Jewish Democrats Take Note: It’s OK to Be Self-Protective

Whether or not Abdul El-Sayed wins a Senate seat, his Michigan primary win further distances the Democratic Party from Israel – and from American Jews. Here’s yet another rising Democratic star whose obsessive hostility to Israel is so central to his political identity it reeks of antisemitism. How many Jew-haters must become leading Democrats before Jews leave the Democratic Party?

Putting Jewish concerns aside, if Democrats want to avoid being cast by Republicans as the party of socialism, Jihadism and anti-Americanism, they should recognize that the long-term cost of having El-Sayed lose is worth the short-term cost of further empowering Donald Trump. Better to lose the Senate this year, than the presidency and the country for the next decade.

Still, because antizionists like El-Sayed interweave their antizionism with anti-Americanism and antisemitism, every self-respecting American Jew should work even harder to oppose him. Anyone who can, as El-Sayed did, rationalize an attack on a synagogue filled with young children by saying “hurt people hurt people,” hates humanity, let alone the Jews. Would he say that if a white victim of a black criminal attacked a black church? And the surge in Jew-bashing in Zohran Mamdani’s New York proves that when sweet-talking antizionists seize power, violent antisemites rush to beat the Jews.

Admittedly, America’s two-party system often saddles voters with unhappy choices and unappealing alliances. Most Jewish Democrats detest Donald Trump and the Republican Party, leaving them politically homeless. Since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, most American Jews have worshiped the Democratic Party. Norman Podhoretz once called Reform Judaism “the Democratic party platform with holidays thrown in.”  And, while some pro-Israel Jews are one-issue donors, Jews are rarely one-issue voters. Polling over decades shows that most American Jews vote based on domestic considerations, not support for Israel.

Of course, until recently, American Jews felt welcome in both parties. Republicans and Democrats used to compete, insisting their candidate was the most pro-Israel, while both parties denounced antizionism as antisemitism.

In this age of sweet-talking antizionist obsessives like Mamdani and El-Sayed, antisemitism is surging. Israel-bashing is an increasingly popular pastime. Meanwhile, a new generation of Democrats keeps proving how much antizionism recycles traditional Jew-hating tropes while scapegoating American Jews.

Yet, feeling caught, too many Jewish Democrats are silent – putting their hatred of Trump first. By contrast, in 1984, when a reporter revealed that the Reverend Jesse Jackson mocked New York City as “Hymietown,” Jews and non-Jews objected. Walter F. Mondale, whose primary campaign was sputtering, nevertheless risked black backlash by saying Jackson’s “derisive” characterization “should not have been used.” Four years later, resenting Jackson’s harsh criticism of Israel too, New York’s Mayor Ed Koch said Jews “would have to be crazy to vote for Jackson.”  Koch compared it to blacks voting for “someone who was praising… the racist supporters of the South African administration.”

There’s a great American tradition of voters punishing candidates – and parties – for bigotry. In 1884, a Presbyterian minister, Samuel D. Burchard, publicly introduced the Republican nominee James Blaine, by denouncing the Democrats as the party of “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” Many Catholic voters in New York were planning on voting for Blaine, because his mother was Catholic. But when Blaine didn’t hear or chose not to react, Democratic operatives did. They publicized the gaffe, enraging Catholics. Blaine lost New York by 1,047 votes – and lost the presidency.

Similarly, in 1920, German-Americans and Irish-Americans punished their usual party, the Democratic Party. The outgoing president, Woodrow Wilson, had questioned their loyalty during the Great War, World War I.  In Milwaukee, the Republican Warren Harding won almost 70% of the German- American vote; in Irish-American precincts of New York, Boston, Chicago, many voters stayed home.

Most blacks voted Republican — the “Party of Lincoln” — long after the Civil War. But starting with the New Deal, more and more turned Democrat. In 1960, John F. Kennedy helped free Martin Luther King, Jr. after he was arrested in Georgia. The Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, stayed silent. King’s father, Martin Luther King, Sr., declared of Kennedy: “now he can be my President, Catholic or whatever he is . … I’ve got all my votes and I’ve got a suitcase and I’m going to take them up there and dump them in his lap.”

(“Imagine Martin Luther King having a bigot for a father,” JFK said. Then, thinking of his own bigoted dad, Joe Kennedy, he added: “Well, we all have our fathers, don’t we?”)

Eight years later, Dodger great Jackie Roosevelt Robinson, whose middle name honored the civil-rights-minded Republican Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, abandoned Nixon and a Republican Party now resisting civil rights.  “I have my right to remember that I am Black and American before I am Republican,” the baseball legend proclaimed.

Other transformed alliances include Cuban Americans shifting Republican to support Ronald Reagan’s anti-Communism, and Muslim Americans shifting Democratic after 9/11.

Jewish Democrats take note: it’s OK to be self-protective. The philosopher Edmund Burke explained in 1790: “To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections.” More bluntly, Archbishop John Hughes, prodding Catholics to demand public funding for parochial schools thundered in 1841: “if you desert the cause, what can you expect from strangers …?”

At their best, Americans have understood that while those targeted instinctively defend themselves, fighting discrimination consistently defends all Americans. “In a country like this it is the interest of all to protect the guaranteed rights of each,” Archbishop Hughes also preached. “Should the professors of some weak or unpopular religion be oppressed to-day, the experiment may be repeated tomorrow on some other.”

In the early Republic, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison opposed John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts to protect all Americans, not just immigrants. In 1845, a young Abraham Lincoln sighed: “As a nation, we began by declaring that ‘all men are created equal.’ We now practically read it ‘all men are created equal, except negroes.’ When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read ‘all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners and catholics.’ When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance …”

While bigotry has obviously festered in America, there’s often been selfless voter backlash too. In 2006, Senator George Allen (R-Va.) saluted a dark-skinned staffer at a rally, saying “Let’s give a welcome to Macaca here.” Although most Virginians didn’t know that racial slur, they felt the hate, and repudiated Allen. Some believe that one word helped turn North Virginia’s suburbs Democratic for the next two decades.

In 2018, Maine’s governor, Paul LePage, warned that drug dealers named “D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” kept invading Maine and impregnating “young white girl[s].” Maine’s population is 98% white. Still, Maine voters rejected their governor’s race-baiting.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Martin Luther King, Jr. taught.   “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” That all-American principle suggests the opening question needs editing. Rather than simply asking: “How many Jew-hating Democrats can Jewish Democrats tolerate,” we must ask: “How many Jew-hating Democrats can Democrats tolerate?” and “How many haters will Americans tolerate?”

Professor Gil Troy is a Distinguished Scholar of North American History at McGill University and a Senior Research Fellow at the JPPI, the Jewish People Policy Institute. He is the author of nine books on presidential history and, nine books on Zionism, including “To Resist the Academic Intifada: Letters to My Students on Defending the Zionist Dream”  as well as two recent e-books, “250 Reasons to Thank America” – with David Suissa, and “The Essential Guide to the U.S.-Israel Partnership: the 250th Anniversary Edition.”