Jews, think about your vote

Rather than reflexive loyalties, base your choice on careful consideration of who will uphold the rights and ensure the future of America’s Jewish citizens.

Last week, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris aided and abetted in incitement against American Jews. This is an unpleasant reality and no one should take pleasure in it, even her most fervent opponents. Nonetheless, it happened. 

At a campaign event, Harris was heckled by a deranged member of the progressive left/Islamic supremacist Red-Green Alliance, who ranted in defamatory terms about an Israeli-committed “genocide” in Gaza that is not happening.

Rather than inform the heckler that he was spewing a monstrous blood libel that she unequivocally rejected, Harris replied: “Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real. That’s not the subject that I came to discuss today, but it’s real and I respect his voice.”

The problem with this hardly bears repeating but it must be repeated: What the antisemite in question was vomiting up was neither “real” nor “respectable.” He was using his “voice” to engage in the most virulent defamation; defamation that has prompted harassment and violence against Jews across the United States. In the face of such barbarism, Harris had one job: to say “no” to the barbarian. Instead, she informed her audience that “I respect his voice.”

To a certain extent, personality issues may be behind Harris’s repellant response. She is an unimpressive politician and the only reason the election is even moderately close is because the Republicans nominated a man who—love him or hate him—is loathed by half the country. Generally speaking, Harris responds to every challenge with pandering mealy-mouthed gobbledygook, and perhaps one ought not to expect a great deal more.

This, however, is wholly insufficient. Harris’s response was forthrightly monstrous and only one of many such statements excreted by her party. There have, of course, been the usual suspects like Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, and other members in good standing of the Red-Green Alliance. But more ostensibly “moderate” Democrats have also engaged in or at least entertained the “genocide” blood libel. There was, for example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a racist cultural appropriator who falsely claimed Native American ancestry to get a job at the systemically antisemitic Harvard University. When asked by a racist audience whether Israel was guilty of the ultimate crime, Warren responded, “If you want to do it as an application of law, I believe that they’ll find that it is genocide. And they have ample evidence to do so.” Again, pandering is no excuse for such incitement, however ostensibly erudite its phrasing.

The significance of all this perfidy is not only that it is risible. It is that it has egregious real-world consequences. Put simply, the “genocide” libel is open incitement to violence. Convinced of it and equally convinced that they are beyond good and evil, the Red-Green Alliance and its minions naturally seek revenge against the “genocidal” Jews of their deranged imaginations. As a result, American Jews have been subjected to barbaric and even murderous violence for over a year. Throughout this slow-motion pogrom, much of the Democratic Party has remained studiously silent, refused to condemn it, or outright encouraged it. 

In this context, Harris’s offense was actually rather mild. Coming from a presidential candidate, however, it can only have the most egregious consequences. Put simply, Jews will almost certainly be subject to verbal and physical violence because of it. This is unforgivable.

Even less forgivable are the larger implications. Harris’s statement grants legitimacy and the imprimatur of the de facto leader of a major political party to the Alliance’s larger ambition: to ghettoize and ultimately destroy the American Jewish community. The Alliance knows it cannot break Israel without breaking American Jews, and they are perfectly willing to make the attempt. Moreover, they see American Jews as active enablers of and collaborators in Israel’s supposed “crimes.” Thus, American Jews must be brutally punished for their ostensible misdeeds. That all of this is either demented criminality or willful mania is somewhat beside the point. It exists and Harris has aided and abetted it.

We must ask: What does this say of a political party that holds social justice and anti-racism so dear? It says, first and foremost, that we do not have to listen to these people. It proves that, with some noble exceptions, their principles are lies, their admonitions hypocrisy, and their pretensions to some kind of political sainthood outright laughable. No one is under any obligation to take such people seriously, let alone submit to their condemnations.

This has grave implications for American Jews because most of them remain loyal Democrats. Even if there is a shift in the Jewish vote—and there almost certainly will be—it will not be a decisive one. The majority of American Jews will likely remain with the party they consider their natural home. The only question is how large the majority will be and if there are enough defectors to inflict a mortal wound upon Democratic presidential hopes. 

People have agonized for decades over why American Jews remain so resolutely Democratic. There are innumerable explanations: The identification of Judaism with progressivism and vice versa, fear of Christian antisemitism, the Democrats’ endless claims that Republicans are racist at best and neo-Nazis at worst, repulsion in the face of Trumpism, and so on. In many ways, it boils down to the fact that a very large number of American Jews view Republicans as something like an alien species they simply cannot understand. This view is the result of nearly a century of reflexive voting inherited from the New Deal generation. It will take a very great deal to shatter it. It appears we have not yet arrived at the necessary impasse, though it may well be coming.

I do not care for telling people how to vote and charging people with political stupidity is very unlikely to persuade them. So, I will only say this: American Jews must sit down and seriously think about their vote. They should at least entertain the possibility that they have a choice. This means something fairly simple: Do not vote for a party because it is how you’ve voted all your life; because it was how your parents voted; because you are afraid of what the party told you to be afraid of; because you are concerned about issues like abortion that, while important, are ultimately irrelevant to the survival of the American Jewish community; or because you may be clinging to denial and delusion. Vote because you genuinely believe that the party in question will uphold the rights and ensure the future of America’s Jewish citizens.

Sit down and think about all of this. At the end of such introspection, make what choice you will. A considered vote must be respected. It cannot be held in contempt. But make sure your vote is respectable. It is the only way that the party you have chosen will ever respect you as much as you respect it.