I hear it all the time from progressive Jewish critics of Israel: Self-criticism is a great Jewish value. It’s not just our right to criticize Israel, it’s our obligation!
No kidding. Of course self-criticism is a great virtue, Jewish or otherwise. How can we hope to grow without it?
My problem is that these proud, smug, self-righteous proponents of criticizing Israel seem to clam up when it comes to criticizing their political party. When their beloved Democrats mess up, these loyal comrades suddenly go silent. It’s as if they’ve morphed into those primal Zionists they love to caricature—you know, those “Israel can do no wrong” diehards who don’t have the guts to publicly bash their own side.
The main argument among Zionist diehards for holding one’s fire has been a reluctance to give ammunition to one’s enemies. Progressive Jewish critics of Israel scoff at that notion—self-criticism is too valuable, they argue, even if our enemies can use it against us.
But when the enemy is Donald Trump or Republicans, everything changes. Hypocrisy unleashes its foul stench: Well, you know, we may not like what our side is doing, but God forbid we should ever help those Republican bigots.
High-brow one moment, primitive the next.
Ask yourself: When is the last time you read an op-ed in a mainstream publication from a Jewish leftist activist, commentator or rabbi criticizing the Democratic party? You won’t find too many. And yet, these are the very same Jewish voices who routinely and with relish publicly bash Israel in the name of that great Jewish value of “self-criticism.”
When one of my Democratic Jewish friends expresses exasperation to stuff coming out of their party—like “defund the police,” open borders or the abandonment of the working class—I will occasionally ask them to write an op-ed for The Journal. I’m still waiting.
After all, why should they criticize their party in public and suffer the wrath of their comrades? That’s only good for Israel, when they never have to pay a price.
If they stopped being so blindly partisan, they’d realize that what their party needs right now is precisely some courageous self-criticism– you know, like the kind they routinely dish out for their Jewish state.
Their blindness is hurting their party, which is in deep trouble.
“Six months after President Trump swept the battleground states, the Democratic Party is still sifting through the wreckage,” Shane Goldmacher wrote recently in The New York Times. “Its standing has plunged to startling new lows — 27 percent approval in a recent NBC News poll, the weakest in surveys dating to 1990 — after a defeat that felt like both a political and cultural rejection.”
With President Trump on a power-grabbing rampage that is sucking up most of the media oxygen, it’s tempting for Dems to stay on easy street and bash Trump all day long. After all, any detour that would criticize their own party would only divert attention from their favorite blood sport: bashing the man who they believe is destroying democracy.
That narrow focus has made Dems lose sight of what they must do to regain power. Bashing Trump is not enough; Democrats can’t afford to become the party that only says no.
It’s one thing, for example, to condemn Trump’s heavy-handed use of federal troops to quell the anti-ICE unrests, but what are Democrats proposing as an alternative? Do they realize the country has moved closer to Republicans on the immigration issue? A CBS News poll conducted before the protests revealed that 54% of respondents approve of Trump’s deportation program.
Even after Trump sent federal troops to Los Angeles, Newsweek reported that the president “has notched a significant victory over Democrats, with polling showing him outperforming his rivals on one of the most contentious issues: immigration. On the broader question of trust, Republicans now lead Democrats on immigration by 6 points in CBS and CNN polling and 19 in the latest Ipsos survey.”
The country has moved since the peak woke days of the George Floyd protests, but the Democrats seem to be standing still as the party of the elites, the party of snobs. How will that put them back in the White House?
Nothing good can happen for Democrats until they do the honest and public soul-searching and self-accounting they abhor. Jewish Democrats who are so good at public self-criticism for Israel must do the same for their party.
If it’s a great Jewish value for Israel, why should it not be a great Jewish value for Democrats?
I’m waiting for the op-eds.
