The Democrats Cannot Hide Their Anti-Semitism Problem
The Democrats will not produce a meaningful resolution denouncing anti-Semitism. The vile hater, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, will not be named. Her position on the powerful Foreign Relations Committee will be as secure as ever. The resolution will dilute anti-Semitism by conveniently placing it among other hatreds.
Such duplicity is reminiscent of the New York Times burying the Holocaust in the back pages.
They covered it, just not where you could see it. The Times, like the Roosevelt administration and the British Foreign Office, knew of the Holocaust since 1942 and chose to ignore it.
The Democratic Party has once again abandoned the Jews. The Jews, however, refuse to abandon the Democratic Party.
I grew up in a Democratic home in Chicago where Franklin Roosevelt was revered as if he were some form of deity.
Little did my parents and grandparents know the Roosevelt’s State Department worked tirelessly with the British Foreign Office to obstruct and delay the rescue of European Jews so that Hitler could continue to kill them as the clock ran out and, consequently, eliminate the problem. Like today’s Democrats, they created mechanisms to give the symbolic appearance of being concerned about the plight of the Jews while doing nothing until the last days of the war.
Little did my family know that Roosevelt fumed at Casablanca about the Jews being overrepresented in the professions and worried that if not restricted by quotas, after the war, North Africans would have the same “justifiable” resentment toward Jews as did Germans. Roosevelt exaggerated the role of Jews in the professions just as he exaggerated the threat of loyal Japanese Americans.
Harry Truman recognized Israel, but then his administration cut off arms to both sides, ignoring that the Arabs already had arms. The Israelis did not.
You had to look at the black community to find a higher portion of voters supporting Obama than did the Jews. Yet, Obama’s attitudes toward Jews are now dramatically revealed in his adulation -- along with other members of the black caucus -- of the Rev. Louis Farrakhan.
Obama released 150 billion dollars to the theocratic tyranny of Iran that denies the first Holocaust while promising Jews the second. It is the greatest exporter of terror in the world, much of it directed against Jews with the funds Obama released.
During Israel’s war with Hamas, Obama cut off air transport to Israel, something that was not done even to Damascus or Kabul, on the specious grounds that landing in Tel Aviv was dangerous.
Ilhan Omar is being rescued by both the progressives and the Black Caucus in the Democrat Party. The progressives have created a Red-Green alliance, and the Black Caucus, whose prominent members hugged Farrakhan, will protect Omar because identity politics requires it. Omar is one of them.
The Democratic apologists have portrayed the party’s division on anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as a conflict of generations. But it is much more than that. As one moves to the extremes on the political continuum, there is one unifying hatred both sides can embrace -- anti-Semitism.
Progressives have become inherently anti-Semitic. Such groups as Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow are cited by the mainstream media as Jewish groups, but they are anything but that. They are progressives who traffic in their limited Jewish identity to instill Zionophobia while pandering to tropes historically associated with Jew-hatred. They are often found fostering Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel and give cover to professional Jew haters. Frequently, they are outside the large and oversized tent in Jewish communities. Some have gone so far as to sign a petition in support of Omar.
They reflect the progressive face of the Democrat Party, and indeed, they are not far from Bernie Sanders’ justifications of Palestinian violence, most recently those carried out from Gaza. The Democratic divide is less about generations than ideology and identity politics, which eschews Jews as being privileged whites.
The Democrats will come up with some milquetoast resolution. Jews, for whom being a Democrat is a commandment from the Almighty, will find a rationale in it for their continued self-exploitation and self-hatred.
But there is hope that the Zionophobia of the Democrats, will make some Jews rethink their party identification. For in the end, as Martin Luther King, Jr. so insightfully noted, it is not actually about Israel; it is really about Jews. Being anti-Israel is the cover for being anti-Jewish. If you don’t believe that, how do you explain a euphoric Barack Obama, and members of the Black Caucus, embracing the Rev. Farrakhan or the support Ilhan Omar is getting for her hatred?