As the U.S. General Election Looms, How Will American Jews Vote?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Winnipeg] Jewish Post 

First of all, before I go any further, we should get something straight: this whole so-called debate about anti-Zionism vs antisemitism is nonsense on stilts. 

Sure, especially before the Holocaust and the establishment of the State of Israel, many Jews were dubious about or even ideologically or theologically opposed to the Zionist project of recreating a Jewish state in the land of Israel. These groups ranged from various socialists on the left, such as the supporters of the Jewish Labour Bund, to haredim like the Satmar Hasidim. The latter still are, but no one thinks of them as “antisemites.”

All of this has virtually nothing to do with today’s so-called “anti-Zionists,” almost all of whom are non-Jewish antisemites making use of a word to confuse people about their desire to destroy a modern sovereign Jewish state, now more than 75 years old. (Yes, there are some misguided Jewish students involved, and the media loves them, but this is mainly a matter of ignorance and “Stockholm Syndrome.”)

Do you remember, not so long ago, that when right-wing Republicans and/or supporters of Donald Trump, made even mild criticisms of one or another Jewish politician or Jewish organization, leftwingers immediately said these were “dog whistles,” implying that this was code for antisemitism.  

Now, though, when protestors parade around proudly with placards reading “F—k Zionism,” or ask Jewish students whether they are “Zionists,” this has nothing to do with wondering whether they are a member of a Zionist organization or a person who subscribes to the Jewish nationalist ideology centered on the Land of Israel. They are asking whether these people are Jewish, pure and simple. 

“Zionist” has simply become a derogatory slur or abusive term for “Jew,” used by Jew-haters as a synonym, and not all that different from earlier, now archaic, versions such as “kike,” “sheeny,” or “Yid.” The animus is also directed at Hillels, synagogues, and other institutions which are Jewish, not technically “Zionist” as such. Is this really that hard to understand? And we Jews should not play their games by arguing the point.

After all, the word “antisemitism” is itself a euphemism, coined by a German Jew-hater in the 19^th century, so as to appear a more “scientific” word for hating Jews. It’s not even accurate – as we know, Arabs and other peoples are also Semites, and no one who hates Jews has them in mind. Judeophobia would be a more accurate term, and we should make more use of it.

Anyhow, we also must stop trying to be “even handed” by trying to equate old-style Jew-hatred on the right with today’s versions, which are coming overwhelmingly from the left, under the rubric of “anti-Zionism.” Remember, anti-Israel demonstrations began the very next days after the Oct.7 massacres, and almost three weeks before Israel even launched its counterattack.

All this is by way of a segue to a very important matter coming our way this November: For whom will American Jews turn out in the forthcoming presidential election? We all know the statistics: For almost a century, a large majority of Jews have voted for the Democratic candidate, beginning with Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1932. No Republican, including those who were victorious, came even close to capturing a majority of Jewish voters. Over the past several decades, according to data from the Pew Research Center, an average of 70 per cent of Jewish Americans consistently voted for the Democratic Party.

But October 7 has been a genuine zeitgeist shift. Even Jews blinded by an almost-religious loyalty to the party understand that it is being quite quickly captured by its far-left wing. Joe Biden may even be the last “pro-Israel” Democratic president (and he hasn’t exactly shone in that regard of late). The president himself has been unable to really condemn unequivocally and without moral relativism the outrages taking place on campuses.

I have for a long time thought that Israel shouldn’t have put all its defence needs in the U.S. basket. America is changing, demographically and ideologically, in a manner detrimental to Israel. The Democratic Party post-Biden will sooner or later be in the hands of the left-wing Congressional representatives known as the “Squad.” The protesters on the American university campuses should be called “Young Squadniks!”

The Hamas onslaught has left a mark on how Diaspora Jews look at their identity, especially in the United States. A recent survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee found that 78 per cent feel less safe since Hamas attacked Israel. “We are seeing an awakening, a heightened sense of consciousness among Jewish Americans,” asserted Steven Windmueller, professor emeritus of Jewish Communal Studies at the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.

They now have seen how elite university campuses like Harvard, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, many of which are heavily funded by Jewish donors, have been breeding and spreading a climate of antisemitic hate.

As apparently some 100 university campuses across the United States are aflame with anti-Israel and “anti-Zionist” fervor, and Jew-hatred has now become mainstream in Democratic politics, Jews are reconsidering many of their basic assumptions about their position in America generally and the Democratic Party specifically.

Many liberal Jewish Americans also feel betrayed by some of their alleged allies, those whose causes they had supported throughout the years, from the Civil Rights movement to Black Lives Matter activists. The left doesn’t care about antisemitism if they deem it inconvenient to their cause. They just call it “anti-Zionism” and carry on.

A few weeks ago, a sermon by Reform Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, the senior rabbi at the Steven Wise Free Synagogue in New York delivered a stern warning to the Democrats. “Do not take American Jews for granted.”

Hirsch explained, “I have spoken to many American Jews in the past few months who have surprised me with their anxiety about developments in the Democratic Party, and their perception that it is becoming increasingly hostile to Israel, and tolerant of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in its own ranks.”

Jewish Democratic voters who never considered voting for Republicans have been announcing that they are voting for Trump, or will stay home or vote for independent candidate Robert Kennedy Jr., but will never vote for Biden.

It is true that New York and California have the largest Jewish communities, and they remain firmly in the Democratic column, even if not a single Jew were to vote for them. The Jewish vote for Biden will decrease, and in the very blue states where Jews live, like California and New York, it doesn’t really matter. But four swing states –Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona — may well be decided by their large Jewish communities. Nowhere is that more apparent than in Pennsylvania, the swing state with the largest Jewish population – about 300,000 voting-age Jews — in a state President Joe Biden won by roughly 80,000 votes in 2020. (We are U.S. citizens who vote absentee ballot in Pennsylvania.)

I’m guessing that many Jews will sit it out. Of those voting, it will be hard for a lot of them to vote for Trump, constantly vilified day after day, but it may still reach 40 per cent. Still others who do vote may just leave the presidential line blank, and vote for Republicans for House and Senate seats.

I think there will be an almost perfect correlation between Jews who feel a deep attachment to the Jewish people — be it religiously, culturally, ethnically, or whatever –and voting Republican this year. For those who are Jewish mainly by “biology and genealogy” and for whom being Jewish is relatively unimportant, they are far more concerned with universal matters that now come under the rubric of terms like social justice, liberalism, diversity, inclusion, and so forth. They will come in at about 85 per cent for the Democrats. But as we don’t know the relative percentages of these two groups of Jews, predicting the overall Jewish vote for each of the two parties is difficult.

*Since writing this article, there have been two important developments. President Biden has said that he will in effect impose a partial arms embargo on Israel should the IDF complete the defeat of Hamas by capturing Rafah.  Secondly, a number of American websites report that they have found evidence that many of the campus protests currently underway in the United States have been funded by foundations and non-profits whose money comes from wealthy donors who are supporters of Biden and numerous Democratic campaigns.

Given this, I’d revise my estimates of Jewish votes in November to predict that the overall vote for Republican candidates might exceed, for the first time in a century, 50 per cent. Even liberal Jews, typically reliable Democrats, will break at only about 75-25 per cent for Biden.

Georgia a Political Football Between Russia and the West

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the animus against Russia in western countries resulted in rewriting some recent history. One of these narratives, which often goes unchallenged, claims that Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. But that’s not the whole story.

Here’s what really happened: following the breakup of the Soviet Union, former republics like Georgia gained their independence. But within this new sovereign state were two regions inhabited by non-Georgians, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, who then successfully seceded from Georgia. They became so-called de facto republics. 

Georgia refused to accept this, and in August 2008 then President Mikheil Saakashvili, launched an attack on South Ossetia. Tskhinvali called for Russian help. The Russians then moved into South Ossetia and routed the Georgians. Both separatist entities remain outside Tbilisi’s control. As for Saakashvili, several criminal cases were later brought against him, and he is serving a six-year prison term since 2021.

Why bring all this up? Because Georgia, strategically located in the Caucasus with a Black Sea coast, and bordering Turkey, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Russia, remains a volatile country and a geopolitical football between Russia and the West.

Georgia is, to use political scientist Samuel Huntington’s term in his “clash of civilizations” thesis, a “torn” country, that is, one that is seeking to affiliate with another civilization.

Georgians are overwhelmingly Orthodox Christians, and so historically they have been culturally allied with Orthodox Russia, especially given historical conflicts with Muslim empires. The Ottoman Turks and Persians at one time even partitioned the country between them.   

According to Huntington, a torn country must meet three requirements to redefine its civilizational identity. Its political and economic elite must support the move. Second, the public must be willing to accept the redefinition. Third, the elites of the civilization that the torn country is trying to join – in this case, the “Western” one -- must accept the country.

Membership in the European Union and NATO is enshrined in Gorgia’s constitution and largely supported by the country’s population. But Brussels urged Tbilisi to first implement judicial and electoral reforms, improve press freedom, and curtail the power of oligarchs. In other words, become “western.”

This has led to internal turmoil. Georgia currently has a presidential system, with separate elections for the executive and legislative branches. Salome Zurabishvili was elected president in 2018 with the support of billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili’s ruling pro-Moscow Georgian Dream party, which has been in power since 2012, winning three consecutive elections.

But a rift emerged between Zurabishvili and the party, as she tried to assume an independent political role, vetoing several draft laws she said were eroding Georgia’s democracy. In August and September 2023 Zurabishvili travelled to Brussels, Paris, and Berlin to ask her French and German counterparts to support putting Georgia on the formal path to EU membership. Georgia has been granted EU candidate status.

In turn, last October 18, the pro-Russian lawmakers attempted to remove her from office. Party chairman Irakli Kobakhidze (now the country’s prime minister) called on the president to step down, saying she was “completely deprived of political and moral legitimacy.”

As well, Georgia’s constitutional court ruled that she had violated the constitution by making foreign trips to lobby for Georgian membership in the EU without the government’s permission.

“No-one could impede me on the road leading to the sole goal I have today: to get EU candidate status for Georgia by the end of the year,” she told parliament. Zurabishvili called the proceedings a “farce” and suggested that they had been instigated by Russia, which sought “the destabilisation of the Black Sea region.”

She survived when the MPs only gathered 86 votes of the 100 needed to oust Zurabishvili, well short of the two-thirds majority required. She is Georgia’s last directly elected president, as the country will transition to a parliamentary form of government. The next president will be elected by a 300-member electoral college.

In April, the government introduced a new “foreign agents” bill, leading to mass demonstrations. NGOs and independent media that receive more than 20 per cent of their funding from foreign donors would have to register as organisations “bearing the interests of a foreign power.” They would also be monitored by the Justice Ministry and could be forced to share sensitive information or face hefty fines of up to $12,850.

Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze accused NGOs of attempting to stage revolutions in Georgia and of attacking the Georgian Orthodox Church. Ivanishvili accused the West of trying to use Georgians as “cannon fodder” in a confrontation with Russia. The party even glorifies Joseph Stalin, who was a Georgian.

“The Georgian people want a European future for their country,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the “cabinet” of the EU, posted on X. “Georgia is at a crossroads.” But the bill was passed May 14.

As Georgian Dream leaders become more hostile to the U.S. and turn to repressive laws to help maintain their power, Georgians are calling for the West to impose sanctions on government leaders before elections this fall.

As for Saakashvili, in a 2023 interview from detention by the German news agency Deutsche Welle, he contended that “Georgia will be in NATO as soon as we get rid of the pro-Russian government and the Russian oligarch loses power.”

 

No One Seems to Care about Sudan

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The devastating war in Sudan is now in its second year and rages on unabated with no sign of an end on the horizon. It has devastated Africa’s third-largest nation with breathtaking speed and has gutted the capital, Khartoum, once a major center of commerce and culture on the Nile.

The civil war raging between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), led respectively by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, or Hemedti, and General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, the former chief of Sudan’s “sovereign council,” has taken a horrific toll on civilians.

They were allies in the military junta that in October 2021 overthrew a transitional government that had been formed following the ouster of longtime resident Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. But they soon quarreled and in April 2023 turned on each other. The repercussions have reached alarming levels. The formal SAF-controlled government, itself displaced to Port Sudan on the Red Sea, has lost control of half the country.

According to United Nations agencies, some 20,000 Sudanese have lost their lives. The number of wounded has reached nearly 100,000. There are no available statistics on those who perished due to diseases like cholera. Furthermore, the already fragile healthcare system has been further debilitated with over 70 per cent of hospitals and clinics across the country destroyed in the fighting.

More than 9.5 million people have been displaced, seeking refuge either in neighbouring countries, where the situation is far from ideal or safe, or elsewhere within Sudan’s frontiers. Now, with a fast-growing regional food crisis, Sudan is sliding into chaos. More than a third of Sudan’s 48 million people are facing catastrophic levels of hunger, according to the United Nations, which in April called it the world’s worst hunger crisis.

Overt foreign military intervention is escalating the conflict, transforming it into a proxy war between rival foreign interests over the heads of the Sudanese people. The RSF militia continues to receive substantial military backing from the United Arab Emirates via Chad and the Central African Republic. Its ranks include recruits from Mali, Niger, and militiamen loyal to the Libyan warlord General Khalifa Haftar.

 On the other hand, the SAF gets support from Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Iran has been providing the SAF with drones, while Turkey has supplied tanks, artillery and helicopters. Islamist terrorists affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood also increasingly align themselves with the army. They too have been engaged in atrocities.

 Even the Russia-Ukraine war is being played out in Sudan. Ukrainian special forces are actively supporting the SAF in its clashes against the RSF, who are backed by the Russian Wagner mercenary group. Ukrainian special services were likely behind a series of drone strikes and a ground operation directed against the Wagner-backed militia near Khartoum last September.

 The powerful Russian group has played a public and pivotal role in Moscow’s foreign military campaigns. Around 90 per cent of the RSF’s weapons have come from Wagner, and its supply of arms to the RSF has continued unabated despite the death of the mercenary group’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin in a plane crash last Aug. 23.

Unfortunately, Sudan is no stranger to mass murder and genocide; the RSF is simply the latest incarnation of the Janjaweed, the militia mainly responsible for the genocide in Darfur in 2003 and 2004.

The ethnically Arab RSF controls four out of five states in Darfur. They have been conducting a campaign of rape, massacre and mutilation against the Masalit people in West Darfur, with 10,000-15,000 reportedly killed in the provincial capital of El Geneina alone.

The RSF has also launched a large scale onslaught on the city of El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state. “This spiraling violence bears terrifying similarity with the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur since 2003,” said Tigere Chagutah, a regional director with Amnesty International. “Even those seeking safety are not being spared.”

It is difficult to foresee a ceasefire or even period of calm taking place soon. The situation is made even more desperate by the apparent inability on the part of the international community -- including the UN, European Union and African Union -- to broker a truce.