Jewish contradictions

Joel Kotkin notes in the OCRegister that anti-Semitism is on the rise on the left.

The massive movement of Muslims into Europe – now accelerating into a tsunamic wave – is accelerating these trends. The European Left, long enamored of radicals from the developing world, increasingly adopts the notion that Israel represents the ultimate political atrocity.

The most obvious manifestation now is the powerful drive to force European universities to divest themselves of investments in Israeli companies and even ban Israeli academics. This is occurring even though Israel, with all its many imperfections, is by far the most democratic, feminist and gay-tolerant country in that exceedingly bad neighborhood.

It’s hard not to see anti-Semitic ideas in this assault. You can certainly oppose, as I do, some Israeli policies – notably settlement expansion in the West Bank – as both wrong and tactically disastrous, without censuring an entire country. Anti-Israel protesters seem less than troubled to associate with Hamas and other terrorist group who have even chanted “Jews, Jews to the gas” at demonstrations joined by the Left.

Fear is also on the streets; there are so many incidents of violence against Jews in France that Jewish children are advised not to wear yarmulkes or any other outward signs of their faith.

...Those Jews who survived the European experience have had good reason to distrust the Right. After all, ultraconservatives supported Czarist pogroms in Russia, defended the perpetrators of fraud in the Dreyfus case in France (where a Jewish officer was falsely accused of treason) and, most importantly, provided many of the ideological roots of the Holocaust.

But, in recent years, anti-Semitism and, particularly, anti-Zionism have shifted ever more to the Left.

...So far, Jews in America are blessed with two major political parties that, for the most part, are tolerant and express support of Israel. And, for as long as this is the case, Jews, particularly those of European descent, likely will continue to support left-leaning politics more than those of the Right. But lock-step support for the Left seems destined to weaken.

In 2008, 78 percent of Jewish voters supported Barack Obama against John McCain, who had a strong pro-Israel record in the Senate. Four years later, Obama won again, but with a somewhat diminished 69 percent of the Jewish vote.

Things got even worse for Democrats in the 2014 congressional election, when one-third of Jews voted Republican, a 21-point shift over six years. In the most recent Gallup poll, Jewish support for the president fell to 50 percent, a huge turnaround from over 80 percent in 2009.

The Iran nuclear deal pushed by Obama – and opposed by about half of Jews – will likely solidify a growing Jewish Right. Obama’s detestation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has certainly alarmed the Zionist establishment, and some of the wealthiest donors, such as casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, have turned into staunch GOP megafunders.

But then there’s what some regard as Obama’s demonstrably pro-Muslim tilt. This can be seen in everything from his bizarre refusal to name “extreme Islam” as the country’s most pressing security risk, to his labeling as “a random act” the killing of patrons in a Paris kosher market by an Islamist gunman.

The shift toward the Right could also be accelerated by events on America’s college campuses. Anti-Semitism on American college campuses, including those of the University of California, has become ever more evident. At the same time, a majority of the most fervently anti-Israel members of Congress come from the Democratic Left. Like their European counterparts, some Democratic politicians soon may find that appealing to Muslims pays larger dividends than catering to Jews; by 2030 there will be more Muslims than Jews in America, according to Pew.

...Jews are a contradictory people. Overall, achievement-oriented and very capitalistic, Jewish educational and self-employment statistics are among the highest for any religious group. They are also politically powerful; amounting to roughly 2 percent of the U.S. population – half their percentage a half century ago – Jews account for nine of 100 U.S. senators and 19 of 435 members of the House.

Yet if Jews have achieved significant economic and political power, they have done so primarily as Democrats. Only one of the 28 Jews in Congress is a Republican – Lee Zeldin from New York’s Long Island – and the one independent, Vermont’s Bernie Sanders, is enough of a Democrat to be running, with surprising success, for that party’s presidential nomination.

Read more here.