Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart

Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart
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Monday 22 June 2009

Pity the Jewish Democrat

Years ago a friend of mine told me the story of someone he knew in Israel who had complained to him bitterly about the problems with the Labour Party. After listening to him whinge, he asked him if that meant he'd vote for Likud or someone else?
"No!" the person replied. "I'm going to vote Labour because I've always voted Labour."
Sometimes I think that secular American Jews vote for the Democratic party in election after election for the same reason - it's what they're always done and they can't contemplate any alternative.
This support is even stranger consider that the Democrats have given us Jimmy Carter - Israel is an apartheid state, Madeline Albright - I'm NOT Jewish, dammit!, and now Barack Obama - I'm not Muslim but I will take their side in all arguments with Israel. Did the Republicans give us the two most pro-Israel presidents in the history of State, Reagan and Bush II? Was the president who saved Israel from being destroyed in the Yom Kippur war a Republican? Who cares, the Jews are going to vote Democrat because, well it's the Jewish thing to do.
One example of this slavish devotion to the Democrats is the great DovBear who never misses a chance to slam the Republicans and remind us that the Democrats are the greatest friends of Israel and that Obama is absolutely no threat at all to Israel. Even after the Cairo speech where Obama not only announced that the Holocaust was the reason the Jews wanted to create a country in Israel but that the massacre of six million innocent Jews is morally equivalent to what the so-called Palestinians have been doing to themselves by refusing to live in peace beside Israel, DovBear insisted that this was not the content of the speech and that you're paranoid if you think so.
And along comes Richard Greenfield to remind us that Jewish Democrats are ostriches who are so busy making fun of Republicans that they're missing the obvious:
President Obama has embraced the ever-ready and willing State Department's negativity towards Israel and, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leading the way, is making demands about Israeli 'settlements' which are harsh and uncompromising. At the same time, State ignores Arab illegal construction which is happening on a much wider and broader scale. State conveniently ignores the fact that if land were truly the issue, Israel and her Arab neighbors would have been at peace for the last 60 years. Even though State has always been biased against Israel, it has never had a Presidency to work with that was in such complete consonance with its views as the Obama Administration is today. The resulting bullying of Israel by the U.S. is without parallel in American-Israeli relations.
In the last month an undersecretary of defense unilaterally discussed Israel's nuclear capability. In the doing, a long-standing U.S.-Israeli agreement to publicly avoid discussion of this topic was broken. Defense is tampering with previously agreed-upon arms deals by denying Israel the right to make adaptations on equipment that Israel deems essential. Effectively, they are moving the long-promised F-35 fighter from Israel's grasp and, instead, Israel will put a good face on buying decades old F-15's and upgrading them to her specifications. At the same time, Egypt is being offered top of the line attack helicopters from a defense department that knows Egypt's only potential adversary for these weapons is Israel.
Meanwhile, Marine General (ret) Keith Dayton is training and arming a 5,000 man Fatah security force designed to secure a Palestinian state on land Israel has not yet ceded. At the UN, Susan Rice is changing U.S. policy from one of support to belligerence. General James Jones, the President's National Security Adviser is touting Presidential Adviser Samantha Power's suggestion that an armed international force including American soldiers enter Judea and Samaria to force the Israelis to make a Palestinian state happen. General Dayton is already training such a force of Fatah soldiers in Jordan, presumably for this task. Meanwhile, George Mitchell, the special envoy to the area, is picking apart previous agreements telling Israel to conform to his selected conditions, while ignoring the obligations to which Palestinians were supposed to have been bound. All of this while rockets still fall on Israel from Gaza, and Fatah and Hamas fight running battles on West Bank streets.
The U.S. media notes all of this pressure and gleefully speculates that it will eventually topple the recently elected Netanyahu government. Mahmoud Abbas, the nominal head of Fatah, says he is waiting for this to happen before seriously considering negotiations. He is hoping the U.S. can get everything he wants before he even sits down with the Israelis.

Where are America's Jews? Well, the non-religious ones are still with the Democrats.
It seems they are still divided along pre-election lines. As individuals, most Jews who voted for Obama last November are content to ignore Israel's agony in the face of U.S. pressure because they still trust the President on other issues. They ignore the threats to Israel's safety and security and are blind to America's infringing on Israel's sovereignty as a free and democratic nation. Not coincidently, Soros-funded anti-Israel groups have popped up promoting the scurrilous conclusions of the infamous Walt-Merscheimer report which was rife with accusations of Jewish- American's dual loyalty and Israel's culpability for every ill in the Middle East.
As others have noted before me, while Israel is a priority for religious Jews, it barely makes the top 10 for the secular community, way below such issues as abortion, freedom of speech, immigration reform and health care. Since secular Jews mistakenly believe that "Jewish values" and "Western liberal values" are the same thing, they have no trouble supporting the most dangerous president for Israel in the last sixty years since the rest of his positions match their completely.
Only when it is too late will they realize that despite their so-called enlightened views, they are still seen by this president and his allies as Jews, different, abhored and only to be ketp around as long as they are useful.

4 comments:

David said...

No argument from me! I've never voted for a Democrat in my entire life, and don't see any likelihood that I'll be doing so in the foreseeable future.

Yeshivish Atheist said...

You say pity the Democrat. They say pity the Republican.

Personally, I pity them both.

Mighty Garnel Ironheart said...

Ah, the old line from Shakespeare: A pox on both your houses!

thanbo said...

Would you mind showing me exactly where Obama said these remarkable statements?

>Even after the Cairo speech where Obama not only announced that the Holocaust was the reason the Jews wanted to create a country in Israel but that the massacre of six million innocent Jews is morally equivalent to what the so-called Palestinians have been doing to themselves by refusing to live in peace beside Israel

I just reread the Cairo speech and I did not see either of these sentiments expressed.

The only claim of yours that is supported is that Obama does not recognize that the Palestinians brought this on themselves, by continually supporting the wrong side in every conflict, by never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, etc. Obama blames the Pal-Arabs' suffering on "occupation." Whis is, of course, part of now-derided colonialism.

So yes, I'd agree with DB - it sounds paranoid.