|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
The New York Times poll showing what the paper described as a “major drop in support for Israel” sent shockwaves through the Jewish community. But few drilled down to see what the numbers really showed.
I did.
40% of white voters support Israel. 41% of black voters and 46% of Hispanic voters support the ‘Palestinians’ as part of 41% support for the terrorists among “non-white voters”.
Non-college graduates are more likely to support Israel but 44% of college graduates support the ‘Palestinians’. The group most likely to support Israel are white non-college graduates. The group most likely to support the terrorists at 52% are minority college graduates.
At 39%, the South has the greatest base of support for Israel, followed by the Midwest at 35%, while the Northeast and the West, where most Jews live, offer majority support to the ‘Palestinians’. 63% of Trump voters support Israel. 12% of Kamala Harris voters do.
Too many Jewish organizations have been going on about how Israel ‘lost’ the support of Democrats when today’s Democrats have little in common with yesterday’s Democrats.
The Democrats didn’t stop supporting Israel. Oct 7 did not lead to a backlash. They were replaced by a different party with different demographics whose members never particularly supported Israel and in many cases didn’t particularly like Jews or for that matter America. (A majority of Democrats, also those who are Gen Z also currently say they’re not proud to be Americans, why expect them to like Israel or support it when they hate their own country?)
The disappearance of pro-Israel sentiment within the Democratic Party isn’t new.
In May 2023, well before Oct 7, when Israel and Hamas were not prominent in the news, 49% of Democrats sided with the ‘Palestinians’ and only 38% with Israelis. Democrat support for Israel had dropped slowly over time, but a major turning point emerged in 2019 where pro-Israel sentiments fell drastically and support for terrorists dramatically increased.
Oct 7 did not reverse a trend, it accelerated an existing trend. The mass media and social media propaganda didn’t take people who were pro-Israel and make them anti-Israel, it knocked on an ‘open door’ and convinced a party already turning radical to drop its mostly theoretical support.
What happened in 2019? One possibility is that Democrats turned on Israel due to Trump’s strong support for it, and that was certainly a factor, while another was the epidemic of wokeness that climaxed in cancel culture and the BLM riots, while a third is that the level of Democratic Party identification began dropping as the party radicalized.
But there are other figures that are more relevant.
Around the turn of the century, a majority of Democrats identified as moderate, about a third as conservative and another third as ‘liberal’. The conservative contingent has nearly disappeared and by 2019, the party was majority ‘liberal’ and the moderates were a distinct minority.
The shift on Israel began a few years after ‘liberals’ became a majority and moderates a minority, and matched a larger political shift on a large number of other issues.
These numbers are not just a mysterious phenomenon of political radicalization. Around this same time, the Democrats also shifted from a working class party and a majority white party to a party dominated by college graduates, the irreligious and minorities. These were the groups least likely to be favorable to Israel and to varying degrees, Jews.
Before 2019, the majority of Democrats had not graduated from college. By 2021, it was around half and half. The leftward lean of the Democrats was partly attributable to the party’s new base.
In 2013, a majority of Democrats said religion was “very important” to them. By 2019, they had become a minority. Today, 40% of Democrats are religiously unaffiliated and a majority of white Democrats are non-Christian. The party’s remaining religious base now consists of black Protestants and Hispanic Catholics whose churches tend to be the least sympathetic to Israel.
In the New York Times poll and in other polls, younger Democrats show up as being unprecedentedly hostile to Israel. But younger Dems also look nothing like the old party base. A majority of Dems were once white. 60% of Democrats under 29 are minorities, 46% say religion is not important to them, 58% graduated college and 63% are ‘liberal’.
If you wanted a profile of the voter least likely to support Israel, a young leftist irreligious member of a minority group would top the charts for anything outside Dearborn.
And that’s simply the profile of the new generation of Democrat voters.
Jewish organizations agonizing over the New York Times poll and urging more ‘messaging’ don’t understand what it shows. Messaging is an issue, since if you believe the poll, majorities in every group believe that Israel is intentionally killing civilians. But when the public is told that by everyone from CNN to Tucker Carlson, why wouldn’t they believe it? The larger shift is driven by the very things that liberal Jews wanted, more diversity, more politics and higher education.
In recent years, the ADL has avoided breaking down its antisemitism surveys by race, but its 2016 survey admitted that “the steady growth of the U.S. Hispanic population – now at 15 percent of the adult population – means that Hispanics, combined with African Americans (12 percent), now comprise 27 percent of the American population, a number that is sure to grow in the coming years. This population increase of the most anti-Semitic cohorts also means that it will be an ongoing challenge to reduce overall anti-Semitic propensities.”
Rather than respond realistically to these numbers by championing policies that would have helped keep the Jewish community safe, the ADL and other liberal Jewish groups doubled down on diversity. The liberal Jewish groups championing open borders might have considered the impact of the ADL’s survey showing that 31% of Hispanic immigrants had antisemitic views. Instead they chose to pretend that they could fix it with Spanish signs in Holocaust museums.
The New York Times poll and others like it show the actual outcome.
In survey after survey, black respondents had the highest rates of antisemitism of any group, double that of white people, and higher than average rates of support for the ‘Palestinians’ and opposition to Israel going back decades. Other minority groups fell somewhere in between.
‘Diversity’ simply meant that the people who liked Jews the least would become a larger share of the Democratic Party and of the United States, and would occupy more powerful positions. Refusing to take those numbers seriously led to Obama and then Kamala, the two most openly anti-Israel presidential nominees, and to a party whose next generation is dominated by groups that don’t like Israel or Jews. The anti-Israel numbers reflect the ‘diversity’ of the Democrats.
That is the work of liberal Jewish organizations, who championed diversity and higher education, who failed to push back against the leftist takeover of the party, even when the numbers clearly showed where that would lead, and who now blame Netanyahu or how well Israeli spokesmen perform when an NBC News anchor or Piers Morgan are yelling at them, rather than the long term trends they incubated in order to be properly good liberals.
The clock of the past can’t be turned back, but it may not be too late to learn some urgent lessons. And to learn them fast because time really is running out. The diverse liberal urban centers where so many Jews live have once again become places where they can be freely attacked, as was the case back in the seventies, and this time running to the suburbs won’t fix it.
Even staring into the face of the abyss, liberal Jews are still reluctant to rethink their old fealty to diversity, higher education and reflexive leftist politics, they think abandoning Israel will save them. It won’t. This is no more about Israel than the purges of Jews in the USSR were. A radicalized party populated by a base with antisemitic beliefs is an existential threat.
The Left, to echo an old cliche, is bad for the Jews. If Jewish Democrats can’t reclaim their party from the leftist radicals, history says that worse is waiting for them than just bad poll numbers.
Daniel Good wishes on Yom Kippur. Keep up the good work. (I used to run into David when I lived in L.A. and was an early subscriber to Heterodoxy – felt my sympathies were a lonely row to hoe out there. To prove my pt: Just today I wrote four comments into the NYT and only one of them made it into the paper. Welcome to the USSR and the New Pravda.
article was about black comics in Saudi:
My perspective: since when did black comics become the flagship of U.S. culture? Black culture is another step into the gutter IMHO & I wouldn’t blame Saudis for rejecting it but no, on the contrary they’re celebrating it w/it’s ‘down home’ perspective & lingo (more destruction of English ) as it raps its way home w/a ‘telln’ it like it is’ laugh, street theads: baggy pants, bling, ball caps etc). I don’t get why it’s happening? It was mainstream American culture that created a populace that made the U.S. victorious during WWII and defeated Soviet culture at the end of the cold war. Part of this is that the Western intelligentsia have turned on the mainstream see: Columbia U e.g. (all like a nightmare of the biblical partying of Sodom and Gomorrah and the golden calf. )
re: Mamdan the Communist about to become mayor
As a Stuyvesant H.S. alum I read w/alarm this guy’s intention to shut down another class for gifted students. Why? Because it was populated by white and Asian students. All students so not have the same intellectual abilities. The Chinese who are in a deadly global competition w/us have no such problem. Here we call advancing our gifted students (Oh No Not that) racism. I am not a basket ball player. nor a drummer. Or brandish my bling. De Blasio wanted to also destroy the ‘elitist’ Stuyvesant ranks – very competitive & if you couldn’t keep up you were left in the dust. But: crush those who promise to be outstanding in any way for an egalitarian ‘We are all the same’ agenda?
Artistic Director
Great American Play Series
I think the group in America that is the most anti-Israel are Muslim immigrants. It isn’t even close. While the left in America became increasingly critical of Israel as Israel became more closely allied with the United States and the Soviet Union became increasingly aligned with the Arab states, it was natural for left wing groups to go along with the shift away from Israel. At the same time, as Israel became more prosperous and moved away from the social democratic Labor party in favor of Likud, liberal American Jews became more critical of the Israeli government.
I think that Jewish organizations both civic and religious have been pro Israel as are most Jewish politicians. Unfortunately, over the years they became complacent about keeping an accurate story of Israel’s revival before the American public. In particular, the promoters of the Israel side dealt with opponents of Israel by trying to marginalize them rather than engaging with them. What is proving to be even more problematic is that liberal Jews, and in fact liberals in general, took a posture towards many of Israel’s Christian supporters, that was condescending if not outright hostile.
What I see is that Democratic Jewish members of Congress look at anti-Israel mobs on college campuses and their response is to pretend that it is a right wing phenomenon. They seem more interested in covering up their own cowardice in not standing up to their hostile colleagues than in protecting the interests of their fellow Jews. As a Jew I find this dismaying.
So when’s the Dems going to start wearing Swatika Armbands and do the Goosestep March? The Nazis also were is support of Gun Control/Confiscation and sending people to Concentration Camps/Gulags the Commies and the Nazis shared the same Ideas and the Dems
Excellent analysis.
Being ridiculously stubborn, stiff necked and rebellious are oft exercised Jewish traits going back to the Torah. Today, it is truly dismaying how so many of our Jewish people refuse to face reality by desperately clinging to an allegience with a Democratic Party that no longer exists.
The values that were once a mainstay of the Democratic Party-John Kennedy type Democrats, have long since evaporated into the creeping radicalism that was beginning on college campuses in the late 60’s. Not unlike the slow invasion now happening in America by Islam, the Angela Davis style communists and other radicals were becoming rooted in popular culture along with recreational drugs and a profound hatred of our government exacerbated by the Vietnam War. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 and then Lyndon Johnson becoming President seemed to begin the undermining of the nuclear family, especially Black families. Welfare became a viable means of separating Black men from the homes of pregnant Black women and the beat went on in destroying all nuclear families, conservative values and replacing them with the advocated values of self-centered realization, feminism, sexual promiscuity marketed as freedom and the concept of communalism as a greater good.
There were musicians and radical zealots like Abby Hoffman setting the stage for influencing young Jewish college students who went on to invest themselves in these new ideas. I’ve met many radicals, young and older, who simply cannot clearly recognize how the world has changed and they cling to information sources that allow them to remain in an idealized, non-existent reality. For our Jewish people that is rapidly becoming a disaster no amount of doubling down will fix but it will allow us to become their chosen scapegoat for what the redesigned, Democratic Party has willingly affiliated itself ( Islam, communism) and like it or not they no longer want or need Jews. There are times when avoiding reality for a time exacts minimal harm but that’s no longer the case and remaining stiff necked and rebellious is about to become the landscape for our murder..
Are there still truth in advertising laws? If so, the kosher wing of the Democ-rat political party ought to drop its “liberal” schtick and brand itself “Suicidal Jews With Karen.” That would line up with their anti-Semitic protest chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free.” Yes, Jew-hating Jews have an advertising problem.
The term ‘By Any Means Necessary’ is a warning from the Left and Jihadists. We are living through it now.
Take it seriously. Gun up. Ammo up. Protect yourself.
The Democrat Donkey is running off the Cliff again
My late Jewish husband & I (Catholic) moved to the Metro Charleston SC area from San Francisco.several years ago. Even back then the SF Bay Area was adopting a very antisemitic attitude. I did 4 years of research on various locations before we moved & I was fairly certain we’d be tolerated in the South, but our welcome from the community was both warm & sincere.
When the horror & slaughter of Oct 7th occurred all religious groups gathered together in Charleston. The rabbi, the pastor & the priest were all in attendance & we all joined hands in prayer. I was never more proud to be a member of this loving & tolerant community. We responded like Americans should, we came together to stand against the genocide of the Jewish people, regardless of our faith.
The banner in the photo says ‘by any means necessary’.
In which case, surely they can be opposed by ‘any means necessary’.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say.
Now do the Republican Party. Yes, there’s less anti-Semitism on our side, but it appears to be rising. The latest to join the fray of haters is Megyn Kelly who’s legitimizing Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. And she is dug in about it. The shift is happening. It may seem incremental, but it appears to be steady. We would be fools to ignore it going all the way up to the VP who, in my view, has some sympathies w/the Tuckers of the world (and the Veep’s Depute Press Secy’s is Carlson’s son). This kind of slow but steady erosion of sanity is how we may find ourselves with the fringe lunatics running the asylum as seems to have happened on the left. (And as an aside, among other things, the rising popularity of “Christian Nationalism” may not bode well for our tribe.)
I was seeing the partisan divide long before 2019. Already by the mid 2000’s, polling showed a 30 percentage point difference in support for Israel between Republicans and Democrats. A decade later we witnessed the walkout of Democrats – even Jewish Democrats – when Netanyahu showed up in Congress to criticize Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran (JCPOA). That negative attitude toward Israel and its leadership only intensified with the demographic changes outlined here.