Gavin’s New Jewish Groove

With Passover days away, it should be remembered that California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, unlike Ramses, the Pharoah of ancient Egypt, actually let his people go—without putting up a fight.

Not that disgruntled Californians were enslaved, of course. But like Pharoah, Newsom wanted them to stay. Jews escaped bondage in Egypt for the Promised Land; the Exodus from states like New York, Illinois and California to Texas and Florida arose from an entirely different set of plagues: high taxes, rising crime, declining municipal services, woke insanities and reckless sanctuary city policies.

Governor Newsom and the California Highway Patrol can’t very well mount chariots and chase after former residents all the way down to a parted Gulf of America.

But there are some things he might be able to do to lure his people back and keep others from leaving. As an added bonus, he could boost his presidential marquee by separating himself from progressives who have hijacked the Democratic Party and remade it in ways that are wholly unrecognizable to centrist, common-sense Americans.

Governor Newsom and the California Highway Patrol can’t very well mount chariots and chase after former residents all the way down to a parted Gulf of America. But there are some things he might be able to do to lure his people back and keep others from leaving.

It would require that we see more of what he accomplished this past week, however: a welcome display of moral courage in defiance of his party’s descent into antisemitism as improbable selling point.

Lax criminal law enforcement and a twisted misreading of the First Amendment have given American Jews ample reasons to make haste to red states.

Since the October 7, 2023 massacre and Israel’s eventual routing of its Islamist enemies in a just war that has now, finally, set its sights on Iran, Jews have become conditioned to watch their backs in synagogues and on college campuses and city streets. Identifying as a Zionist—or even sharing a sympathetic word about Israel—can be a career-ending, friendship-shattering, and family-dissolving experience.

Here’s an area where California’s governor could generate some political goodwill—by flexing his Jewish mojo. Jews are slowly coming to the realization (far too slowly, to my mind) that the Democratic Party to which they have been eternally loyal since the FDR administration, actually wants the existence of Israel to come to an end.

Democrats have renounced their fidelity to the only democratic nation in the Middle East. Solidarity now favors the incalcitrant, rejectionist and faithfully violent Palestinian people. What a poor choice that is: Clamoring to “Free Palestine”—a mythical place that never existed—by killing the Jews of Israel who built their nation 1,500 years before a Muslim ever walked anywhere on Earth.

Democrats have renounced their fidelity to the only democratic nation in the Middle East. Solidarity now favors the incalcitrant, rejectionist and faithfully violent Palestinian people. What a poor choice that is.

The Gulf nations that joined the Abraham Accords came to the obvious conclusion that Palestinians don’t want a state, never showed any interest in nation-building, and wouldn’t know what to do with a state if they had one. Honestly, how many suicide vests does a people need? The two-state solution is one-step closer to yet another terrorist state.

That’s what AOC, Omar, Tlaib and Mamdani are selling to a guileless American public.

Newsom redeemed himself for having carelessly read from the script that excites Democratic Socialists and maniacal Islamists alike. Appearing on “Pod Save America,” he spoke of Israel as becoming “sort of an apartheid state,” referencing Thomas Friedman, from the New York Times, as his source.

After speaking with leaders of California’s Jewish community and a Florida lawyer with a long history of Jewish advocacy, Newsom, in a subsequent interview on a Politico podcast, reflected more thoughtfully and recanted the apartheid charge. He then said, “I revere the state of Israel. I’m proud to support the state of Israel.”

Bernie Sanders must have had a heart attack when he read that revocation. Progressives, especially Jewish ones, live to libel Israel. But for the governor, it was a wise decision to distance himself from the antisemitic riffraff.

The governor could also benefit from an information overhaul. Who’s handling his briefing books? Because they are outdated and rife with Jew-hatred—and Jewish self-hatred.

For instance, no one outside of the New York Times cares what Tom Friedman thinks anymore. They did in 1989 when he wrote “From Beirut to Jerusalem.” Nowadays, he’s just an overpaid Israel-bashing shill. He’s been wrong on most matters related to his purported expertise: the Middle East! He supported Barack Obama’s Iran Deal and never saw the Abraham Accords coming.

Even his falafel restaurant recommendations should now be disqualified.

Here’s someone else to ignore. Mark Ruffalo roundly criticized Newsom’s backtracking on Israeli apartheid, stating, “I don’t know what billionaire got in your ear but it’s not working for you. This is not how you are going to win. It’s Apartheid and it’s a Genocide. Today!”

What a lack of humility from an empty-headed actor. Is Ruffalo, or, for that matter, Javier Bardem, John Cusack, Emma Stone, Ariana Grande and Dua Lipa, really credentialled to render opinions on Middle East history and politics, and international law? Ruffalo never attended nor graduated from college (neither have the others). He doubtlessly is poorly read, knows very little history, has not travelled to regions infested with terror, and has had no direct contact with terrorists and Islamists.

Ruffalo is in no position to advise Governor Newsom or any presidential candidate on American foreign policy or international humanitarian law.

These red-carpet virtue-signaling spotlights, and Bardem’s narcissistic commentary while presenting an Oscar, are especially galling. Palestinians—even most of the civilians—are accomplices to terrorism. They are also the source of their own suffering. Meanwhile these celebrities blithely ignore the 50,000 who have been murdered by the Islamists of Iran.

It’s time to properly acknowledge that for many of these A-listers, the “A” stands for antisemites. They repeatedly single out Israel—where artists, women and homosexuals live freely and thrive—but have nothing to say about the terrorism of Hamas or the suffering of tens of millions in nations run by Islamists.

There’s something seriously awry in having a predisposition to think the worst of Jews and always have a ready justification for any harm that comes to them, or Israel—the repository of all contemporary Jewish hatred.

One final thought for Gavin Newsom should he falter or be enticed to restate the false apartheid charge. For apartheid to be present, a state must forcibly separate and discriminate against a disfavored group within the population on racial grounds. Jews and Arabs, however, are not racial groups, and there is no “racial separation”—or any division at all—between them.

In Israel, Jews and Arabs (20 percent of the population) ride the same public transports, eat in the same restaurants and enjoy identical civil and political rights. Arabs serve on the Supreme Court, in the Knesset and governing coalition. They operate on patients in hospitals and are soldiers in the IDF. An Ethiopian Jew was crowned Miss Israel. Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot, is a woman of color!

Does that sound like anything even remotely separate and apart?

As for the West Bank, yes—those Arabs do not have the same rights as the ones in Israel because they don’t live in Israel. Arabs that live in Brooklyn don’t have rights in Israel, either. Nor does a Jew who lives in Malibu.

Newsom’s newfound sensitivity to Jewish concerns and reclaiming of the moderate mantle is commendable. Now all he needs is for the Angel of Death to “pass over” the Democratic Party.