down pattern, but between 2008 and 2012 (Obama’s first and second terms) there was a marked drop in Jewish support for the Democrat, and that drop has held so far. The level of Jewish Republicans is not quite at the Reagan level, but it’s certainly up from a lot of other previous levels.
Ok. What you are proposing, I think, is that new information may induce an eventual cascade of political policy preference [and even conceptual] changes; if, the original selection-preferences are seen as more or less reflexive and habitual, and, not as the result of deep seated psychic commitments to a clear and distinct … uhh I don’t know … “political or social eschatology” will do I guess.
Well, if the appetite for liberty can be sharpened by the eating, then it’s very good news.
As a practical matter, the Jewish people are dispersed widely and, if voting patterns change, will not have a large effect on electoral results. One possible positive effect could be one of leadership. In things like Nobel Prize winners, they number much more as percentages of population. Let’s hope so.
The longer I reflect upon Jexodus, the more certain I am that nothing will come of it.
“We felt we had a
homerefuge there,” said Mark Schwartz, the Democratic deputy mayor of solidly blue Teaneck, NJ. “And now we feel like we have to check our passports.”…Where will they go? Given their leftist/liberal beliefs… how can they embrace the Republican party? Absent membership in a politically powerful party, no other refuge is available.
What Schwartz and other like minded Jews are discovering is that while they can reject Judaism, they can’t escape their Jewish ancestry, which means they cannot escape being antisemitism’s target.
It’s the Jewish version of “Hotel California”.
Polling of Jewish voters is a chancy thing because of the sampling problem.
IIRC, The high points in the Jewish voting population for Republican presidential candidates were 1972 and 1980 (with the Republican candidate managing to score 40% in both years). Michael Kinsley produced a column in 1984 crowing about the erosion of Jewish support for Ronald Reagan between 1980 and 1984 (it falling to 32% in the latter year), even as his support was increasing in just about every other group. Look at the odds ratio in regard to Jewish support for Democratic candidates contra that of the general population:
1972: (0.6 / 0.4) / (0.38 / 0.62) = 2.4x
1984: (0.68 / 0.32) / (0.41 / 0.58) = 3x
2000: (0.81 / 0.19) / (0.475 / 0.48) = 4.3x
Recall also that you once had a modest core of prominent Jewish Republicans in New York politics – Jacob Javits, Louis Lefkowitz, Roy Goodman, Barry Farber, Wm. Green. All gone. (Coast to coast, about a half-dozen Jewish Republicans have been elected to Congress since 1990 or thereabouts).
the Jewish people are dispersed widely and,
Not really. North of 40% live in one of 22 counties, nine in New York, ten in New Jersey, and three in Florida. Another 5% live around Boston or around Washington.
I am a Zionist Jew who left the Dems in 2003. It took 10 years to leave the fold. I have not been forgiven by family or friends. What needs to be understood is that socialist/marxism is more important to most Jews than fear of anti-semitism or survival of Israel.
They are also globalists for open borders, pro-abortion, and anti-business. They have no understanding of economics and don’t want to if it means understanding that business creates the money they want for free everything. They believe every point made by the Democrat talking points. They even believe that there is some compromise that Israel can make to gain peace. They prefer to ignore the speeches and mission statements calling for the destruction of Israel.
They refused to watch the Reverend Wright anti-Jew videos before voting for Obama. They disregarded Obama’s anti-Israel position. They had many reasons for supporting Obama’s Iran deal, even though Iran has promised the destruction of Israel.
All this to say, the growing anti-semitism of the Democrat Party will not bother most Jews. They will make excuses as they always do. And their socialist positions will keep them Democrats.
I don’t think this will amount to much beyond a few individuals. Within the Jewish community, the intellectuals and big money donors all seem to favor the globalist, progressive, variously socialistic side of things, so they will all stick with the Democrats, no matter what a few within that coalition might say.
The other matter to consider, besides their geographic locale, is just how short a time most Jews have been in America, not arriving here until between 1880 and 1920. In that sense, all they know of this country is from the Progressive Era onward. That will influence their identity, just as their religion does.
Nobody will tell anybody so if it happens it will be impossible to gauge or predict.
it all depends on ones level of Jewish commitment . the very committed already vote Republican. the only red areas of NYC in 2012 and 2016 were the Jewish neighborhoods.
Non Jewish Jews who wouldn’t care if politicians support the arabs, ban shechita and circumcision because they dont give a shiite. During the Crown Heights pogrom many liberal Jews sided with the blacks. that segment won’t switch from the dems. our only blessing is they are the ones marrying out.
the swing group of in between is shrinking but they might Jexit,
Rob Reiner types would vote for Arafat if he were a democrat,
Those who refuse to learn history’s lessons are doomed to repeat those lessons. One of those lessons is that Lenin and Stalin did not let their Jewish comrades loyalty to Marxism interfere with the necessity of purging all idealists from the party. And, nearly all Marxist Jews are idealists. In Marxism, they have found a new covenant with a new Baal. It may be history’s greatest tragedy, out of misplaced idealism, they have made pact with evil.
Leah says:
Doc d, says:
These are interesting remarks. One could with some reason ask: “How would they know?”
But naturally, it is to be expected that in the course of time at least some of one’s acquaintances and relatives will express an interest in your political views and possibly even take exception to them.
However, the categorical and vehement shunning that Leah and Doc seem to imply takes place, appears odd even in this era of hyper-politicization and self-censored holiday gathering conversations.
My point being that straightforward and unemotional airing of views usually, and I emphasize the word “usually”, does not seem to lead to these drastic consequences, though that may be changing if self-reports of those who claim to have experienced social media blow-ups, are given credence.
I had a social worker cousin (adopted) who ignited his own fuse and went ballistic at a Christmas season gathering a couple years back; and, a brother-in-law’s academic parents cannot seem to control themselves, gratuitously spewing out resentful and angry anti-conservative jabber continuously, but those represent maybe a percent or two at most of family and acquaintances.
“Yglesias seems to have no actual facts about…”
That’s a pretty all-purpose clause when one is considering something written by Yglesias, a charter member of the Juice Box Mafia. Remember when he touted the VHA in the Obamacare debate? Remember when he said lying to win an argument was the right way to go? Yep. He’s a real beaut. He’s gotten fatter. He’s gotten older. He’s gotten balder. But he still hasn’t wised up. He’s what is wrong with opinion writing.
Sad.
Given how the Democrats refused to directly condemn the remarks of Omar and her by name, it appears that they’ve decided that it is no longer critical that they have the support or contributions from Jews, or perhaps they believe that, no matter what they say or do against Jews, the great majority of the Jews will still remain and vote Democrat.
Alternatively, the Democrats have now fixed their sights on the far larger number of Hispanics/illegals as their new sources of votes and contributions, and no longer need the Jews.
Some few Jews may start leaving. But:
“They are also globalists for open borders, pro-abortion, and anti-business.”
And of all the significant ethnic groups on Earth, the avg Jewish IQ (about 15 pts higher than avg White), theirs is the highest.
All smart people know how to lie to themselves so that they believe the false facts are true.
Insofar as the all the pro-life soft Christian socialists have left/ been booted out from the Dems, as mentioned the Reps can be fairly called the pro-life party. “After 1975 [Roe}, it was conceived of as the electoral vehicle of evangelical voters.”
If a few more public Jews choose Jexodus, there could be a cascade; but even then, it might remain just a dribble of the non-Orthodox. It took Israel 20 years of independence to mostly give up its Zionist Socialist idealist fantasies. How could Zionism, created by the “smartest people” in the world, be socialists?
For too many elite intellectuals, where there is a disproportionately large number of Jews, the theory of socialism is too seductive. Such thought leaders, if they publicly change, might lead a Jexodus. But there might not be a critical mass — and I’m sure Dem media will want to minimize the reporting on this. They have successfully said very little about #WalkAway.
Doc d on March 20, 2019 at 5:38 pm at 5:38 pm said:
I am a Zionist Jew who left the Dems in 2003. It took 10 years to leave the fold. I have not been forgiven by family or friends. What needs to be understood is that socialist/marxism is more important to most Jews than fear of anti-semitism or survival of Israel.
In order to understand why the Jewish people are stuck on various issues today, it is wise to go back to the past and see where the Marxist alliances started.
In doing so, though, people will encounter a lot of cognitive dissonance and think about stuff they would prefer not to think about.
https://tarbaby.wordpress.com/2017/07/26/aleksandr-solzhenitsyn/
Solzhenitsyn quote:
“We cannot state that all Jews are Bolsheviks. But without Jews, there would never have been Bolshevism. For a Jew, nothing is more insulting than the truth. The blood maddened Jewish terrorists have murdered sixty-six million in Russia from 1918 to 1957.”
Just a little “spice” to bait the lure.
Blacks and Jews are minorities, so they often have very strong community identities, tribal loyalties, and consider outsiders as enemies or opponents. This creates certain easy to manipulate levers.
Consider the various so called Reverends, Luther King, Jackson, Sharpton. Aren’t many of these just con men and flawed individuals keeping the blacks down? Why does a community tolerate corruption by their spiritual leaders, who are also their political and economic reformers and leaders. Because Whitey Will keep them down otherwise. It’s always this Fear of the Other that lets the central heads maintain control. Luther, however, went off the plantation too early and they had to kill him. But we still have Jackson Sharpton and other “Reverends”, don’t you worry, backing Hussein Obola keeping the blacks on the Demoncrat plantation.
The KKK keeps white boys on slavery and white power. Black Power and Nation of Islam does the same for blacks. And the Deep State sits back and watches blacks kill whites for whites hanging blacks, laughing all the way.
This does not mean always that minorities are constantly neurotic in the inferiority/superiority complex. For example, even though Jews constitute less than 2% of the population, and the Amish far less than that in the USA, many are proud of their heritage, traditions, even if they shun the majority in marriage or social cliques. The Latter Day Saints are also another sub 2% of the USA pop and are represented or considered highly in certain government and financial sector jobs.
It is not always the case that minorities create problems. But when there are problems, look for minorities first.
That can lead to explorations in media on the right, on YouTube, all sorts of things, that can lead to a series of cascading “aha!” moments for that person. –neo
I know several ex-hippies, including myself, who got annoyed with illegal immigration, feminist over-reach, 9-11, gun control or identity politics, who no longer vote Democrat or identify as such. They still smoke marijuana, love rock music, etc., but they are changed politically.
These aren’t large numbers but I wouldn’t discount them as insignificant.
The left is always on the lookout for small numbers of changers which might get bigger. The right should too.
huxley on March 20, 2019 at 10:01 pm at 10:01 pm said:
…..
These aren’t large numbers but I wouldn’t discount them as insignificant.
The left is always on the lookout for small numbers of changers which might get bigger. The right should too.
* * *
The changers only have an effect on Presidential elections if the Electoral College is still operating, so that small numbers of party-switchers have a disproportionate result (which is why Trump won). For local and state voting, they have other ideas for diluting the impact.
Going to popular presidential voting, lowering the voting age, and extending suffrage to formerly-ineligible groups ALL have the consequence of making small groups of defectors irrelevant to the Big Picture.
The biggest thing about tipping points is that you don’t know what they are going to be until they happen.
They get even harder to predict if the media is obfuscating the clues, and the public is not interested in them anyway.
Maybe nothing will change in the relative status of the two major parties.
Maybe something cataclysmic will happen (add up all the #Defectors, and they could make a substantial number) that no one foresees (new Party busts the D/R monopoly, maybe).
But we won’t know for sure until it happens.
I don’t know if Jews will formally leave the Democratic party and vote Republican, but I think you will see at least some sitting home, and a falloff of donations.
Something feels different. Even I —despite having a Holocaust survivor mother who raised me to keep my mouth shut and head down to avoid persecution and living in fear of Nazis under the bed— have been unable to keep from laughing out loud in public about Socialism. Probably I’m doomed. But it’s so absurd.
As a libertarian gentile with an unusual number of Jews in my life as business associates, major customers, in-laws, grandchildren etc. I have wondered about their Democrat affinity for decades.
I had come to see it as an ethnic survival adaptation since in my experience the Democrats were the most likely to actually get crazy and go after some group with very damaging consequences.
What is new and undeniable are the outbursts of plain old anti-semitism among progressives and the young clueless left. It is troubling and not likely to just go away. Jews as oppressors are a staple part of their worldview. It is also not likely to drive many Jews away from voting for whatever Democrat is on the ballot any time soon. I have seen some surprising support for Trump among the senior members of my group however.
“…As I’ve written before, Jews are such a tiny percentage of the electorate…”
Yeah, we call that tiny percentage, Mass Communications Management, and Hard Liquid Asset “stewardship”.
I had come to see it as an ethnic survival adaptation since in my experience the Democrats were the most likely to actually get crazy and go after some group with very damaging consequences.
But Blacks and Jewish minorities were told the KKK was a Republican phenomenon and that anti semitism was gonna come from those Evangelical Christians or Catholic conservatives.
People bought it. Why wouldn’t they. They read the New York Times after all.
What is new and undeniable are the outbursts of plain old anti-semitism among progressives and the young clueless left.
They will use the Stockholme Syndrome. That is why the Jews are so harsh against fellow Jews who aren’t Democrats in the USA or those who are for or against Israel. It somewhat depends on what the Leftists say about Israeli leadership. If Israeli leadership was Marxist or socialist, they would be for Israeli policies. But if Israeli leadership gets to be Netanyahu… then he has to be brought back in line. It’s a kind of tribal circle the wagons punishment using social ostracizing. Small groups are very adept at this, perhaps even better than super majority groups.
I promise that this comment is not intended to threadjack – but I have a question about the difference between “anti-Zionism” and antisemitism that I’d very much like to hear discussed by those with better understanding than mine.
So, I get that it is criticism of Israel’s policies is considered anti-Zionism, whereas criticism of Israel’s right to exist is considered antisemitism. That’s clear. In practice, though, it seems to me that criticism of Israel’s policies, when other countries’ far worse policies don’t come in for the same criticism, can appropriately be seen as antisemitic rather than anti-Zionist, even if the critic isn’t explicitly calling for the destruction of Israel or claiming that it should never have been allowed to re-form after WWII. Am I right? Basically, in my view anti-Zionism should be narrowly defined – if an “anti-Zionist” fails to denounce *worse* (or the same, but so very often it’s worse!) behavior by other nations, they’re not “anti-Zionist” but have instead singled out the only Jewish nation for *special* criticism and are therefore antisemitic. This much also seems clear to me.
Now, as for Omar’s comments – my husband thinks she should be opposed on the basis of her politics but doesn’t think evidence of her antisemitism is as compelling as so many find it. I thought her “Israel has hypnotized the world” comment was self-evidently antisemitic (and he agreed). I recall the way she responded to criticism of her “pretty face” comment referring to Obama (“I’m an Obama fan! I was saying how Trump is different from Obama, and why we should focus on policy not politics.”), and the way she responded to criticism of her “all about the benjamins” comment (by saying “I unequivocally apologize,” but immediately equivocating, drawing parallels between AIPAC and other lobbying groups she’s definitively against but NOT against lobbying groups she’s for, while claiming the problem is lobbying) – and the difference between those two responses seems to me evidence of antisemitic bias.
BUT – it does seem *possible* that her walkback could be read as misinformed about where AIPAC money goes but not necessarily explicitly antisemitic. I mean, it seemed antisemitic to ME, but I can theoretically see the other reading. And my husband is reading it that way. I’m looking for a yardstick, because it is possible – we know, we see it all the time on the left – to *claim* that someone is biased in some way in order to shut down an opposing voice. I don’t want to fall victim to that fallacy. So, anybody have that yardstick?
Jamie — The difficulty is that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism slide together so easily that it is difficult to separate them. Zionism is the belief that there should be, and the effort to create, a Jewish state. One where Jews would be safe from persecution, one in which Jewish values would be the cultural norms.
Criticism of Israel’s policies is neither anti-Zionist or anti-Semitic. For example, “I don’t think Israel should annex the Golan Heights,” is a criticism of Israel’s policies. Nothing wrong with that. Saying “I don’t think Israel should exist,” is anti-Zionist. The problem is, that means you don’t think there should be a state where Jews should be free of persecution and where Jewish cultural mores are the culture of the country. It’s virtually impossible to believe that without believing Jews are evil and should be wiped out, which is anti-Semitism. (There are a few hundred ultra-Haraidim living in Israel who believe that Israel as a state should not exist because the messiah has not come yet, but who don’t believe the Jews should be exterminated. They’re about the only people in the world who are anti-Zionist without being anti-Semitic.)
Two Democrat candidates, Harris and Warren, have now announced they will not attend the AIPAC meeting. Moveon.org has come a long way,
Captain DMO:
Who is this “we” of whom you speak?
Trump is apparently willing to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
And in other news Judicial Watch has now gotten direct quotes from FOIA requests that confirm the active involvement of Carl Levin’s and most notably John McCain’s staff, in trying to persuade Lois Lerner to impose onerous requirements on 501C applications and to pursue “financially ruinous audits”.
That self-aggrandizing, vainglorious, attention whore John McCain, has to be one of the three or four most ignoble, petty, and malicious sons-of-bi***es, ever to sit in the Senate.
And historically, there has been plenty of notorious competition which he had to beat in order to achieve that ranking.
Jamie, like Richard Saunders said, criticizing Israel’s policies isn’t anti Zionism, it’s just criticism. Saying Israel should not exist, or is bloodthirsty, or is trying to destroy the world, etc etc., is antizionist and antisemitic.
A lot of anti Zionist style antisemitism derives from an old Russian propaganda text, a conspiracy theory called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It’s also reheated Soviet Cold War propaganda, ie the notorious Zionism is racism resolution fiasco at the UN.
A lot of leftists claiming anti Zionism isn’t antisemitism, or that it isn’t antisemitic to criticize Israel, are usually talking out of the old Russian playbook. This is also where you get the old saying “antisemitism is the socialism of fools.” (Hello present day socialists.)
Antisemitism, and now antizionism, is also a conspiracy theory. Which is why it’s so irrational and complicated. Try to argue with someone about a conspiracy theory.
CNN stuck an oar in that water when they described Israel as “A Jewish only state.” It happens to be one of two countries where Arabs and Muslims can vote,
The other is Iraq, Turks can vote but they don’t mean much although I hear that Erdogan is worried that the next election might not go as planned,.
DNW:
Not to speak ill of the dead. but I not unhappy that he is Singing in the Celestial Choir. It is strange how Lois and Koskien (sic) were never really penalized for their crimes, inconceivable almost.