Jewish Loyalty Should Not Be Questioned

Amid the never-ending fusillade of Trumpifications, it is hard to keep up with the outrage of the moment that requires comment. Perhaps most upsetting to me is the tumulter-in-chief’s assertion that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats—in other words, any Jew who doesn’t vote for him—are dumb and guilty of disloyalty to America, to Jewish people and to Israel.

For the better part of a year several high school chums and I have engaged in email debate on Trump, Israel, which party to support, and social values in general. It has gotten so intense, at times, that one of the group no longer wants to read my blog or my responses to what I consider some of his outlandish beliefs. 

Recently another fellow theorized that secularism has become the new religion of American Jews who vote Democratic. To which the first one piled on by stating, “Their parents raised their children to be just like any American child. They (many, not all), made sure to speak English at home so the children would not talk like “greenery”. They wanted their children to assimilate into the American culture. Just like the Israelis stoke (sic) the Yemenite children from their parents, the European-born Americans removed their Judaism from their children. Since the parents worshipped FDR, who actually sold out that generation and refused to help the Jews fleeing extermination, the next generation felt they had to uphold their parents’ decision. Many of us woke up and went right; many have remained with the same mindset.

“Trump was right in what he said; the problem was HOW he said it.”

No way I could remain silent after that broadside. I started to type a response: “Secularism seems to be the reason given for Jewish support of Democrats. I guess they identify with civil rights. With labor and union rights. With voting rights. With environmental rights. Not too many Republicans favor those initiatives these days. I guess it didn’t hurt that Truman, a Democrat, recognized Israel. Maybe they didn’t like the fact Eisenhower forced Israel to give back the Sinai in 1956.”

As for blaming FDR for slamming the door on Jewish refugees, it behooves us to look to the proponents of the 1924 immigration bill that restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe. The sponsors were Congressman Albert Johnson and Senator David Reed. Both were Republicans! Who fought against it? Rep. Emanuel Celler, a Democrat! 

I was about to continue when another high school buddy asked for comments about an article in Tablet magazine on American Jews and whether the Democratic Party is becoming unsalvageable (https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/289871/democratic-party-becoming-unsalvageable?utm_source=tabletmagazinelist&utm_campaign=ed6da33e59-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_08_22_04_40&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c308bf8edb-ed6da33e59-207772409). 

Here’s what I wrote: 

It is unacceptable what some—some—Democrats are saying and the failure of leadership to strongly admonish them, including removing them from committee assignments. 

That said, a few bad apples will not destroy the Democratic party. Just as McCarthy and Goldwater and Nixon and Agnew and Bush II didnt destroy the Republican party. 

The Israel of today is not the Israel Democrats embraced. As I think about it, it increasingly resembles Republican traits—discrimination against segments of Jewish society (Ethiopians), discrimination against Israeli Arabs, forced expulsion of foreign workers, repression of Palestinians (we can argue if that is justified at least part of the time), efforts by the government (of Bibi Natanyahu) to fear monger votes based on Arab-Israeli voting, actions by Bibi to try to curtail the rule of law by reducing the power of the Supreme Court, cozying up to autocrats and despots. The list could probably be expanded but that’s enough for starters. 

So without denying that Palestinian intransigence is the reason no peace has broken out between the two groups, let’s keep in mind that the Camp David accords were signed when Carter was president. The Oslo accords when Clinton was president. Clinton again for the Camp David summit which Arafat sabotaged. The point is, Democrats have labored hard to broker a deal. 

Trump and before him Bush II unchained Sharon and then Bibi to do as they please. 

Israel today has a public relations problem. It needs to transmit to the world, daily or at least weekly, the following statistics:

*How much food is sent into Gaza assuring no one is starving. 

*How much medical supplies are provided Gaza residents. 

*How many Palestinians are treated in Israeli hospitals and doctors’ offices. 

*How many Palestinian workers from Gaza and West Bank work in Israel. 

*How many Palestinians attend universities in Israel, Gaza and West Bank. 

*Examples of the anti Jewish curriculum taught in Palestinian elementary schools and beyond. 

*How many acts of terrorism are perpetrated throughout Israel daily/weekly/monthly. 

*How many times Palestinians rejected specific peace proposals. 

*How speeches in Arabic are different than what Palestinian leaders say in other languages. 

*How Palestinian newspapers and radio/TV/internet sites portray Israel and Israelis. 

*How the standard of living and employment and education in the West Bank and Gaza compare to those in Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon. 

I am sure there are other statistics that would all but eliminate the impression that Israel has been a repressive ruler. To change perceptions this data must be constantly transmitted. Letting the world know about its high tech industry, its agricultural and ecological gains, its scientific and medical advances, etc., will not change the trajectory of opinion on Israel as long as it has the image of a cruel oppressor.  Congressional visits must be targeted at Palestinian actions to show that they live better than under Arab leaders and that it is not Israel that holds them back. 

The American people time and again have supported freedom fighters around the world. The challenge Israel faces is to flip the narrative that the Palestinians seek freedom and Israel doesn't.  

Congresswoman Tlaib and other Democrats are winning the pr war because Israel is losing it by failing to tell its side and because Bibi is doing all he can to stay in office including embracing actions that turn off non orthodox Jews around the world. He is drying up the reservoir of good will Israel has among tribe members. 

So, in short, Democrats don’t want to abandon Israel. They want Israel to live up to the ideals of its founders and the early pr success it had as a country of limitless possibilities for all. 

Governors Front and Center in Race for President

Rightfully so, the nation for the last two weeks has been engrossed in several dialogues—on race, on marriage equality, on Pope Francis and his encyclical on global warming and its impact, particularly on the disadvantaged, on foreign trade agreements, on negotiations with Iran and its nuclear capabilities, on the threat posed by ISIS. Important issues, issues that have overshadowed another debate, one that is especially pertinent to Republicans.

There’s a not so silent argument going on among presidential hopefuls and their respective supporters debating whether anyone hoping to attain the highest office in the land needs prior executive experience. Otherwise, as those who favor gubernatorial or business experience often admonish, the country might wind up with another “community organizer” running America. Those without a governorship or a CEO title on their CV suggest that time served in the (once) greatest deliberative body in the world, the U.S. Senate, gives them the cred to lead the nation forward.

If recent history can be a guide, the debate would wind up as a teiku, what the Talmud describes as a stalemate in deliberations that will only be adjudicated when the prophet Elijah returns to Earth to herald the beginning of the messianic era. 

Let’s consider the history of the presidency going back 50 years:

Lyndon Johnson never ran a state government but as president was a masterful manipulator of Congress, a byproduct of his long tenure as a senator from Texas. If not for his failure to control our deepening involvement in Vietnam and the domestic turmoil it engendered, he would rank among our most progressive presidents. 

Richard Nixon had scant congressional and senate experience, but he was vice president for eight years, albeit never really close to the decision making of president Dwight D. Eisenhower. Watergate, and Nixon’s expansion of the war in Southeast Asia, cloud much of what we think of him. Yet he did have domestic and foreign policy triumphs, including opening relations with communist China, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, and ending the military draft. He was not liked, but he was effective.

After a long career as a congressman and a short time as vice president, Gerald Ford presided over a depressed economy battered by high inflation. He’s remembered for one signature executive decision—the pardoning of Richard Nixon.

Four of the next six presidents (Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush) served as governors. It’s hard to separate one’s political leanings from an assessment of each of their terms of office. 

Carter oversaw the Camp David Accords but was viewed as an ineffectual leader by most onlookers. 

Reagan was an undisputed great communicator. Conservatives loved him (even though he raised taxes 11 times). He forged an aggressive anti-Soviet Union stance. But his foreign policy was stained by the Iran-Contra scandal. He championed supply-side economics, another tainted legacy that rewarded the rich at the expense of the middle and lower classes. 

Putting aside the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Clinton posted an impressive list of accomplishments, among them the longest economic expansion in the nation’s history with ancillary growth in jobs and home ownership.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A legacy of misguided foreign and domestic responses to 9/11 by George W. Bush. Bush squandered the budget surplus he inherited from Clinton. The wars and his failure to avert the Great Recession left the nation mired in debt.

His father, George Bush I, arguably, had the most impressive resume of any president of the last 50 years. His four years in office reached its peak in the formation of a wide ranging coalition against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. But his failure to connect with the public, coupled with conservative anger at his raising taxes despite vowing not to, and the third party candidacy of Ross Perot, thwarted his second term bid.

Barack Obama, arguably, had the least impressive resume before entering the Oval Office. Despite Republican militancy from Day One of his administration, Obama’s legacy includes passage of the Affordable Care Act extending health coverage to millions as well as overseeing the economic recovery. 

So what are we to make of it all? Reagan and Clinton are revered by their respective parties, loathed by the opposition. Bush II and Carter are disdained by both parties.

Johnson-Nixon are symbols of failed expectations muffling great accomplishments. Ford and Bush the Elder are afterthoughts, no more thought of than Franklin Pierce or Chester Arthur.

Obama alternately frustrates and excites Democrats. He is  demonized by Republicans.

Looking further back in history our greatest president— Abraham Lincoln—revealed little public success prior to his election. He served but two years in Congress, six years in the Illinois state house. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on the other hand, and his cousin, Theodore Roosevelt, served as governor of New York, among their other appointed and elected positions. 

George Washington was a general; before that a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia. Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey. Thomas Jefferson was Washington’s secretary of state then vice president under John Adams. But being secretary of state and vice president didn’t help Martin van Buren rise to greatness as a president.

The aforementioned undistinguished Pierce was a congressman and senator. James Polk and Calvin Coolidge were governors. Warren Harding was a senator.

So there you have (most of) it.  Being a governor is no ticket to success as president. Nor is a legislative background. It is a hung jury on the value of a military career. Washington—a plus. Mixed reviews for Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant and Eisenhower (though Ike is gaining esteem of late).

With so many governors seeking the presidency(by my count there are 8 from the GOP, along with two Democrats, among the 20 or so hopefuls), we are bound to hear lots of talk about their being used to making executive decisions and working across the aisle to forge a united way forward. 

Just keep in mind that history is no guide. It all depends on the man and woman behind the talk.