I am a registered Democrat. One reason for that is that I want to be associated with a political party that supposedly has no tolerance when it comes to racism, religious bigotry, xenophobia, and misogyny. So I am glad that the Democrats in Virginia are calling for the resignations of their own who cross those lines—that’s the kind of political party with which I want to be associated. That other party is the home of racists, religious bigots, false patriotism, and miserable patriarchy.
That said, I have issues with standard Democratic Party ideology, and the one that simultaneously depresses and infuriates me the most, not surprisingly, is the topic on which the Democrats and the Republicans are virtually indistinguishable: Israel.
For centuries anti-Semites have stereotyped Jews in terms of their relationship to money, promoting a vicious caricature of them as scheming misers and unethical money lenders, and spreading insane conspiracy theories that claim that Jewish money is financing most if not all of the evil in this world. No moral or thinking person would hold or promote such beliefs.
The corrupting influence of money on politics is, however, a very real thing and, in my view, the root of quite a bit of the depravity in American politics.
Since the wave of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe that begin in the 1880s, American Jews been associated with liberal politics, the labor movement, and civil rights. The majority of Jewish Americans have voted Democratic since 1916. FDR got 90% of the Jewish vote in 1940 and 1944. More than 75% of Jewish voters voted Democratic in the 2018. Jews represent 2% of the American electorate, but they are responsible for 50% of all financial contributions to the Democratic Party. With the skyrocketing cost of political campaigns and the legalization of dark money, the influence of Jewish donors has increased, as have the efforts of the GOP to use support of Israel as a wedge to divide the Democrats and to start redirecting Jewish donations in its direction. Jewish businessman and donor Sheldon Adelson, who contributed $150 million to the GOP in 2012 and $100 million to the Trump campaign, is one of the most powerful people in the Republican Party.
The corrupting influence of money American politics due to money is fundamental to the progressive movement in the Democratic Party that was ignited by Bernie Sanders in 2016 and that saw some notable successes in the 2018 midterms. It is literally impossible to discuss this issue without touching upon the sizeable political contributions by American Jews. That is not an endorsement of age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes.
The country of Israel is overwhelming Jewish. But the actions of its government are not synonymous with the Jewish faith or the Jewish people, any more than Donald Trump’s GOP is synonymous with Americans and American values. No country in the history of humankind has ever been beyond reproach, and that includes Israel and the United States. Many of Israel’s actions in the West Bank have been criminal and racist. Americans who criticize the actions of their government are not un-American, and Americans who criticize the actions of Israel are not by definition anti-Semites.
The Republicans are running with this anti-Israel con just like they used to accuse Democrats of being soft on crime and weak on terrorism. And the Democrats are falling for it.
Ilhan Omar, one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress in November, suggested in a Tweet that some politicians in Washington have been influenced by campaign donations from Jewish lobbyist groups.
This is just true—just as it is undeniably true that politicians are influenced by donations from the NRA, labor unions, billionaires, Wall Street, the banks, manufacturers, the pharmaceutical industry, insurance companies, casino owners, movie producers, tech companies, and on and on and on.
The Democratic leadership, which claims to be fighting to the influence of money on politics, responded to Omar’s truth telling by frog marching her out in front of her colleagues and the media to apologize for her “insensitivity.” In her apology, Omar thanked her “Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes.”
Omar never used such a trope. Her “crime” was that she didn’t exclude pro-Israeli-government lobbyists from her absolutely justified condemnation of the system of legalized bribery that is American politics today. The Democratic Party still has a long way to go.