Jews are betrayed by the Democratic party they – Latest News
Batya Ungar-Sargon is the writer of “The Jews and the Left” (Broadside Books), out June 2.
On May 14, 2026, a flag bearing a star of David and two swastikas flew over a dorm at NYU — one of the most left-wing universities in a single of the most left-wing cities in America.
On March 12, 2026, a Muslim man drove a truck full of explosives into a synagogue in Michigan with the intent of blowing up 140 Jewish-American preschoolers in the identify of the Palestinian trigger, in line with prosecutors. His homicidal anti-Jewish racism was defined away by leftists at The New York Times and NPR.
On May 21, 2025, a man named Elias Rodriguez allegedly murdered two innocents as a result of he thought they have been Jews. “Free, free Palestine!” he chanted whereas the police arrested him, in the actual tune and cadence bellowed on school campuses on daily basis. “I did it for Gaza.”
A flag with a Jewish star, NYU branding and a swastika flew over an NYU dorm weeks in the past. CBSNews New York
These are simply three current examples of a uniquely left-wing type of anti-Jewish hate and violence that has all however changed right-wing antisemitism in America — up to appropriating the swastika itself. It’s an whole tradition that suffuses the left, justifying and finishing up acts of political violence in opposition to Jews, and it stems from the prime.
The Democrats are now set to elect a man with what resembles a Nazi tattoo, unexpectedly coated up after 20 years of proudly displaying it off, as their senator from Maine. They marketing campaign eagerly with sociopaths who declare they would vote for Hamas over Israel and call Jews inbred. The phrase Zionist, which describes the overwhelming majority of Jews worldwide, is now a slur on the left.
Maine political candidate Graham Platner unexpectedly coated up his controversial tattoo after 20 years of displaying it off. Instagram / @grahamformaine
And it’s a full reversal of the place anti-Jewish sentiment has historically sprung from.
For most of American historical past, the place antisemitism cropped up in the US, it was a lot more pronounced on the proper. It’s definitely not fully gone on that aspect of the political aisle; over the previous decade and particularly the previous few years, there’s been an alarming rise of antisemitism on the proper, with large identify influencers and commentators participating in and platforming outright Holocaust denial and admiration for Hitler, in addition to blaming Israel for all of the world’s ills and malefactors.
And but, by and enormous, it has remained a contained phenomenon on the proper, thanks to very large efforts by Republicans senators, congresspeople, influencers and the president himself. Meanwhile on the left, an open skepticism towards Jewish pursuits and hostility to Jewish views has in a short time grow to be mainstream.
For 100 years, American Jews have overwhelmingly been Democrats. ullstein bild by way of Getty Images
Apologists on the left will declare it’s not antisemitism, it’s merely anti-Zionism. They don’t hate Jews — simply the State of Israel. And but, the overwhelming majority of American Jews are Zionists. Israel is a central element to their identification as Jews. And it’s now verboten on the left.
This can be unhealthy enough. But it’s particularly jarring as a result of for 100 years, American Jews have overwhelmingly been Democrats. They constructed the Labor Movement out of the sweatshops of the Lower East Side. Then they saved some money and acquired their own retailers and despatched their youngsters to varsity, so they wrote FDR’s New Deal, which mixed a respect for the dignity of labor with a healthy appreciation of capitalism. In the 60s, they marched at the entrance traces of the Civil Rights Movement. They taught in public faculties. They learn The New York Times and studied at the universities the place the left outlined the tradition.
In March, a Muslim man drove a truck full of explosives into a synagogue in Michigan with the intent of blowing up 140 Jewish-American preschoolers in the identify of the Palestinian trigger. by way of REUTERS
So central to the left have been Jews that for a lot of, being a Democrat and being pro-Israel have been the two central elements of what it meant to be an American Jew. Yet now, in the twenty first century, there’s an inherent battle in these two items of their identification. In the party that Jews made their home for 100 years, they now really feel welcome provided that they verify their Zionism at the door. They are welcome provided that they denounce their own people (sadly, many Jews take the left up on this humiliating offer).
To perceive what a betrayal this was, think about a counterfactual situation: One can simply image the left recognizing how central Jews have been traditionally to their motion and thus rejecting an ideology that might make Jews really feel no longer welcome. Instead, the left, and by now the Democratic Party writ giant, embraced that ideology, turning on the Jews who had for thus long been a mainstay of their coalition.
Elias Rodriguez allegedly murdered two innocents as a result of he thought they have been Jews. “Free, free Palestine!” he chanted whereas the police arrested him. Thehistorymakers
But the betrayal goes each methods.
For it was not a foregone conclusion that the historical past of America and its Jews would result in 100 years of voting for Democrats. America has at all times had a distinctive relationship with Jews. In 1790, President George Washington wrote a well-known letter to the “children of the stock of Abraham” of Newport, RI, promising that right here, bigotry can be given no sanction, persecution no help.
In the letter, he defined that Jews, as all different Americans, can be handled as equals, although not due to the tolerance of their neighbors, tolerant although they have been; as an alternative, their equal rights can be due to the spiritual freedoms imbued in us by our Creator. In his clarification, the president was laying out the template for the extraordinary freedom Jewish Americans can be granted right here, just about from Day 1. The distinction between spiritual tolerance and non secular freedom would come to outline how America would deal with its Jews — but in addition how it will outline what it means to be an American.
Many Jewish Democrats have needed to verify their Zionism at the door if they wish to stay in a party that loathes Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s (above) Israel. REUTERS
It means zealously defending our rights as a present of God slightly than the end result of the sufferance of our neighbors or authorities.
American Jews would play a essential function in proving that the guarantees of a liberal democracy could possibly be fulfilled, if liberalism meant equality earlier than the law, respect for spiritual freedom and freedom of conscience, free enterprise and democracy.
Europe’s Christian nations had persecuted Jews for millennia. But it turned out that the ticket to freedom wasn’t a secular state; the Jews needed a spiritual nation to thrive. And in a divine irony, that nation needed Jews.
Jews constructed the Labor Movement out of the sweatshops of the Lower East Side. Heritage Images/Getty Images
It is a tragedy that so many Jews, in a misreading of this historical past, allowed and proceed to permit themselves to really feel like company in a social, legal, political, and religious actuality — in a nation — that had been fashioned and knowledgeable by us to such a deep degree.
Today, American Jews are in a state of flux, making an attempt to determine what it means to be an American Jew in a world through which the left, which for thus long outlined their Jewishness, has rejected them. On the 250th anniversary of this nation’s founding, it’s time to reclaim our historical past, not as immigrants however as founding companions on this great endeavor often known as the United States of America, the best nation in the historical past of humanity.
