Concerned About Israel and Antisemitism? Vote Democratic

By Steve Sheffey

Voting Republican means voting to keep assault weapons legal, voting to make abortions illegal, and surrendering our democracy. Thursday’s hearing demonstrated not only Donald Trump’s perfidy, but the complicity since then of the entire Republican Party except Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY).

Find me one Republican in the House or Senate speaking out against Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination. You can’t. None of them deserve to be reelected. I’m fond of saying elections matter, but if we lose our democracy, elections won’t matter anymore. That’s why this election matters more than ever. If you haven’t watched the hearings, before you watch the latest on Netflix, take eight minutes to watch Cheney’s closing remarks.

If someone votes Republican for other reasons it doesn’t matter — they are voting for the entire Republican agenda whether they intend to or not. Pick three from column A and two from columm B are not on the menu. We vote for one party or the other, for better or worse, and all that comes with that party. Voting the person not the party is no longer a rational strategy. Nothing matters more than party affiliation, and which party controls Congress determines the legislative agenda. Party affiliation is itself a policy position — the single most important policy position.

Changing the law means changing the lawmakers. If we want to illegalize assault weapons, codify Roe v. Wade, and keep our democracy, we have to maintain Democratic control of the House and increase the Democratic majority in the Senate by at least two so that we can eliminate the filibuster and pass the laws the way the founders intended laws to be passed in the Senate: by simple majority, the way state legislatures in every state, even the most Republican states, pass laws.

We have guards stationed in front of our synagogues. Our kids participate in active shooter drills. Friends and loved ones are wounded or killed in mass shootings. Our wives and daughters may soon lose their lives because of abortion bans. Is this how you want to live? Then vote Republican, because they will block all of the reforms that Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering outlined in her July 20 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Yet even within our community, some refuse to vote Democratic and change the lawmakers.

Only 25% of Jewish Americans identify with the Republican Party, but they are a vocal bunch, and often they claim that concern about Israel and antisemitism is the reason that they vote for the party that wants to keep assault weapons legal and make abortions illegal. Is the tradeoff worth it? That’s an interesting academic question, but in the real world, it’s nonsensical because the Democratic Party is strong on Israel and the GOP has mainstreamed antisemitism.

The Democratic Platform leaves no doubt that the Democratic Party supports Israel. Read it yourself: “Democrats believe a strong, secure, and democratic Israel is vital to the interests of the United States. Our commitment to Israel’s security, its qualitative military edge, its right to defend itself, and the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding is ironclad.”

President Biden entered office with the longest and strongest record of support for Israel of any U.S. president, and his record since taking office is outstanding. The Joint Declaration on the US-Israel Strategic Partnership signed by President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid reaffirmed “the unbreakable bonds between our two countries and the enduring commitment of the United States to Israel’s security” and reiterated the U.S. commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge, never allowing Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, full compliance with the Obama-Biden Memorandum of Understanding (which provides a record-breaking $38 billion assistance package to Israel over ten years), and “while fully respecting the right to freedom of expression,” firmly rejecting the BDS campaign against Israel. Read more about Biden’s amazing trip here.

Democrats in Congress overwhelmingly support Israel. Republicans love to talk about the handful of Democrats who are outside the mainstream on Israel. If votes in Congress were weighted based on Twitter followers or media hits, I might be worried too. But that’s not how it works. The votes in Congress prove the strength of Democratic support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism:

• Roughly 96% of all Democrats, including 90% of the 95-member Progressive Caucus, voted for the $1 billion emergency Iron Dome supplemental in September 2021.
• In February 2019, when Republicans moved to include language clearly and specifically condemning antisemitism in an unrelated bill, Democrats unanimously voted to include the language — and then 177 Republicans voted against the entire bill, including the antisemitism language. But the bill passed with the antisemitism language drafted by the GOP, thanks to 100% Democratic support and 18 Republican votes.
• In March 2019, the House passed H. Res. 183, which again clearly and specifically condemned antisemitism. No Democrats voted against, but 23 Republicans did.
• In July 2019, the House passed H.R. 1837 with no opposition (that means no Democrats opposed it), which provided for enhanced cooperation between the U.S. and Israel, security assistance for Israel (including codification of the record $38 billion Memorandum of Understanding entered into between the U.S. and Israel during the Obama administration), and justice for United States victims of Palestinian terrorism.
• In July 2019, the House passed H.R. 1850 unanimously, which imposed sanctions with respect to foreign support for Palestinian terrorism.
• In July 2019, the House passed H. Res. 246, which condemned BDS and supported a two-state solution, with support from over 90% of House Democrats. More Democrats than Republicans voted for this resolution (the Democratic majority was large because moderate Democrats replaced Republicans in toss-up and Republican-leaning districts, not because a few left-leaning Democrats replaced other left-leaning Democrats).
• In December 2019, the House passed H. Res. 326, which reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to a two-state solution, our “ironclad” commitment to maintaining military assistance for Israel, and support for humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians. The resolution is almost a definition of what it means to be pro-Israel. Yet Republicans overwhelmingly opposed it.

Congress does not constantly take votes on Israel and antisemitism, although some organizations seem to think so. The two key resolutions in 2019, H.R. Res. 246 and 326, were not introduced in subsequent sessions since Congress is now on the record, and the Iron Dome emergency vote was a one-off vote. Aid to Israel, aside from the emergency Iron Dome bill discussed above, is generally part of a much larger package of must-pass legislation and it passes overwhelmingly every year. Israel currently receives record levels of aid pursuant to President Obama’s Memorandum of Understanding with Israel, which requires, and receives, congressional appropriations every year.

If your Republican friends think this list is cherry-picked, ask them to name one — just one — piece of anti-Israel legislation passed or even called for a vote under Democratic control of the House or Senate. They won’t be able to name any because there are not any. Ask them to name one — just one — piece of pro-Israel legislation that did not pass with overwhelming Democratic support. They won’t be able to name any because there are not any.

Republicans occasionally play political games to create the false impression of divisions on Israel, but the voting record is clear: Democrats overwhelmingly support Israel and oppose antisemitism.

But what about the handful who are out of pattern on these votes? I don’t think it’s lowering the bar to say that 96% of Democrats voting for emergency funding for Iron Dome is pretty good. I will concede that it wasn’t unanimous. The Republican vote wasn’t unanimous either, and it took six months for the funding to reach Biden’s desk because a Senate Republican, Rand Paul, blocked it. If you are concerned about the Squad, you should be apoplectic about Rand Paul — he has more power than the four of them combined. But if the choice is legal abortion and an assault weapons ban or Iron Dome passing 421–8 instead of 420–9, what do you think we should prioritize?

Some Democrats, including the same Democrats who routinely support pro-Israel legislation every time, sometimes criticize specific policies of the current Israeli government. Millions of Israelis do too. It’s not unpatriotic to support the United States and criticize certain U.S. policies, and it’s not anti-Israel to support Israel and a strong U.S.-Israel relationship and criticize certain Israeli policies.

At a time when the Republican Party is unanimously opposed to codifying Roe v Wade into law, at a time when Republicans want to keep assault weapons legal, and at a time when the fate of our democracy hangs in the balance, is now the time to worry that pro-Israel legislation is passing with with “only” 96% Democratic support?

If all of the 109 insurrectionist Republicans backed by AIPAC had voted against Iron Dome, the funding still would have passed with the 2/3 vote required for emergency funding. Israel should not be an issue in the 2022 election, and we should not let anyone use Israel as an excuse to support Republicans, not with the stakes in this election.

If Republicans return to power, look for more mass murders, more women dying because they were denied health services, and less democracy. A vote to expand the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate is a vote to make assault weapons illegal, a vote to keep abortions legal, and a vote for a strong U.S.-Israel relationship. You don’t have to compromise any of your values in November.

The Republican Party is the party of racism and antisemitism. For all their professed concern about antisemitism, Republicans have remained completely silent on Trump’s long record of antisemitic rhetoric, not even after reports that Trump said Hitler “did a lot of good things.” Trump is not an outlier. He is the man the GOP twice nominated for President of the United States.

The days are long gone when mainstream Republicans stood with mainstream Democrats against bigotry. On June 7, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) introduced a resolution condemning the mass shooting in New York on May 14, condemning the Great Replacement Theory as a white supremacist conspiracy theory, and reaffirming the House of Representatives’ commitment to combating white supremacy, hatred, and racial injustice.

What could possibly be controversial about that? All it’s missing are clauses supporting baseball and apple pie. Yet not one Republican signed on as a cosponsor. The marchers in Charlottesville carrying tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” subscribed to the Great Replacement Theory.

Why don’t Republicans support the resolution opposing white supremacy? Maybe because Donald Trump, the leader of the Republican Party–it doesn’t get more mainstream than that–referred to the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville with tiki torches chanting “Jews will not replace us” as “very fine people.” Does that sound out of character for Trump? On January 6, he told the rioting insurrectionists “we love you, you’re very special.” The insurrection did not lack for antisemitic symbols and sentiment.

Maybe because the #3 Republican in the House, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), hardly a fringe member of the GOP, supports Replacement Theory Stefanik also backs Carl Paladino for Congress.

Or maybe because the #2 House Republican, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), blamed“radical, Soros-backed elements of the Democratic Party” for violence against Republicans in 2018 and previously described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.”

Or maybe because the #1 House Republican, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), is an insurrectionist who tweeted the day before the horrific Tree of Life synagogue massacre that three Jews, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Steyer, and of course George Soros, were trying to buy the 2018 election.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) recently refused to directly condemn Replacement Theory. Adam Serwer explains how this racist theory entered the Republican mainstream. Just last week, we learned of Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor Doug Mastriano’s association with the antisemitic Gab website.

If you are Jewish and you don’t oppose racism and those who support racism simply because racism is wrong, then shame on you, but at least have enough of an instinct for self-preservation to recognize that Jews don’t fare well in racist societies, especially when the government itself is run by racists.

Steve Sheffey has a weekly newsletter called the Chicagoland ProIsrael Update. You can sign-up here.

The views represented here are those of the author, and not necessarily those of JDCA.