Posted on 01/01/2007 5:56:33 AM PST by gallaxyglue
Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats Gabriel Schoenfeld January 2007 The 2006 midterm elections confirmed once again a truism of American politics: American Jews remain overwhelmingly devoted to the Democratic party. According to exit polling, the tilt this year was, if anything, even more pronounced than it has been in the past. Some 88 percent of Jewish votes went to Democratic candidates, while a mere 12 percent went to the GOP.
Along with this lopsided outcome, a historical extreme, comes the news that the number of Jewish representatives in Congress has itself reached an all-time high. Although Jews represent a marginal slivera mere 2 percentof the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of themArlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of MinnesotaDemocratic. (Bernard Sanders of Vermont, elected as an independent, has pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus.) In the House of Representatives, Jews, all but one of them Democrats, now occupy 30 seats.
Party affiliation aside, this surely denotes a high-water mark of Jewish political representation, just as Joseph Liebermans presence on Al Gores presidential ticket set a previous mark in 2000. But party affiliation cannot be placed to one side. For the paradoxical and disturbing fact is that even as Jewish voters remain unwaveringly loyal to the Democrats, and even as Jewish representation in national office, almost entirely Democratic in color, has risen to an all-time high, the Democratic party itself is becoming demonstrably less hospitable to Jewish interests. Indeed, on at least one matter of central concernthe safety and security of the state of Israelthe party and the American Jewish community may be heading toward a slow-motion collision.
This development is not exactly of recent vintageits historical roots can be traced as far back as the late 1960sbut it has taken on an increasingly stark aspect as the party has progressively succumbed to the influence of its own left wing and to blind hatred of George W. Bush. And recently a new element has entered as well, symbolized by the election this past November of Keith Ellison, the first-ever Muslim member of the House of Representatives, on Minnesotas Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) ticket. Ellisons story is unique, but also a symptom of larger trends.
Louis Farrakhans First Congressman is how the Weekly Standard titled an election-eve profile of Ellison. In the late 1980s, while still a law student, Ellison had indeed been an activist in the Nation of Islam, Farrakhans black-Muslim cult. Writing under the pseudonyms of Keith Hakim, Keith X. Ellison, and Keith Ellison Muhammad, he called for the establishment of an independent black republic in the American South and defended the unadorned anti-Semitic pronouncements of Farrakhan and his organization. Long after completing law school, moreover, Ellison continued to work with the Nation of Islam, joining with more prominent black leaders, including the Reverend Jesse Jackson and the Reverend Al Sharpton, to help organize the 1995 Million Man March.
Ellison was carrying other baggage as well. Critics, particularly his Republican opponent, were quick to raise questions about his ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization that has been linked to radical Islamists and anti-Semites of various stripes.
But attempts to derail his candidacy on these grounds failed. Under fire during the campaign for his associations with the Nation of Islam, Ellison wrote a letter to the Minnesota Jewish community-relations council in which he admitted that as a young man he did not adequately scrutinize the positions and statements of the Nation of Islam, acknowledged that they were and are anti-Semitic, and declared that I should have come to that conclusion earlier than I did. On the strength of this and similar statements he proceeded to win endorsements from the American Jewish World, a progressive local paper, and the even more progressive Minneapolis Star Tribune, the latter of which dismissed criticism of his links to CAIR as a smear campaign.1
Both the ease with which Ellison was able to glide through this controversy and the remarkable lack of discomfort his candidacy appeared to cause among his fellow Democrats point to the larger significance of his election. For the simple fact is that in certain respects he is not alone: the past decade or so has seen the formation of a group of 40 to 50 Democratic Congressmen who, in varying degrees of intensity, have felt free to express an uninhibited hostility toward the Jewish state.
A coarse index of this groups membership was on display last May when Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist terror organization pledged to Israels destruction, won elections in Gaza and the West Bank and assumed control of the Palestinian Authority. In response, Congress took up the Palestinian Anti-Terror Act of 2006legislation aimed at denying U.S. financial aid to the Palestinian Authority unless and until the President could certify that terror groups were not among its recipients, that the new Palestinian regime recognized Israels right to exist, and that it remained committed to agreements with Israel signed by its predecessors. The bill passed the Senate unanimously. In the House, a similar but slightly tougher version also passed handilybut not without drawing 37 nay votes and 9 votes of present only. Of the 46 representatives either actively opposing the bill or unwilling to vote for it, 41 were Democrats.
To be fair, not every Congressman who failed to support the legislation could automatically be counted as unsympathetic to Israel; the State Department had expressed its own reservations about the House version on the grounds that it unduly limited American flexibility. Still, the number of Democrats ready to oppose so straightforward an anti-terror measure was striking, and all the more so in light of the Democrats long record as the party friendlier to Israel than the Republicans.
What explains this turnabout? A full answer would take us on a sojourn through the twists and turns not only of party politics but of the ideological, cultural, and racial disputes of the past decades as they have affected both domestic and foreign policy. But of particular relevance in the present context is the demographic ingredient exemplified by Keith Ellison.
The Muslim population of the United States has been steadily growing. Although the numbers are hotly disputedthe U.S. census does not gather information about religious affiliationa middle-range estimate tells us there are four to six million Muslims in the country. Not in dispute is that they are one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population, and that with increasing size has come increasing potency within American political life.
Where populations are sufficiently concentrated in America, so too, usually, is political clout. As a rule Americas Muslims have settled in major citiesLos Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New Yorkwhere they are still too sparsely present to exercise significant weight as a bloc. Smaller localities, however, tell a different story. Thus, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where many émigrés from strife-torn Somalia happen to have gathered, Muslims formed an important building block of Keith Ellisons electoral victory. In places like Dearborn and Detroit, Michigan, where many immigrants from the Arab world have settled, Muslims enjoy a far larger degree of political influence.
Only about 10% of America's Jews are Orthodox.
Half of American Jews are completely secular, and about half of American Jews claim not to believe in God.
Of religiously affiliated Jews, about 40% belong to the very leftist Reform movement.
See, for example, the interesting article at
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/WillYourGrandchildrenBeJews.htm
about 12-15%.
about 12-15%.
I believe this is a blatant lie. If Alan Fine, a spectacularly weak candidate, raised such questions, he must have been doing it in some code no one clould crack. Even when his supporters opened the door for him to point out Ellison's terrorist Farrakhan past, Fine seemed to change the subject as fast as he could.
Thanks. This would correspond pretty closely to the conservative voting pattern amongst American Jews, no?
Orthodox Jews tend to vote rep or blu dog.
However most American Jews are secular liberals and are the WAFFEN SS of the Democratic Party.
And when they are not goose stepping for abortion rights, they are buggering Orthodox Jews like myself.
ACLJews are in the forefront of fighting aid to Yeshivas, fighting menorot, synagogue expansion and eruvim. They use zoning laws to block Yeshivas and synagogues from opening (we have to walk to shul on saturday).
Jewish libs are lib first with varying attitudes about Israel(usually low commitment) and will vote for a DEm whose anti Israel but pro-abortion before a Pro-Israel pro-life Rep.
yes
Thank you. This is pretty much what I suspect.
Yes, the percentage of Jews who are Orthodox about matches the percentage of Jews who vote conservative.
No one seems to understand that the half of American Jews who are secular (and inter-marry at a rate of over 70%) cease to be identifiable as Jews once the become politically conservative.
In other words, the Jewish honchos at the ACLU generally don't have Jewish grandchildren, so the 'problem' is solving itself.
I think you are referring to Tammy Lee, not Tammy Fine.
Alan Fine was the GOP candidate.
Yep...know EXACTLY what you mean. It defies logic.
Yes, you're right. My mistake. That said, she was standard boiler plate left in 90% of the issues.
The Dem'crats HISTORY of being partial to Israel, is not reflected in their current attitudes about Israel. Like support for civil rights and equality for the Americans of African descent, the support for Israel now comes largely from the conservative (and yes, the NEO-conservative) wing of the Republicans.
If the world does not know, "neo-conservative" is codeword for "Jews who are Republicans". And as such, they are more rabidly despised than even those Americans of African descent who have chosen to be Republicans and embrace a much more conservative perspective than the roughly 85% to 90% of the specific demographic out of which they come.
So to remain true to the socialistic code to which they subscribe, the Dem'crat Black Caucus and the Jewish Congressional Mafia treated the Republican "neo-cons" and "Uncle Toms" (or "Aunt Jemimas") extremely harshly.
Seems like the goal of the "kinder, gentler" face on Washington politics is going to have to be deferred once again, as it has so often before.
Just in case jews loose all their $ they got to insure welfare for demselves.
Waves of immigrants who came to the USA from 1880-1920: the poles the italians the irish the jews. Most of them voted for FDR by large majorities in 1932, 1936 & 1940. Today only the jews still vote democratic by hefty majorities. Why? The reason for this dates explicitly to the McCarthy period from 1950-54. The reason this is so is because Hollywood still strenuously maintains the communist lie about that era. This lie is maintained by movies in the last years called "A Beautiful Mind," and "Good Night and Good Luck".
There are various reasons given as to why Stalin initiated the Doctor's Plot in the early 1950's before he died. The KGB hated Israel. Many Americans who were enthusiastic supporters of the UN were Jewish.
Edvard Radzinsky in his book "Stalin" argues that while at one time Stalin hoped Jewish financial capital would help rebuild the Soviet Union after the WWII, Stalin hated the prospect of suborning himself to the Baruch Plan and he flat out rejected IAEA nuclear controls--presented in 1946. The Russians were working on their own abomb based on stolen US designs. (Stalin's attitude is not entirely dissimliar to that of Iran today.)
Whatever the reason, Stalin fomented the Doctor's plot hysteria and broke off diplomatic relations with Israel. He was within days of preparing to exile the Soviet Jews to the Gulag (as was done previously with various other ethnic minorities such as the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, etc.), and initiate another great purge along the lines of 1938.
The important thing to recall is that the Doctor's Plot happened at the same time as the McCarthy anti communist business from 1950-54
Stalin already had the concentration camps set up. And some of the preliminary accusations had gone out for the Doctor's Plot when he died in 1953.
At the same time the Rosenburgs were tried and executed for treason in the USA in 1953--and this less than a decade after the Holocaust. This naturally caused fear and suspicion in the US Jewish community. This fear and suspicion was played upon by knowledgeable communists and leftists--large numbers of whom were jewish. These folk not only knew about what Stalin had done in the 1930's and was about to do with the doctor's plot--before he died-- but also saw the Rosenburg trials as show trials american style ... that is, a prelude to an american pogrom.
What Stalin had planned to do-- in a brilliant piece of jujitsu --leftists and communists imputed to Americans on the right. But it was done soto voce. Basically a blood libel was perpetrated on Americans without their knowing it. Worse, protestant america were painted as tribal enemies tooth and claw of the US jewish establishment without protestant america even knowing it. Never again! -- Was the battle cry. But there weren't any protestant tribal enemies of Jews in the USA. If there were protestant tribal enemies in the USA -- Meyer Kahane would have provoked them into a bloodletting. Why? Because he heard the same thing as everyone else. He also heard about enemies of the jews in the heartland. When he went to give battle, the only sorts of fights the JDL could find resulted in unintelligible court disputes in places like Idaho. In the end, Kahane married an american woman & helped expedite Stalin's last wish--to rid Russia of Jews. When Kahane died it was at the hands of a Moslem in 1990.
While the American public outside NY/LA were generally given the view that the McCarthy era was an age when innocent men were unjustly tried by suspicious anti semites like McCarthy & Nixon--the NY/LA Jewish establishment was given a very different story. They were given to understand that the democrats/liberals had prevented the US from visiting a holocaust on them. And that therefor American Jews owed their loyalty to the liberal democrats because the liberal democrats were the protectors of the Jews.
And this Meme went on untouched for decades after McCarthy.
This dual track story line didn't crack until the early 1990's when the kgb/nkvd/gru opened up their files on the WWII-McCarthy Period. In 1995 the US's NSA agency opened up their Venona files. Both Russian and American spy agency files showed that McCarthy was right. The US government --as well as the Manhattan Project--had been at one time soaked with Russian Spies. The Rosenburgs were guilty. While McCarthy was wrong in most the details he got the general outline of the story right. Why did McCarthy get the outline right and the details wrong? The reason is McCarthy's relationship to Hoover was the same as Hoover's relationship to the NSA.The NSA told the FBI about the Venona intercepts but insisted that the FBI could not use NSA intercepts as evidence in court. The FBI had to develop their own leads. As a result most of the spies escaped prosecution. The FBI did not get their man.
In 1950 J Edgar Hoover began weekly meetings with Joseph McCarthy. Those meetings ended in 1954. The beginning and end of those meetings coincided with the beginning and end of McCarthy star turn in the national spot light. McCarthy got most of the details of the spy story wrong but he got the general outline of the story right. His predicament was the same as that of the FBI. Whatever Hoover told him--McCarthy could not use in the senate hearings. To this day the FBI denies that Hoover told McCarthy anything about the Venona Cables and maybe Hoover said nothing explicit to McCarthy for which Hoover could be liable in court.
Needless to say, an American style shoah was never in the cards.
The reason that hollywood hated Ronald Reagan so much was that he was an anti communist in hollywood during the McCarthy period. During this period to be staunchly anti communist in Hollywood or NYC was to be at least vaguely anti semetic because in the 30's to the 50's communism was considered to be almost a secular form of Judaism in the Jewish communities of NY/LA. Why? In Russia, communism was a way to get ahead for the jews. As well, there was a biblical antecedent for jewish communists in the bible in the person of Joseph in Egypt. Why? Because the relationship between jews to joseph's Egypt maps over well to jews in Russia. And the history of the jews from Joseph to Moses looks very similiar to the rise to prominance of many jews in the soviet communist bureaucracy from the 1917-1970 and the decades long expulsion of Russia's jews after 1970 when it became clear that communism was not working. The Russians blamed Russian jews for the failure of communism.
Reagan was among the first wave of FDR democrats to switch parties. Reagan's star turn in Hollywood ended after McCarthy. However, his experiences in Hollywood served him well when he went into public service. He always understood the jujitsu of media talk of the age. Something that cannot be said of Nixon.
When I hear American based Moslems talking about McCarthyism being visited on them. I have to laugh. They don't know that they have pronounced themselves guilty in the eyes of many Americans.
As for the democrats, part of the reason for the loss of their inner coherence has been that part their foundational raison d'être steming from the McCarthy era was revealed to be based on a lie. So now the core of the democratic party is the sodomites. Those folks are not just confusing. They are confused.
David Horowitz interviewed by Rush Limbaugh in the spring of 2006 talked about how his parents were communists and he was a communist in college. He said when he was in college his views were always treated respectfully by his professors. But he said recently a young christian college student told him that his homosexual college professor had singled him out in class and asked him "Why do you christians hate queers." Asked why he continued to do what he did in the face of all the abuse he gets, David Horowitz said like Rush he took public political positions because he had to. But also he said he did it as a matter of atonement.
He gets it.
Venona Historical Writings that include comparisons of venona and russian spy lists and the changing venona story in the academy.
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/page43.html
http://www.johnearlhaynes.org/index.html
Couldn't really follow what your point was...but I believe the Jew/democrat thing is fairly simple: they believed the Nazis were from the right, so left is better. They equate the country club antisemitism of the (classic) Republicans with the Nazis. Dumb, but true, IMO.
"What people?" indeed. It is sad...
I guess the point of your expose is that: Jews are brought up to believe that republicans and Christians hate them so they must vote for democrats to save their own skin? If they can't change based on finding out the truth then, I guess they are not as smart as those they should be listening to who write for "Commentary".
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