Towards a Jewish-Hindu Alliance

Politics can be divisive. But when done the right way, politics can also bring us together.  You don’t win elections without forging coalitions. Seeking new allies forces you out of your comfort zone to meet people from different backgrounds.  The great joy of politics is discovering that you share more with new communities than you ever realized.  If politics can end friendships, it can also forge them. 

My first foray into politics was as a chief counsel and then chief of staff for Senator Arlen Specter in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s.  The job required frequent visits to Pennsylvania, including the central and northern parts of the state, the so-called “T.”  While located in the Northeast, this region is surprisingly rural, Christian and conservative.  It was there, in cities like Coudersport and Erie, that I connected with evangelical Christians for the first time in my life.  As my suspicion gave way to admiration, I realized that I shared critical priorities with this community including love of the Bible and Israel. 

My decade building Christians United for Israel was the direct result of meeting these evangelicals on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania. 

I left the Northeast years ago.  This cycle, I ran for Congress in my new state of Nevada. I lost. But the race forced me back out there, beyond my family and my community. I met with that rich pageant of immigrant communities that make up Las Vegas and, to an increasing extent, America. In the process, I engaged with the Hindu-American community more closely than ever before.  

Time after time, I found that I connected with Hindu Americans in deep, immediate ways.  They reminded me of my parents and uncles – a generation closer to my family’s own immigrant experience.  And even if we didn’t agree on politics, we shared the same worldview and reference points.  

In particular, Hindus share three important characteristics with other immigrant groups that shape their politics. They lean Democratic despite their financial success. But they’re wary of the woke agenda that threatens the very meritocracy that enabled this success.  Finally, they have ties to a foreign homeland that shape how they view the world and America’s role in it.

Right now, there’s no community in America with whom we share more than the Hindu American community. 

As America’s Jewish community confronts a political emergency on the left, we need to find allies who share our experience in America and the policy perspective that flows from it.  Right now, there’s no community in America with whom we share more than the Hindu American community. 

The Challenge

The American left has turned against Israel and is increasingly hostile to Jews.  That’s not a partisan statement.  It’s not a denial of antisemitism on the right.  It’s merely a recognition of reality. It’s old news.  

Those who counter that President Biden, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer are solid friends are trying to distract you, not inform you. Yes, many older Democrats still support Israel and abhor all forms of antisemitism (including anti-Zionism).  But they are relics of a bygone era. When you focus on the activist base of the Democratic Party – where both the young people and energy are – the landscape is bleak.  While there are wonderful exceptions like Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), they remain terribly outnumbered.  

But if those who ignore the problem are wrong, so too are those who counsel retreat.  We must never give up on one of our two political parties. Nor do we have to.  There is a powerful progressive case to be made for Israel.  And we can still appeal to progressive values to fight antisemitism.  When we show up and make our case, we can claw back territory from the haters. 

If we want to make lasting progress on the left, however, we cannot go it alone.  Despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, America’s Jews are not particularly well positioned to defend our interests in the fierce marketplace of American politics.  Punching above our weight in activism and donations only takes us so far when threatening new winds begin to blow.  We need new friends and allies who can help turn our lonely voice into a winning coalition.  

In thinking about how to do better on the left today, we’d be wise to learn lessons from how we did better on the right in the early 2000’s.  It was an effort with which I was intimately involved.  

The Precedent

In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, I served as Chief Counsel and then Chief of Staff to Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.). Among my jobs was to keep my finger on the pulse of the conservative activists back in Pennsylvania.  As I did so, I received a lot of feedback regarding Specter’s support for Israel. I didn’t like what I heard. 

Prominent critics of U.S. support for Israel such as Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul were developing a dedicated following, especially among the younger activists.  The more the war in Iraq bogged down, the more the isolationist impulse grew.  To me, our mistakes in Iraq highlighted the importance of allies like Israel who defended themselves by themselves (in sharp contrast to Iraq).  But many of my conservative friends simply wanted to turn their backs on the Middle East and, in many cases, the world.  

We were losing ground on the right.  But the Jewish community was poorly equipped to solve the problem.  The American Jewish community is less than 6 million strong.  A majority of American Jews are Democrats living in a handful of coastal cities.  When Secretary of State James Baker allegedly said, “F the Jews, they don’t vote for us [Republicans] anyway,” he actually had a point.  

We desperately needed allies who could supplement us where we were weak in terms of numbers, geography and, most importantly, conservative clout.  And, as if heaven sent, there was a vast constituency – evangelical Christians – who checked every single box. There were tens of millions of them scattered in every Congressional district from New York to Los Angeles.  They leaned Republican.  And most of them shared a deep sympathy for Israel.  All they lacked was organization and focus – a path to act on their pro-Israel instincts.  

That’s why I was so intrigued when a leading pro-Israel evangelical, Pastor John Hagee, shared with me his dream of creating a Christian pro-Israel organization.  When we launched Christians United for Israel in 2006, I was the only employee of an organization that had no money and no members.  When I left a decade later, we had over 6 million members.  And, more importantly, we had radically shifted the way conservatives and Washington in general think about Israel.  No one views Israel as just a “Jewish” issue anymore. 

Striking Similarities

But just as we were solidifying our support on the right, we found ourselves facing escalating challenges from the other end of the spectrum.  The woke left has emerged as an opponent of Jewish interests at home and our ally Israel abroad. 

While influential on the right, our evangelical allies cannot help us on the left.  Nor are there other giants waiting in the wings.  Instead, we must knit together a band of brothers from the multiple communities that share our experience and agenda.  These communities must lean Democratic.  And, in the current environment, it would certainly help if they were communities of color.  

As we scan the American political scene, one community in particular – the Hindu American community – stands out as the perfect partner with which to begin this urgent work.   

There are over a billion Hindus in the world and over 2 million Hindus here in the United States. Like Jews, most Hindu Americans are relatively recent immigrants.  While many came to fill high-powered tech jobs, most followed a more familiar path: the first generation opened stores, motels or other small businesses so the second generation could go to college and become professionals.  

Like Jews, Hindus still lean Democratic despite their financial success.  According to a 2020 Carnegie Endowment survey, 67% of American Hindus planned to vote for Joe Biden, while only 22% indicated support for Donald Trump.  This is little changed from a 2014 Pew survey which showed that 61% of American Hindus identified as Democrats while only 13% identified as Republicans.

More than most immigrant communities, Jews and Hindus share a passionate connection to our respective “mother” countries: Israel and India.  These countries are not only our homelands but also our holy lands; they are the wellsprings of our faiths and the places to which we return to immerse ourselves in them.  

More than most immigrant communities, Jews and Hindus share a passionate connection to our respective “mother” countries: Israel and India.  These countries are not only our homelands but also our holy lands; they are the wellsprings of our faiths and the places to which we return to immerse ourselves in them.  We don’t just visit – we make pilgrimages.  

But neither country is fully at peace or free from danger.  Thus we also connect to these homelands in a more urgent way.  Italian Americans may feel a connection to Italy, but Italy doesn’t demand their political support.  Israel and India, by contrast, aren’t just countries – they’re causes. 

Having been shaped by similar experiences and concerns, American Jews and Hindus now find ourselves confronting parallel challenges. 

When we arrived in America, both of our communities faced discrimination because we weren’t considered white.  We achieved success despite prejudice and quotas.  Now that we’ve worked our way to relative prosperity, we find ourselves confronting new obstacles from a new source.  The woke left ignores our struggles and blithely dismisses us as “white” or “white adjacent.”  The quotas the right once used to keep us down are being resurrected by a left that wants to keep us out. Our children will pay the price. 

The same woke left is increasingly critical of Israel and India. They take complex conflicts and recast them as simplistic morality tales in which Israel and India are the perennial villains.  They dismiss Israel as a Jewish supremacist country that occupies Palestine.  They criticize India as a Hindu supremacist country that occupies Kashmir.  The world’s only Jewish majority country and major Hindu-majority country are held to ridiculous double standards.

When it comes to responding to shared challenges, Israel and India are providing an example we should follow.  These two nations have developed a robust strategic and economic alliance.  Israel is now a major arms supplier to India, second only to Russia. And bilateral trade is thriving, especially in the tech sector.  In the old days, flights from Tel Aviv to Mumbai were filled with young Israelis seeking eastern enlightenment or adventure. Today, these flights are packed with tech entrepreneurs in search of business partnerships.

The time is long overdue for American Jews and Hindus to follow the example set in the old country and accelerate our alliance here at home.  In so doing we can defend our communities from discrimination and our homelands from hate.  Even more importantly, we can repay a debt of gratitude to the United States by helping it recalibrate our approach to two issues where we’ve lost our way: civil rights and foreign policy. 

On civil rights, our communities are well positioned to confront the excess of the woke left.  We’re the descendants of immigrants who suffered discrimination.  We’re the cousins of Rabbi Heschel and Mahatma Gandhi.   We can help focus the social justice movement on removing old barriers without building new ones.  Sure, people will point to our success and tell us we have no right to talk. But we’re a lot harder to ignore when we stand together. 

We also have much to contribute to America’s foreign policy.  Americans no longer want to police or fund the post-war order.  Yet our desire to withdraw from the world comes at a time of escalating threats from rising adversaries. How can we protect our interests without sending our troops abroad to do so?  The answer is that we must find front-line allies willing to confront shared enemies on our behalf.  

Israel and India are the leading examples of such allies.  Each nation confronts a major U.S. adversary: Iran and China, respectively. Israel is taking the lead in containing Iran by striking its proxies in Syria and Lebanon. India is holding the line against China’s westward ambitions (our disagreement on Russia notwithstanding).  Neither ally has asked for American troops to fight on their behalf.  All they want is the military and diplomatic support they need to defend themselves by themselves.  In the process, they’re defending us as well. 

Towards a New Alliance

Evangelical support for Israel has never been a favor to the Jews; it’s an organic Christian priority.  Evangelical zeal for Israel was therefore sufficient to fuel the rise of an independent organization dedicated to the cause, Christians United for Israel. Many other evangelical leaders and organizations have joined the chorus of support for Israel and made significant contributions.  

We can’t expect Hindus or any other immigrant group to adopt our priorities to this extent.  Instead, we need to build a coalition of communities with shared interests and ideals akin to the 1960’s Civil Rights coalition.  

This celebrated coalition – already in decline – has been further sidelined by a woke left that no longer sees Jews as persecuted or Martin Luther King, Jr. as a hero.  If we want to fight for the old ideal of a colorblind society, we’re going to need to bring in new partners.  And if we want to maintain support for Israel we must join with others who know enough about foreign affairs to reject the simplistic woke worldview.

We need to reach out to other immigrant communities that lean Democratic but are increasingly anti-woke, including Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Nigerian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Muslim Americans (beginning with Muslims from Israel, India and the Gulf). 

Jews and Hindus can be core of such a new alliance.  But it cannot end with us. We need to reach out to other immigrant communities that lean Democratic but are increasingly anti-woke, including Chinese Americans, Filipino Americans, Nigerian Americans, Hispanic Americans and Muslim Americans (beginning with Muslims from Israel, India and the Gulf).  

Imagine a new rainbow coalition made of Americans from these multiple immigrant communities together with those who never went woke.  An alliance of people so diverse they deflect the race baiters.  A coalition of people so practical it ignores the radicals.  Because they’ve lived the American Dream they know how best to help others do likewise.  Because they’re closer to the dangers of the world, they reject the folly of demonizing our allies.  

If we can be the catalyst for such a coalition, a Jewish-Hindu alliance can be the start of something very important indeed.

David Brog is the CEO of the Maccabee Task Force and the co-founder/former Executive Director of Christians United for Israel.