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With the party riven by anti-Semitism, vague reassurances about supporting Israel’s “right to defend itself” are not enough.
By: Benjamin Kerstein
Whenever a politician says, “Let me be clear,” you know that sheer doggerel will follow. Barack Obama, for example, regularly used the phrase to preface his pseudo-inspirational gobbledygook. Now Vice President Kamala Harris has cribbed it with considerable emphasis in her Democratic National Convention acceptance speech.
As Harris likely knew, American Jews were paying close attention, so she made sure to emphasize: “And let me be clear. And let me be clear. I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself, because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist organization called Hamas caused on Oct. 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”
This statement, ironically, may not have struck many American Jews as particularly clear. Certainly, it was a sop to the community and the community needed one, given that over the past year, American Jews have witnessed the antisemitic wing of the Democratic Party emerge in full. Driven by the Red-Green Alliance between progressive leftists and Islamic supremacists, the alliance’s numerous antisemitic crimes on campus and the streets hardly need reiterating here.
As a result, the Democrats are now trapped in a state of more or less total schizophrenia, torn between an increasingly violent antisemitic wing and the squishy liberals unwilling to stand up to it. In this context, Harris’s statement was clearly intended to reassure American Jews—and not just on Israel. It was a way of saying that American Jewish fears and concerns are being taken seriously.
However, such reassurances tend to disappear upon close examination. For example, “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself” is rhetorical mush. We know this because everybody says it. Obama said it; Biden said it; now Harris says it. The question is whether they mean it.
The Democrats’ record on this is decidedly mixed. Obama most certainly didn’t mean it. Biden probably did mean it, but his infirmity and the perfidy of many in his administration seriously deranged his policies.
In the case of Harris, we have no presidential record, so the only way we can determine if there is any substance in her attempt to reassure American Jews is to examine her party itself.
In politics, what is said means next to nothing. What is done or not done means everything. And on the most pressing American Jewish issues of the moment, there is a very great deal that the Democrats have not done:
The Democrats have not moved to investigate and prosecute antisemitic hate groups like CAIR, Students for Justice in Palestine and numerous others.
The Democrats have taken no effective measures against the antisemitic professoriate regime that unethically and illegally rules the higher education system. Even Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer, a self-styled “guardian” of the Jewish community, have refused to take any action whatsoever on the issue or the antisemitic mob violence the regime has unleashed. The only politicians who have attempted to do so—with some success—have been congressional Republicans.
The Democrats have not forced elected and appointed Democratic officials, especially in major cities like New York, to hold antisemites accountable by prosecuting them for their crimes and giving them long sentences. The failure to do so has enabled and compounded antisemitism through perpetual indulgence.
The Democrats have not launched a major investigation into the incitement, funding and orchestration of the current wave of antisemitism by domestic and foreign actors, especially on campus.
The Democrats have done and said literally nothing about the metastasizing of antisemitism in the Muslim-American community, 60% of which thinks the Oct. 7 massacre was justified. Nor have the Democrats stared down the numerous Muslim-American organizations fueling antisemitic mob violence across the country. Instead, the Democrats continue to repeat the lie that America is suffering from a “wave of Islamophobia,” even though the evidence of our eyes reveals no mobs of non-Muslims marching through major cities demanding the annihilation of Muslims—quite the opposite, in fact.
The Democrats have not forcefully repudiated the blood libel that Israel is committing systematic war crimes and “genocide” in Gaza. Indeed, some prominent Democrats like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have publicly endorsed it, inciting further antisemitic violence. Neither Warren nor any other offender has been criticized or penalized by party leaders.
The Democrats have not endorsed military action—by Israel or anyone else—against Iran, a genocidally antisemitic regime that has murdered thousands of Jews. This is despite considerable evidence that Iran is involved in fomenting antisemitic violence in the United States and interfering in the 2024 election.
The Democrats have not stopped patronizing and insulting American Jews through cheap scare tactics. Rather than face the antisemitism in their own party, Democrats relentlessly harp on right-wing antisemitism, as if the existence of the latter somehow refutes the existence of the former.
Above all, the Democrats have not done what they obviously must do: Purge their antisemitic wing. At the moment, the party appears to believe that it can appease the antisemites rather than expel them. Putting aside the moral bankruptcy of such a tactic, it is doomed to disastrous failure because it is impossible. Antisemitism is unappeasable; it will settle for nothing but genocide. One would assume that an ostensibly “anti-racist” party would deal with such a movement in short order. So far, the Democrats have chosen not to.
American Jews may or may not maintain their century-old loyalty to the Democrats in November. In some ways, however, it does not matter. The question is what the Jews, however they vote, will do now. Some, no doubt, will defect to the Republicans, but most likely will not for ideological or emotional reasons.
That is their right, of course, but Jews who wish to remain Democrats must understand that they face, in many ways, the more grievous ordeal. They are now tasked not only with fighting antisemitism but also redeeming the party to which they have dedicated their lives.
This is a difficult reality to face, but once faced, it is obvious what Jewish Democrats must do: They must demand that the party and, should she be victorious, a President Harris finally live up to their fine reassurances. Jewish Democrats should be clear that when a Democrat says “Let me be clear,” they are heard very clearly and the pledge that follows is taken very seriously indeed. Jewish Democrats must demand that their party do, at long last, what it has thus far refused to do: the right thing.
(JNS.org)
Benjamin Kerstein is a writer and editor living in Tel Aviv. Read more of his work on Substack at No Delusions, No Despair.
