July 24, 2012

Realignments?

The possibility that American Jews will drop their suicidal "religion" of liberalism still seems remote to me. But this is very interesting...

Lawrence Solomon: Losing the anti-Semite card | FP Comment | Financial Post:

...But today the politics is realigning. Anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli venom is on the rise, and it is coming mostly from the left. Anti-Semitism on U.S. college campuses is a "serious problem," concluded the 2006 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. "There is more sympathy for Hamas [on U.S. campuses] than there is in Ramallah," wrote award-winning Palestinian journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who found during a 2009 speaking tour of the U.S. that it "is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state."

Surveys by Jewish organizations confirm that anti-Semitism is on the rise, as does a 2009 survey by researchers at Stanford and Columbia University, designed to find explicit prejudice toward Jews as a result of the financial meltdown. To the researchers' surprise, they found that "Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32% of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4% of Republicans did so," a difference that jars "given the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition." Warning that "we must take heed of prejudice and bigotry that have already started to sink roots in the United States," the authors noted that "Crises often have the potential to stoke fears and resentment, and the current economic collapse is likely no exception."

Almost as if on cue, the Occupy Wall Street movement arose, with Jews often crudely singled out for blame, and with prominent Democrats, Obama and Pelosi among them, stoking the anti-1% sentiment. Anti-Semitism is coming close to home for many of America's Jews, who see themselves in the 1% and who see their children -- students at American campuses -- too intimidated to speak out against the anti-Semitic or anti-Israeli activities that confront them.

As Jews are reassessing their support for Obama and other Democratic candidates, they are also beginning to warm to Republicans. Much of the credit here belongs to Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, who made it unacceptable for evangelicals to be anti-Semitic. Evangelicals and the American right are now unabashedly in the Jewish and Israeli corner, leading many Jews to end their reflexive opposition to anything labelled right-wing.

In Canada, Jewish alarm at Liberal tolerance of anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli policies, coupled with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's unequivocal stance against terrorism -- "[There's no] moral equivalence between a pyromaniac and a firefighter" -- persuaded Jewish captains of industry who were also Liberal funders and fundraisers to tear up their Liberal membership cards and throw their support behind the Conservatives. In the U.S., where the Democrats are losing their ability to play the anti-Semite card, a similar phenomenon could be underway....
Posted by John Weidner at July 24, 2012 6:33 PM
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