Hostile

A number of readers have approached me on my recent posts on the Democratic party's inexorable drift toward the Left, and as a consequence, it's connection with anti-Israel and in select instances, anti-Semitic politicians and causes. My recent post, Disloyalty, had a number of Jewish readers asking whether I was overwrought and more importantly, what the origins of the Dems' drift toward anti-Israel politics are.

Progressive writer, Liel Leibovitz, provides an answer in the left-leaning Tablet:

Shortly after Trump was elected, the left moved into resistance mode. The feelings here were entirely understandable—I myself found Trump’s election deeply worrisome. But, very quickly, the energy began to be channeled into causes and outfits with deep and clear anti-Semitic associations—including, most prominently, the Women’s March. Over the course of two years, the leaders of this organization sang hosannas to Louis Farrakahn, flagrantly used Nation of Islam as security, and used their influence to reframe Israel as the world’s biggest state criminal—quite a feat when you have such a calamity happening next door. Jews expressed their discomfort, but time and again were ignored—even told by some of their own leadership, by some of our own rabbis, that to want the people in our own spaces simply not to foment vicious hatred of us was to selfishly “center ourselves.”

After Tablet published a 10,000-word expose, revealing that the Women’s March leadership was veritably soaked in hatred for Jews and Israel, some prominent people in the Democratic Party (though not all) finally felt compelled to distance themselves from these obvious bigots.

He goes on to describe Ilhan Omar's lies as she courted Jewish voters (who, incredibly, supported her because she was a Democrat) and then more recent anti-Semitic, anti-Israel canards that have originated within the Democratic party and their trained hamsters in the media (think: the NYT and WaPo as examples). He writes:

Did prominent voices in the Democratic Party rush to defend the Jews from these obvious and dangerous canards? I wish. The Washington Post described Miftah as a nonprofit headed by “longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi” and The New York Times contextualized as “a group dedicated to raising global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.” Peter Beinart went on CNN to defend Ashrawi and her group as paragons of goodwill. Instead, the entity that came under fire was…you guessed it. A hailstorm of wails about the death of democratic norms ensued, all culminating in a #BoycottIsrael trend on Twitter—pushed by many of the same sort of polite people behind the last big boycott of the Jews.

In recent months, the Dems have proposed actual legislation and a number of resolutions that clearly target Israel. Again from Leibovitz

Earlier this year, Rep. Betty McCollum (D.-Minn.) introduced a bill in the House of Representatives titled “H.R. 2047—Promoting Human Rights for Palestinian Children Living Under Israeli Military Occupation Act.” In June, a host of high-profile Democrats co-sponsored her bill, including Seth Moulton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib.

The bill’s purpose is to require that “United States funds do not support military detention, interrogation, abuse, or ill-treatment of Palestinian children.” It then goes on to present a long list of citations from reports compiled by non-government organizations that accuse Israel of everything from applying coercive interrogation techniques against children as young as 11 to holding minors for days without a trial.

You could easily tear apart most of the bill’s cherry-picked claims by explaining, as the Israel Democracy Institute had, that Israel’s approach to underage suspects is far more complicated than the bill presents it to be. But there is an even simpler, more enlightening explanation—especially after seeing Ocasio-Cortez’s glib tweet about the bill: “I don’t believe in caging kids. Pretty straightforward value. I don’t care if it’s American kids, Mexican kids, or Palestinian kids.”

Except, of course, that the bill doesn’t apply to Mexico or Egypt or South Africa—all of which receive substantial amounts in American foreign aid.

If it had, we’d be on solid moral ground. Instead, this bill—backed by a cadre of House Democrats who abjure anti-Semitism in theory and yet astonishingly manage to “accidentally” perpetrate it over and over—tracks, in an eerily perfect way, with a long and murderous tradition: Fantasizing that Jews have a special fondness for killing, abducting, maiming, or otherwise abusing non-Jewish children, and leading mobs to attack them based on these accusations.

Sadly, the Left is ascendant in the West. It has captured most important sources of information flow—the media, academia, entertainment, public policy (in the main), major cities—and as a consequence, the anti-Israel narrative is growing in prominence within the Democratic party.

Leibovitz concludes:

Let us, then, observe these changes candidly and without succumbing to the pressures of screaming ideologues on either side. The party our parents voted for, the party we thought would be ours for eternity, appears to be well on its way to becoming something entirely hostile to Jews. The president we are told again and again is the single greatest menace to our community is many things, but certainly not that.

What you choose to do with these realities is entirely up to you.

#Walkaway.

UPDATE:
---------------------
Part of the reason that Jews maintain such a strong connection to a political party that has actively adopted a variety of policies that work against them is that those same Jews tend to get a majority of information from media sources that are closely aligned with the Left. In fact, those media sources have become propaganda arms for the Democrats to such an extent that they spin the narrative in dishonest ways. Ben Shapiro comments:

Imagine two sitting Republican congresspeople planned a trip to a foreign country in conjunction with a nongovernmental organization. Imagine that particular nongovernmental organization had a long history of Jew hatred: It had run a piece on its website quoting anti-Semitic myths about Jews imbibing Christian blood, republished a neo-Nazi article decrying the “Jew-controlled entertainment media,” and suggested that “honor” was the proper response to a terrorist who murdered 38 Israelis, including 13 children.

Imagine that these two congresspeople tweeted a cartoon from a cartoonist so anti-Semitic he won second prize at Iran’s Holocaust denial cartoon contest.

Imagine that these congresspeople had themselves engaged in anti-Semitic slurs, ranging from a suggestion that Israel supporters in America suffer from dual loyalty, to the accusation that Israel “hypnotized the world,” to the suggestion that Jewish money lies behind America’s support for Israel (“it’s all about the Benjamins”).

Imagine that these congresspeople had expressed support for terrorist Rasmea Odeh.

Imagine also that both congresspeople had a long history of associations with open anti-Semites.

Finally, imagine that both members were supporters of the anti-Semitic boycott, divest, and sanctions [BDS] movement directed against Israel—a movement so obviously anti-Semitic that a bipartisan coterie ranging from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had declared it so.

Now imagine that these two Republican congresspeople were barred from entering Israel under Israel’s law that prevents propagandizing designed to destroy the state of Israel. Would the media report on Israel’s reaction or on the Republican congresspeople’s associations, actions, and statements? Would the narrative surround Israel’s supposed free speech crackdown, or would it center on the obvious Jew hatred of the Republican congresspeople?

And yet.

Simply switch out the word “Republican” for “Democrat” and the media coverage shifts 180 degrees. Suddenly, the congresspeople become put-upon heroes, victimized by the evils of the nefarious Jewish state. Suddenly, a media blackout arises with regard to the nongovernment organization sponsoring the visit; The Washington Post calls the organization “a nonprofit organization headed by Palestinian lawmaker and longtime peace negotiator Hanan Ashrawi”; The New York Times praises the group for raising “global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities.”

Those. Are. Lies. But when they come from NYT and WaPo there are people who swallow them as truth.

In order to get to a point where they're comfortable walking away, Jewish voters should broaden their information sources. Only then can they make intelligent judgements about the current positions adopted by the Democratic party and the politicians that populate it.