Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.
The Democrats care about anti-Semitism.
They care so much that they had a presidential candidate and convention speaker who led an anti-Semitic riot through a Jewish neighborhood. “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house,” he had taunted his victims.
He became a close presidential adviser whose endorsement is sought after by every Democrat running for the White House.
They care so much that they had a presidential candidate and speaker at two conventions who had used racial slurs against Jews and declared, “I’m sick and tired of hearing about the Holocaust.”
They care so much that the new deputy DNC chair, who had also spoken at a convention, has a long history with anti-Semitic hate groups.
From Al Sharpton to Jesse Jackson to Keith Ellison, there’s a safe space for anti-Semitism on the left.
Keith Ellison’s people are blaming the Jews for his defeat. They aren’t blaming themselves for having put forward a “progressive” candidate with a long history of anti-Semitism which continued to come out during the campaign forcing even the ADL and other liberal Jewish groups to back away from his hatred.
It’s not Keith Ellison’s 11 years in the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam hate group that they object to or his planned appearance at the MAS-ICNA Islamist convention in Chicago alongside an Islamist cleric who had called for killing all the Jews. Nor is it his ties to CAIR which has invited a Holocaust denier to its conferences and whose leader made anti-Semitic remarks.
It’s not Ellison’s anti-Semitism that they object to. They object to the Jews for objecting to it.
There’s a long proud history of that sort of thing on the left. Cynthia McKinney’s backers blamed her setbacks on the same folks as Keith Ellison’s backers. As her father put it, “Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-e-w-s.” If the Jews “bought everybody”, they didn’t get a good deal since McKinney was succeeded by Hank Johnson who compared Jews living in Israel to termites.
“You see one home after another being appropriated by Jewish people,” Johnson ranted. “…almost like termites can get into a residence and eat before you know that you’ve been eaten up.”
And so the left has decided to blame the “Jewish termites” for eating up Keith Ellison’s candidacy. But his anti-Semitism didn’t prevent him from becoming the leading candidate to head the DNC. Anti-Semitism is not a disqualifier on the left. If anything, it’s a qualifier.
Keith Ellison lost because Obama’s people campaigned against him. Ellison’s backers, most of whom are white leftists, can’t say a bad thing about Obama. But blaming the Jews is always a safe bet.
When it comes to anti-Semitism, the Democrats aren’t just bigots, they’re cowards. Take Bernie Sanders, the son of a Polish immigrant, who panders to anti-Semites and refuses to stand up to them.
In an address to the anti-Israel hate group, J Street, which has hosted BDS supporters, Bernie Sanders blamed President Trump for anti-Semitism and complained that he hadn’t condemned it enough.
No one is a bigger coward when it comes to condemning anti-Semitism than Bernie Sanders.
When an audience member at one of his own events began ranting about “Zionist Jews” running the Federal Reserve and Wall Street, Bernie responded by launching into an attack on Israel.
When NPR’s Diane Rehm accused him of having dual citizenship in Israel based on a “list” from some anti-Semitic site, he mumbled his way through a response. Instead of condemning this bigotry, he praised her as a “good interviewer”.
What good interviewer, with a background of hating Israel, doesn’t accuse a Jewish candidate of dual loyalty? What good progressive leftist whose Jewishness is limited to his accent doesn’t praise her for it?
Bernie Sanders shrilled that it was “imperative” that Trump and members of his administration “be loud and clear in condemning anti-Semitism”.
Where was Bernie’s condemnation when his Sandinista comrades were chanting, “Death to the Jews”, when a synagogue was firebombed and in an echo of Hitler’s Germany, its president was forced to scrub the streets? Instead his voice was raised loudly in support of the Marxist regime that wiped out the Jewish community of Nicaragua.
While Bernie Sanders honeymooned in the USSR, Soviet Jews were being oppressed by the leftist regime. The same year that Bernie Sanders was touring the USSR, Soviet Jewish protests were being broken up by the KGB and Josef Begun, a prominent refusenik, met with President Reagan.
Reagan was vocal in condemning the abuse of Jews by the USSR and the Sandanistas. But where was Bernie’s “loud and clear” condemnation?
It was nowhere to be heard.
Bernie Sanders supported Jesse Jackson despite his “Hymietown” slur. He refused to directly condemn his anti-Semitism when he was asked about it.
But why blame Bernie Sanders for being a miserable coward? The left is an anti-Semitic movement. To be a part of it, you either have to be anti-Semitic or very good at not hearing certain things.
Bernie Sanders is very good at not hearing certain things about Jews running the banks or being dirty ‘Hymies’. But he’s hardly alone. Senator Schumer was very good at not hearing the things that Keith Ellison was saying even when they were on tape. But that’s what you have to do if you want to be Jewish and get ahead in a party overrun by anti-Semites who are very concerned about anti-Semitism.
As the Democrats become a radical left-wing party, there will be room only for anti-Semites and those who pretend not to see them. And that will become harder and harder to do.
But there will always be lefties with Jewish last names who find it lucrative or fulfilling to pander to anti-Semitic bigots. Bernie Sanders rode his selective blindness to the leadership of the left. The old Bernie used his unemployment benefits to buy a dilapidated maple sugar shack with a dirt floor. The new one can afford a $600,000 summer home. The old Bernie used to fly coach. The new Bernie took to flying around in a private 767 jet with lamb loin, crab salad and lobster sliders on the menu.
Chuck Schumer was pressured into standing up to the Iran deal once by his Jewish constituents. And the left threatened his career. So the new Senate majority leader went all in on Keith Ellison.
Bernie, Chuck and the rest of the gang have a good life. But the price of their careers is turning a blind eye to anti-Semitism. Meanwhile they will pretend to care a great deal about anti-Semitism as long as it doesn’t come from the left, from Iran, from the Palestinian Authority or any Islamic organization.
Because the Democrats care about anti-Semitism. They care so much that they insist on funding Islamic terrorists in the Palestinian Authority who get paid based on how many Jews they kill.
They care so much that they want money to keep flowing to Iran’s genocidal nuclear program and through it, to Hamas and Hezbollah, who have called for exterminating the Jews.
They care so much that they fought on behalf of Muslims convicted of terror plots against synagogues.
In the end there will be only two types of Democrats: anti-Semites and the cowards too afraid to stand up to them.
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