Photo credit: PBS NewsHour on YouTube
When a politician says, “Let me get this straight,” you know it’s going to be a load of silly nonsense. Barack Obama, for example, regularly used the phrase as an introduction to his pseudo-inspirational gibberish. Now Vice President Kamala Harris has copied it with considerable emphasis in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
Harris was probably aware that American Jews were listening intently, so she emphasized, “And let me be clear. And let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always make sure that Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again be subjected to the horrors that a terrorist organization called Hamas inflicted on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”
Ironically, that statement may not have seemed particularly clear to many American Jews. Surely it was a concession to the community, and the community needed one, as American Jews have seen the anti-Semitic wing of the Democratic Party emerge in full force over the past year. Fueled by the Red-Green alliance between progressive leftists and Islamic racists, that alliance’s numerous anti-Semitic crimes on campus and in the streets hardly need repeating here.
As a result, Democrats are now caught in a state of more or less total schizophrenia, torn between an increasingly violent anti-Semitic wing and the soft liberals unwilling to stand up to it. In this context, Harris’ statement was clearly intended to reassure American Jews – and not just about Israel. It was a way of saying that the fears and concerns of American Jews are being taken seriously.
But upon closer inspection, such assurances usually disappear. For example, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to self-defense” is rhetorical mush. We know this because everyone says it. Obama said it, Biden said it, now Harris is saying it. The question is, do they mean it?
In Harris’s case, we have no experience as president, so the only way we can determine whether her attempt to reassure American Jews has substance is by examining her party itself.
In politics, what is said is almost meaningless. What is done or not done is everything. And when it comes to the most pressing issues facing American Jews today, the Democrats have failed to do much:
- Democrats have failed to take action to investigate and prosecute anti-Semitic hate groups such as CAIR, Students for Justice in Palestine, and numerous others.
- Democrats have failed to take effective action against the anti-Semitic professorial regime that unethically and illegally governs the higher education system. Even Democrats like Senator Chuck Schumer, a self-proclaimed “guardian” of the Jewish community, have refused to take any action at all against the problem or the anti-Semitic mob violence that the regime has unleashed. The only politicians who have attempted to do so – with some success – have been Republicans in Congress.
- Democrats have failed to force elected and appointed Democratic officials, especially in major cities like New York, to hold anti-Semites accountable by prosecuting them for their crimes and imposing long prison sentences. The failure to do so has enabled and reinforced anti-Semitism through continued leniency.
- Democrats have failed to launch a comprehensive investigation into the incitement, funding and orchestration of the current wave of anti-Semitism by domestic and foreign actors, particularly on campus.
- The Democrats have literally done and said Nothing about the spread of anti-Semitism in the Muslim-American community, 60% of whom believe the October 7 massacre was justified. Nor have Democrats acknowledged the numerous Muslim-American organizations that are fomenting anti-Semitic mob violence across the country. Instead, Democrats continue to repeat the lie that America is suffering from a “wave of Islamophobia,” even though we do not see mobs of non-Muslims marching through major cities calling for the extermination of Muslims – quite the opposite.
- Democrats have not vigorously rejected the ritual murder myth that Israel is committing systematic war crimes and “genocide” in Gaza. In fact, some prominent Democrats, such as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, have publicly supported this myth, thereby encouraging further anti-Semitic violence. Neither Warren nor any other perpetrator has been criticized or punished by the party leadership.
- Democrats have not supported military action – by Israel or anyone else – against Iran, a genocidal and anti-Semitic regime that has murdered thousands of Jews, despite ample evidence that Iran is involved in inciting anti-Semitic violence in the United States and interfering in the 2024 election.
- Democrats have not stopped condescending and insulting American Jews through cheap fearmongering. Rather than confronting anti-Semitism within their own party, Democrats relentlessly insist on right-wing anti-Semitism, as if the existence of the latter somehow disproves the existence of the former.
- Most importantly, the Democrats have not done what they obviously should have done: Clean up your anti-Semitic wing. At the moment, the party seems to believe it can appease anti-Semites rather than exclude them. Putting aside the moral reprehensibility of such a tactic, it is doomed to catastrophic failure because it is impossible. Anti-Semitism cannot be appeased; it will settle for nothing short of genocide. One would think that a supposedly “anti-racist” party would deal with such a movement in short order. So far, the Democrats have chosen not to do so.
Whether American Jews maintain their centuries-old loyalty to the Democrats in November is not a given. But in some ways it doesn’t matter. The question is what Jews will do now, no matter how they vote. Some will undoubtedly defect to the Republicans, but most will not do so for ideological or emotional reasons.
That is, of course, their right, but Jews who wish to remain Democrats must understand that in many ways they face the harder ordeal. They now face not only the task of combating anti-Semitism, but also of saving the party to which they have dedicated their lives.
That is a difficult reality, but when faced, it is clear what Jewish Democrats must do: They must demand that the party and, should it win, a President Harris finally make good on their great promises. Jewish Democrats must be clear that when a Democrat says, “Let me make this clear,” they will be heard very clearly and that the promise that follows will be taken very seriously. Jewish Democrats must demand that their party finally do what it has so far refused to do: do the right thing.
{Reposted by JNS}
