The Squad convinces Democrats to weaken Israel's defenses
If Jewish brains were computers, they'd have fast processors (smart), but they'd mostly be running defective programs (making them act stupid). That's the only way I can fathom my fellow Jews' devotion to the Democrat party. Democrats are increasingly open about their hatred for Jews and for the tiny nation that was finally returned to its indigenous people in 1948 and that is the only place in the world where Jews can be sure that their government won't eventually try to send them to gas chambers. On Tuesday, the Democrat party yielded to the demands of "the Squad" and voted on a budget that pulled $1 billion from Israel's purely defensive Iron Dome system.
According to Politico, the House did manage to pass a fiscal rescue package last night that will prevent a government shutdown and a U.S. debt default, provided that Senate Republicans vote yes on the bill. There are a lot of problems with the bill because it's a Democrat bill, but this post is about one specific problem: the open animus it reflects toward Israel, which has been a loyal American ally for decades, in addition to being the only free, multi-racial, multi-religious society in the Middle East.
The only way Pelosi was able to get the bill to the floor for a vote was to yield to her party's hard left wing (as opposed to its merely left wing) demanding that funding for Israel's Iron Dome get pulled:
The House vote came Tuesday night, after Democratic leaders yanked $1 billion for Israeli missile defense from the government funding package at the last minute amid objections from a group of House progressives.
[snip]
[T]he episode resurfaced the long-simmering internal tension among Democrats over supporting a longtime U.S. ally in the Middle East. And it comes as Republicans have already sought to portray the majority party as anti-Israel due to progressives' long-standing skepticism of the U.S.-Israel security relationship.
Two people familiar with the matter said that the group of objectors to the Iron Dome language included the Democrats who pushed earlier this year to cancel an arms sale to Israel amid its shooting war with Hamas militants in Gaza. The funding would have made good on a pledge by the Biden administration to help Israel replace hundreds of interceptors used to knock down rockets Hamas launched from Gaza in the spring.
Incidentally, while we won't help our ally, taxpayers will be on the hook for $6.3 billion to settle Afghan refugees, almost none of whom assisted America, and all of whom come from a country with a 99% support rate for sharia law.
Pro-Israel Democrats — or, at least, Democrats who rely on Jewish votes — insisted that they'd make sure that some other bill funded Iron Dome:
Instead, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday night that he plans to call for a vote later in the week on a bill to fully fund the Iron Dome system, which Israel views as critical for its protection from rocket attacks. "I was for that. I'm still for it, we ought to do it," he said.
"There is no interruption in funding for the Iron Dome," Appropriations Chair Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) said. "We are trying to make this seamless."
If you go here, you can see Republicans attacking the decision to pull Iron Dome funding from the bill. And if you go here, you can see Rep. Elissa Slotkin having to admit that there are people in her party who hate Israel.
What's enormously frustrating is that it's likely that this won't do a darn thing to change the fact that Jews, by a huge majority, vote Democrat and that their devotion to the party is unswerving. I belong to a Jewish Facebook group, and, rather than being outraged by a party that has a leadership that caves to anti-Semites, people in the group are celebrating the fact that, after the Democrat leadership bowed down to these radicals, the same leadership promises to do an after-the-fact workaround.
What I can't understand is why these Jews believe that, having caved once, the same party leadership won't cave again and again. Over the years, Democrats have been broadcasting at top volume that up-and-coming players in the party hate Israel. Obama was open in his disdain for the country. Biden has surrounded himself with anti-Semites. It's no use defending by saying that Biden has Jews in his administration. These are J Street–type Jews who hate Israel as much as Rashida Tlaib does.
When Ilhan Omar let loose with a flurry of openly anti-Semitic tweets in 2019, Nancy Pelosi was unable to call her on the carpet for it. Instead, the Democrats eventually cobbled together a statement saying they are opposed to all hatred as if every minority group in America has experienced a Holocaust and has been systematically exposed to deadly religious hatred for millennia.
On Tuesday, Pelosi again caved to the Squad. This isn't going to change. As I said, my fellow American Jews have great processors (brains) but lousy programs (political values and common sense).
Image: The Squad. YouTube screen grab.
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