The Cocktail Party is contrarian: the pro-Israel voter is also a pro-American voter

In most election cycles, a minority of American Jews consider Israel’s safety and security a priority issue at the ballot box, but Hamas’s attacks on Israel on October 7 last year and the wave of anti-Semitism that followed have changed people. An increasing number of Jews will put aside traditional party loyalty tomorrow to vote for candidates they view as “pro-Israel” allies.

However, who gets their vote depends on how they define what it means to be “pro-Israel.”

Traditionally, the “pro-Israel” label has been earned by consistent votes in Congress in support of foreign aid, including funding for the Iron Dome missile defense system. Most members of Congress from both political parties check this box.

“Pro-Israel” has also been associated with opposition to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and, especially in the past year, with vocal opposition to the vilification of Israel in the media and at the United Nations. Fewer, but still a fair number of our political figures meet these criteria.

Votes and vocal support are important, but an argument can be made that they are no longer sufficient in assessing a candidate’s bona fide “pro-Israel” status. Incoming missiles and bad press are not the only serious challenges Israel faces today.

We live in a ‘woke’ world in which a global, left-wing, Marxist movement is trying to gain control of the West. It has deployed diversity, equity and inclusion, and identity politics to create an anti-American narrative in the same way it has created an “anti-Israel” narrative.

It divides Americans based on group identity and assigns collective guilt to disadvantaged populations for their “crimes” against the disadvantaged, in the same way it portrays Palestinian Arabs as the perpetual victims of white, colonialist, Israeli aggression. It promotes irresponsible, centralized government power and targets free people in democracies with censorship, discrimination, demonization and violence.

What poisons America poisons Israel. Politicians who fail to provide a cure may not be as “pro-Israel” as they seem.

Those who vote to defund Iron Dome and also to defund their local police are doing Israel a disservice in the long run. A generation of young people trained to see all law enforcement officers as perpetrators of state violence will see every IDF soldier as a war criminal and behave accordingly.

Those who applaud open borders in America but vote to send money to Israel to protect its borders will not be able to convince a class of congressional freshmen why either decision is in America’s best interest. It will only be a matter of time before the halls of Congress will be filled with people wondering why any country should have a border in the first place.

Allowing the American justice system to conduct open justice against political opponents makes it harder to criticize the International Criminal Court when it does the same against Israelis. The failure of our courts to administer blind justice is an invitation to the rest of the world to ignore that ideal as well.

American Jews who consider themselves part of the “pro-Israel” community should reconsider whether voting for a candidate who is outspoken about the brutality of Hamas but silent about the drug cartels is in America’s—or Israel’s—best interests.

If “pro-Israel” is measured only by votes and vocal support for Israel, Senator Schumer of New York would qualify — and he has done so for many years, collecting checks and drawing support from the Jewish community because of his traditional ” pro-Israel attitude’. ” file.

Exactly no one should be surprised by recent revelations that he advised embattled former Columbia University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik to do nothing but wait for the controversy surrounding Hamas parades and the harassment of Jewish students on her campus to blow over . Once he checked the two classic “pro-Israel” boxes required of him, his job was done.

Telling the oppressed not to break into buildings or spit on fellow students in the pursuit of “justice” has probably never occurred to the self-proclaimed “thoughts.”for Israel” – guardian of Israel. He had already satisfied his “pro-Israel” constituency and was working to satisfy another constituency deeply entrenched in DEI.

This matters because today’s students are tomorrow’s legislators. The ideological framework that Mr. Schumer has not challenged, and to which he has conceded, will shape future votes in Congress on Israel-related issues. It matters because by the traditional definition of “pro-Israel,” Mr. Schumer is still a poster boy, even if he has damaged the cause.

Opposition to the left-wing ideological takeover of the United States should be added to the list of “pro-Israel” criteria for politicians. Those who don’t check that box are generally on the Democratic side of the aisle this time, which is a bitter pill for the majority of Jews out there too, but one day this could be a Republican problem.

Tomorrow’s task for those concerned about Israel is to care for American principles such as freedom of speech, the rule of law, national sovereignty, justice and individual liberty, and to vote for candidates who demonstrate that they do too do, regardless of their party. These values ​​make our lives here better and also protect Israel’s future.