Jews, Muslims, and the Democrats

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 sliver—a mere 2 percent—of the U.S. population, they now hold 13 seats in the U.S. Senate, all but two of them—Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Norm Coleman of Minnesota—Democratic. (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 Lieberman’s presence on Al Gore’s 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 concern—the safety and security of the state of Israel—the party and the American Jewish community may be heading toward a slow-motion collision.

This development is not exactly of recent vintage—its historical roots can be traced as far back as the late 1960’s—but 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 Minnesota’s Democratic Farmer-Labor (DFL) ticket. Ellison’s story is unique, but also a symptom of larger trends.

“Louis Farrakhan’s First Congressman” is how the Weekly Standard titled an election-eve profile of Ellison. In the late 1980’s, while still a law student, Ellison had indeed been an activist in the Nation of Islam, Farrakhan’s 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 group’s membership was on display last May when Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist terror organization pledged to Israel’s 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 2006—legislation 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 Israel’s 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 handily—but 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 disputed—the U.S. census does not gather information about religious affiliation—a 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 America’s Muslims have settled in major cities—Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and New York—where 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 Ellison’s 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.

That certainly explains Feinstein and Boxer who I just recently found out, much to my surprise, were both Jews. It's never bothered me, everyone has a right to practice the religion of their choice, but all the fuss that was made over Joe Leibermans religion, I had come to the wrong conclusion that he was the only Jew who was a Senator.

Should this really come as a surprise? The Republican Party has recently become a predominantly Southern and Rocky Mountain party. Most Jewish people live in places other than the South and Rocky Mountains, excluding Florida.

You refer to NY/LA getting a different story from “flyover country”, but what about Chicago? I think the media and educators in Chicago perpetuate the same myths there as in NY/LA.

I, a Midwesterner, was given a completely different take on the Cold War as my relatives in Chicago Metro were. Right after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, my relatives were still being told that Germany, not Russia, was our true enemy. Whether it was in school or the media (WTTW, WFMT, etc.) giving them this view, I don’t know. While I was educated to be a foot soldier in the Cold War, they were evidently being prepared to be diplomats and global businessmen and professionals more sympathetic to foreign governments than their own. They are not Jewish, so I wonder if this is a more general inculcation of world view.

You refer to NY/LA getting a different story from “flyover country”, but what about Chicago? I think the media and educators in Chicago perpetuate the same myths there as in NY/LA.

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