The waning American Jewish liberal {American Jews are moving rightward}

Haaretz Daily ^ | April 4 2002 | Nathan Guttman

[malakhi]

I won't bite on this rosy scenario till I see the mostly liberal Jewish organizations and leading individuals speak out in support of the beleaguered nation.

I don't want to see them speak out. I want them to become sidelined and irrelevent.

[goodnesswins]

Let's wait and see what happens in November......

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

Graham was a polico before Florida was totally overrun by New Yorkers. Sad but true.

[norton]

The entire list needs repeating:

"Bush's civil agenda still deters most Jews. Issues of religion and state, as well as his opposition to abortion, his reluctance to restrict the right to bear arms, and the marginal importance he assigns to environmental quality are eventually leading the Jews to the Democratic candidates."

1) Since the US offers the safest environment in the world to the Jewish faith and GWB and "our side" seem far more willing to defend religious rights than the "not on public property" & "ethics are relative" left...
2) Since Israel is an armed camp - and becomming more so in direct response to the intifada...
3) The only thing this rationalizatioon might suggest is that American Jewish political attitudes are dominated by their passionate fondness for Redwood forests and Spotted Owls.

I'm just not sure I'm willing to accept that opinion.

[goldstategop]

This Jewish conservative is a living refutation of the perception all Jews are liberal. Some of us are decidedly not. The rightward shift among Jews today is correlated less with specific domestic controversies than a growing realization the Left has grown in hostility and hatred towards Israel while the Right has acquired a philosemitic hue. American Jewish identification with liberalism is historically derivative and can be traced to the reception Jews faced on the Right in the old country. America is very different and Jews are slowly coming to realize the Democrats are not the sole address the community can turn to respond to their concerns. A lot of us ex Democrats know this to be true. And since I joined the Republican Party a few years ago, I haven't looked back.

[donozark]

Interesting, but failed to address Second Amendment issue. Sadly, MOST Jewish-American pols are antis. It is a fact. Indisputable. Moving to the "right?" Perhaps when Rabbi Eric Yoffie, President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, retracts his Dec. 1999 statement referring to NRA members as a "...criminal lobby," I'll take heart in this article. Yoffie urged a "..Take no prisoners,Give no quarter campaign against the NRA." He was supported by a majority of his brethren...

[NativeNewYorker]

It will be hard for Jews to stop their decades of turkey- brained support for liberals.

As a Jew, a former liberal, a registered Democrat, a child of Holocaust survivors, a man with family in Israel, and a close friend of many Jews, I say, "HOW DARE YOU INSULT TURKEYS!!" :)

[NativeNewYorker]

Many Orthodox Jews are pro-life.

[NativeNewYorker]

A lifetime of reflexive liberalism ended for THIS Jew when the Democratic machinery of the City and State of New York allowed a Black-on-Jew pogrom in 1991.

The light bulb went on over my head, and here I am. :)

[MinuteGal]

#21 - Either way is ok with me.

Leni

[KC_for_Freedom]

There are far too many American Jews with a self destruct gene

I think you must be making reference to the Reform Jewish Movement. (Of which I am a contrary member). Nevertheless, many acquaintances have been at least verbally moving to the right while continuing to vote for liberal politicians in the US. Maybe they will get the message, maybe not. They come from long lines of socialists reaching back to Europe. But the current events must be opening a few minds. I hope.

[mgc1122]

I think you hit the nail on the head with the socialist lineage point ... and there are as many Protestant with similar gene. Thanks for making an excellent point.

[Texaggie79]

ping

[Honorary Serb]

When are American Jewish "liberals" and "neo-cons" going to stop supporting phony "human rightser" muslim-coddling neo-imperialsts, "peacekeeping" missions, etc., and start supporting the Serbs, who were only fighting against islamic expansionism just like Israel is doing and America should be doing?

[veronica]

Bump.

[veronica]

Bump.

[dennisw]

 

The waning American Jewish liberal {American Jews are moving rightward}

CCAR President Rabbi Martin Wiener presented the shift in his organization's position as the result of a soul-searching the movement has conducted since the intifada broke out. "Many of us who supported the Oslo process in the past decade have to admit that the Palestinians do not want peace," Wiener said during his visit to Israel.

Never too late baby!  Wake up and smell the Jihad! The Jihad that wants to kill the Jewish nation of Israel and kill many others!!!!

[dennisw]

An armed Jew is a good Jew bump! So Israel has more good Jews than America does.

Never again! Islam can take their Jihad against the Jews of Israel and stick it!

[junta]

bttt

[Basil Duke]

The American Jewish population to a large extent (at least that 80 percent that robotically punched the "Gore" hole in '00) strikes me as demographic that exists in a sort of fantasy world. Theirs must be a world wherein stark, brutal experience (i.e. the Nazis' ovens that incinerated so many European Jews)is immaterial to the present gun "control" debate here in the States. To advocate disarming normal, run of the mill citizens for the good of the state, a leftist U.S. Jew must refuse to concede the obvious, historical facts: that millions of their relatives were murdered by a state that first took away their firearms - leaving the mass of them helpless. And yet the Holocaust is of course NOT glibly dismissed or forgotten by them, as well it should not be. It is a foundation block of their religious and philosophical existence. How then do they square their fear of an armed civilian society with the undeniable fact that THEIR UNarmed society was herded like sheep to their deaths a mere 60 years ago? This is inexplicable to me. Israel has it right: it recognizes a monstrous physical threat to its state's very existence and encourages the ownership of private firearms to help combat that threat. I may be flitting about the periphery of unacceptable posting etiquette with this, but it is my sincere belief that those American Jews who insist that my privately owned firearms constitute a threat to their safety and should therefore be seized by the state are either idiots or closet fascists themselves.