PicoBlog

I’ve become more cynical of late, but even I was taken aback by this morning’s story in the NYT:

A U.S. resolution calling for “an immediate and sustained cease-fire” as part of a deal in Gaza failed in the United Nations Security Council on Friday, after Russia and China vetoed the measure, which had included some of Washington’s strongest language since the start of the war.

The U.S.-backed resolution reflected the Biden administration’s growing frustration with Israel’s conduct in the war, and had been intended to put pressure on Israel not to attack the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of civilians are sheltering.

If the NYT were still interested in journalism, the last line would have included, “where thousands of Hamas terrorists are sheltering behind civilians,” but that “if” has long since gone by the boards. And somewhere in the Times, an opinion piece might have noted that the State Department’s growing hostility to Israel has come to the point that China and Russia have problems with it only because it isn’t snarling enough. It might also have noted that invading Rafah, by far Hamas’ most important remaining stronghold, is the only way Israel can win the war that was thrust on it by the re-emergence of pre-civilization savagery 167 days ago.

It’s not news to Ringside readers that the Democratic Party, and particularly younger Democrats, have become hostile to Israel and increasingly likely to tolerate, if not encourage and practice, more-or-less open anti-Semitism. Not for nothing have Jewish students at “inclusive” universities — or more accurately, selectively inclusive universities — come to feel and be threatened.

Before taking a look at where this is going, I thought it worth a reminder about where it came from. It was 40 years ago that this piece about Democratic rainmaker and “civil rights leader” Jesse Jackson appeared in the Washington Post:

Rev. Jesse Jackson referred to Jews as "Hymies" and to New York City as "Hymietown" in January 1984 during a conversation with a black Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman. Jackson had assumed the references would not be printed because of his racial bond with Coleman, but several weeks later Coleman permitted the slurs to be included far down in an article by another Post reporter on Jackson's rocky relations with American Jews.

A storm of protest erupted, and Jackson at first denied the remarks, then accused Jews of conspiring to defeat him. The Nation of Islam's radical leader Louis Farrakhan, an aggressive anti-Semite and old Jackson ally, made a difficult situation worse by threatening Coleman in a radio broadcast and issuing a public warning to Jews, made in Jackson's presence: "If you harm this brother [Jackson], it will be the last one you harm."

Finally, Jackson doused the fires in late February with an emotional speech admitting guilt and seeking atonement before national Jewish leaders in a Manchester, New Hampshire synagogue. Yet Jackson refused to denounce Farrakhan, and lingering, deeply rooted suspicions have led to an enduring split between Jackson and many Jews.

Anyone care to hazard a guess about what would have happened if a Republican with anything like Jesse Jackson’s national prominence and political clout had held forth about “Hymietown,” then lied about it for weeks before professing pretty obviously concocted regret? I’m kind of thinking it would be a five-part, front page series titled roughly, “Republican Party Morphs Into Proud Boys,” (I should apologize if I’ve already seen that and just can’t place it). This would be followed by weeks of outraged demands that the guilty party leave public life.

Has Jesse Jackson left public life?

The fact that anti-Semitism is not new to the Democratic Party, but is now increasingly emboldened and out in the open, is made explicit in this piece by Jonathan Tobin, titled, “Israel has become a partisan issue. Do American Jews care?” The sub-head is, “While Trump is impatient for a complete victory over Hamas, Biden and Schumer wave the white flag in their party’s civil war against Democrats who loathe the Jewish state.” Its opening follows (emphasis added):

This isn’t the direction the 2024 election cycle had to take. But whether Israelis or pro-Israel Americans wanted this to happen, support for the Jewish state has become a partisan issue. That conclusion became impossible to avoid last week when Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer gave a speech that signaled his support for a change in administration policy about Israel’s post-Oct. 7 war on the Hamas terrorist organization. Schumer didn’t just back up President Joe Biden’s smears about Israel’s conduct. He also blamed the continuation of the conflict on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while calling for what amounts to regime change in Jerusalem.

The political context of this broadside was obvious. The speech was coordinated with the White House, which decided it needed a signal from prominent party centrists that they supported his decision to bash Israel. That was appalling in and of itself. But it also made it clear that the increasingly noisy civil war within the Democratic Party over the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians was already over….

Rather than confronting the antisemitism that has become commonplace on the left, Biden’s campaign—no doubt influenced by the strong anti-Israel sentiment among party activists—has become convinced that he must act to force Israel to end the war before Hamas is completely defeated if he is going to survive.

Tobin adds this specifically political note:

It’s true that Biden is losing ground among younger voters who are more likely to be hostile to Israel. But Democrats are wrong to think that the Gaza war is their biggest problem. Trump is currently ahead because he’s making huge inroads among working-class voters, as well as Hispanics and African-Americans, whom Democrats took for granted. The Democrats have become a party that is both dominated by and solely interested in the concerns of credentialed elites who are in denial about the way Biden’s policies on the economy and illegal immigration have hurt many Americans. If he loses Michigan, it will be because auto workers and Teamsters vote for Trump on those issues, not because campus radicals and Arab Americans hate Israel.

I don’t know politics well enough to make even a mildly educated guess, but I do wonder if Biden’s genuflecting to pro-Hamas groups (I’m going to call them what they are rather than join the pretense that they merely favor “humanitarian assistance” for Gaza) is going to cost him more with Jewish voters, largely concentrated in and around big cities, than it’s going to gain him support either in Palestinian quasi-enclaves or with younger Democratic votes who, at present, don’t seem all that motivated to vote for Grandpa.

Still, we should resist the temptation to see only or mainly the political facets of this. As noted in the heading, this is the 167th day on which scores of innocent people, including American citizens, are being held in grotesque and evil captivity. If Biden is doing anything even remotely forceful to free them, we haven’t heard about it. Instead, he and his crew seem more and more devoted to braying criticism of the one force — the IDF — that’s trying to defeat their captors.

The great majority of voices in the MSM implore us in anguished tones that we must prevent another round of Trump’s indecencies — implore us while all but oblivious to the bloody indecencies Trump’s successor dithers with right in front of their faces.

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