A matter of priorities

If I got a dollar for every time I heard the question why American Jews will probably vote Kerry by a large margin --- or for every expression of astonishment when I tell some European that American Jews are not a Republican voting bloc --- I'd be a rich man. Tom Gross ponders the question at length:

Once upon a time most American Jews were underprivileged, and most of them voted Democrat. Then their circumstances changed, but their political allegiances remained unaltered. Around 30 or 40 years ago there was a joke which said that American Jews live like Episcopalians (i.e., relatively rich, privileged people) but vote like Puerto Ricans.

The remark was a bit racist, perhaps, but it was essentially true. Everyone knew what it meant. Only it is not true anymore. Puerto Ricans, like other Hispanics, have moved on. They now vote in a pluralistic way in accordance with their developing economic interests, ethnic concerns, and views of what is good for America as a whole. In 2000, the Hispanic vote for George W. Bush was more than 50 percent greater than the Jewish vote.

This year American Jews remain as intransigent as ever. Jews, more than almost any other group in the US, are set to vote against Bush by large margins.

Polls indicate that 69% of Jews will vote Kerry tomorrow, and only 24% for Bush. And 3% will vote for Ralph Nader, the strongly anti-Israel independent candidate of Arab descent who, according to polls, commands less than half that support among non-Jewish Americans.

Yet the situation is even more lopsided than it first appears: What the overall figure doesn't take into account is that the hundreds of thousands of American Jews from the former Soviet Union --- who know a thing or two about oppression, terrorism, anti-Semitism, and the meaning of freedom --- are overwhelmingly pro-Bush. Only 14% say they will back Kerry.

Naturally, many Jews will vote on issues completely unrelated to foreign policy or their own economic status --- issues of social justice, abortion, gay rights, and so on. But much more than usual, this is a foreign policy election. Right now, the right not to get your head chopped off seems more important than that of, say, gay marriage.

I joked the other day to a colleague that the US presidential race came down to whether one finds it more important that the West win the war on Islamofascism, or that two men can marry each other and a woman can get an abortion in the 9th month of pregnancy. Seems like Tom Gross, who generally seems to be quite liberal (and regularly writes about "gay" topics), has something in common with me. But let's hear him out:

According to the polls, other Americans recognize this and, given the rise in global anti-Semitism, foreign policy concerns should be of exceptional importance to Jews. If they have not read Bin Laden's key 1998 text Jihad against Jews and Crusaders, issued by The World Islamic Front, they should. Ignoring it is as foolish as it would have been to ignore Mein Kampf.

If American Jews think they are immune to this, they are mistaken. For many in the Muslim world are convinced that when al-Qaida chose the Twin Towers as their target, it was because in their anti-Semitic world view, Jews control American finance: They saw the Towers as a Jewish target and aimed to kill as many Jews as possible.

Support for Israel is "a very important factor" in their lives, say 74% of American Jews. Bush is generally regarded as not only the most pro-Israel president ever but probably the most pro-Jewish one as well, his recent signing of the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act being only the latest example.

Yet, even though Kerry has called Yasser Arafat "a statesman," has criticized Israel's security fence as a "barrier to peace," and has not noticeably protested any UN actions against Israel, according to polls more Jews may well vote Kerry than Palestinian-Americans will.

When Bush ran for president four years ago, there was little to indicate that he would grasp the necessity for reform in the Arab world as an American interest, an Israeli interest and, most importantly, as an Arab interest. It is clear that he does now.

It should be equally clear that many of the Clinton administration's policies were unwise not only in terms of American national interest but also from a humanitarian viewpoint; in particular, the extraordinary appeasement of Arafat and the red-carpet treatment given to him while he violated every single one of the Oslo accords, the failure to take al-Qaida seriously, and the failure to exert any kind of meaningful pressure on regimes in Riyadh, Damascus, and elsewhere.

Yet there is every indication that the foreign policy team Kerry would assemble, should he win, would comprise many of the same people who made such glaring mistakes in the 1990s.

This is why some major Jewish Democratic Party figures, such as former New York mayor Ed Koch, have endorsed Bush. Why Al Gore's running mate, Joe Lieberman, hinted last month that Bush might be better for Israel. And why the leading liberal journalist Martin Peretz wrote last week, "A President Kerry would be a disaster for Israel."

Whereas non-Jewish Americans I have spoken to in recent months are split roughly 50-50 in their voting preferences, almost all my Jewish American friends are backing Kerry.

Why? I asked an American Jewish friend who lives in London. "Because Kerry is for human rights," was the answer. Apparently he did not know until I told him that it was Bush who had made possible one of the biggest repatriations of refugees in history (more than three million Afghans have returned home thanks to his policies) or that the Taliban regime that Bush removed crushed homosexuals to death as a matter of policy. Nor was he aware of how many people had died under Saddam.

Given past voting habits, one would not, perhaps, expect Jews to vote overwhelmingly for Bush. But that in 2004 so few of them still seem to appreciate who their true allies now are is surprising.

Not to mention infinitely saddening.

Two thousand years ago, a great Jewish sage (Hillel the Elder) rightly asked "If I am only for myself, what am I?" Fair enough --- Judaism, perhaps more than any other religion, believes in "tikkun `olam" (literally: "repairing the world"). But I quoted only part of the saying. Hillel also asked: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" And finishes by asking: "If not now, when?"