One of the more enduring fictions about the American Jewish community is that it is largely comprised of "single-issue" voters, with that one issue being Israel. This is a myth that's been debunked more times than I can count; while certainly American Jews care about Israel, polls consistently show that Israel is not among most Jews' top voting priorities. This is one reason why GOP efforts to win over the Jewish vote by focusing entirely on Israel always founder: on every issue aside from Israel, Jews support Democrats more than Republicans (the other reason is that, on the issue of Israel ... Jews also support Democrats more than Republicans).
But over the past few years, I have started to notice the emergence of some folks who do present themselves as single-issue Israel voters. But it's not the imagined pro-Israel zealot -- it's sharp anti-Zionist leftists.
I first noticed this phenomenon in relation to Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), who pairs a domestic policy agenda that's almost Squad-like in its leftism with strong and vocal traditional pro-Israel commitments. Now, to be clear, I don't expect progressives to approve of these positions by Torres. But there's a common enough progressive line on Torres that's not "he's really strong on a lot of issues except for Israel"; or not even "he's really strong on a lot of issues, which makes the Israel thing really aggravating." This cadre of progressives hate Ritchie Torres with a passion; they basically view him as the devil. He's detested far more than most Democrats who are well to his right on most issues but who haven't been as vocal or front-facing in their pro-Israel politics as he is. And that pro-Israel orientation, in turn, is the sole reason why these progressives hate him and seethe at the fact that they haven't been able to primary him out -- they barely make any pretensions that anything else is motivating them.
More recently, we've started to see a flurry of commentators saying, more or less, that Biden's Israel policy -- specifically, his continued support for Israel in the midst of its campaign against Hamas in Gaza notwithstanding the devastating toll it's exacted on the Palestinian civilian population -- means they will not vote for him in 2024. Now, admittedly, for some of these people it's hard to say they're single-issue Israel voters because one suspects they're single-issue every issue -- they're just looking for some heresy they can cry blasphemy over and justify the nine trillionth self-indulgent "both parties are the same" essay (I have my doubts about the twice-over Jill Stein voter, for instance).
But there are others who really do seem to be pretty explicit that the only thing that's motivating their vote is Israel -- everything else is washed away. This piece making that argument is especially illustrative because it states flat out that Israel single-handedly renders meaningless a mountain of accomplishments and priorities that the author concedes should under normal circumstances represent essential progressive priorities:
Is sending weapons to Israel that it can use to decimate and kill a civilian population more important than Biden’s industrial policy? Is it more important than the Supreme Court, and abortion rights? Is it more important that all of the hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment? Is it more important than having a government that takes on corporate power concentration? Is it more important than the revival of organized labor? The person who is answering “yes” to all of those questions right now is Joe Biden himself.
Effort to pin the blame on Biden notwithstanding, the entire point of this litany is to say that for a significant cadre of voters all of these issues and accomplishments will count for squat in the face of Biden's current stance regarding Israel. While I'm dubious that the author actually has his finger on the pulse of a sufficiently large contingent of voters that it will actually make the political difference he thinks it will, he certainly is speaking for a vocal set that is not hiding their stance that Biden's Israel policy is the alpha and omega of their voting habits, and every other issue is irrelevant.
One can, of course, defend that position -- viewing America's policy on Israel (or Israel in this moment, anyway) as so essential that it outweighs every domestic policy item (and every other foreign policy item). People make their own choices on where their priorities lie. But if you thought it was a bit dodgy when it was (imagined that) Jewish voters were putting Israel above all other considerations, well, this isn't any different from that.
I understand having a firm moral line and drawing it where you do. But I only ask everyone who draws it here to seriously reflect on where it wasn't drawn and why. I know disabled people who, knee-jerk, drew it at the abdication on COVID, some of whom later backtracked not because Biden came around, but because we live in a two party system and the other side has been very clear about what it would do. Voting as harm reduction, the "vote blue no matter who" which people find understandably condescending. But if all the other issues -- continued oil drilling, public health, the refusal to enshrine roe vs wade, giving up on student loans, continued police militarization and 'tough on crime' policies, were "this would be a moral line but the other guy is proven worse on it" the question is why that doesn't hold here. Is it amnesia on Trump policies, on his bad faith ""peace"" plan, his personal relationship with the Netanyahu family, the embassy move done only to be provocative?
ReplyDeleteOn the flip side, the argument is, if there is nothing you'd withhold a vote for, no red line you will not hold Dems accountable on just because 'the other guy is worse' how do you move the needle at all?
To which my very incomplete answer, for now, has been, that technically, there is still a primary. Not that we haven't seen that play out in 2016 and 2020 -- with "bernie or bust" people. But I haven't actually heard the call to not vote for Biden tempered very often by "in the primaries, here are a list of people on or trying to get on the ballot who support what I support."
As a side note, in the Richie Torres is the devil discourse, which is a wild rabbit hole to fall down, we get a very clear distillation of what is totally not the same thing as the david icke type "zionist occupied government". It's totally different when you phrase it as "AIPAC owns congress." Cori Bush just put out a video calling out AIPAC for some wild things far beyond the scope of legitimate and universal critiques of PAC money in general. AIPAC, apparently, hates black and brown congresspeople, in addition (and these are not on her slides, at least) to being puppet masters, mesmerists, oppressive capitalists bribing everyone, and all the other old yarns that are fine so long as you're using AIPAC or, you know, Zionists. But not in the protocols sense, of course. If you think that, you're the real anti-semite, the current discourse goes.
I've seen very little examination of the slippage between "Zionist" as used by ZOG and "Zionist" as used by genuinely non-antisemitic critiques of Israeli actions. This is not a new slippage, it goes back to the Soviets.