Jews for Kamala are living in denial Why should we have to side with antisemites?

I don’t know how one changes the minds of others. Through 50 years of writing, I’ve regularly heard that film and drama should be enlisted in the service of good works; but no one has ever had his mind changed by a play or movie. That’s not how they function — they’re entertainment, with as little ability to alter one’s thinking as does a meal. Exodus no more reduced antisemitism than tacos clarify the border crisis.

All the guests at the presentation were enraged at the eruption of American and international Jew hatred. The World Court, whatever that is, had indicted the Israeli Prime Minister as a war criminal; our President and Vice President pointedly insulted him on his visit to Congress; the administration withholds the release of arms voted by Congress for Israeli defence in contravention of the Constitution; and so on. The affronted Jews each proclaimed what he considered a solution, but which I understood as cries of anguish.

Islamists at home and abroad have been demonising the Jewish State since 1948: why would a bunch of septuagenarian Jews in Hollywood conclude they could be defeated by “changing the narrative”? The answer: they did not conceive of them being defeated, they merely wanted peace, which, to their minds, might be achieved, rationally, without war, through mere dialogue, as if murderous savagery were the result of misunderstanding.

The proximate solution to Jewish vulnerability — which I saw but did not say — was not in persuading others to think differently, but in so-persuading oneself. The problem that day was not to be found in “world opinion”, but in that room. We Jews, without a country for 2,000 years, have always been second-class citizens, where we were not “guests”, which is to say “visitors on suffrage”. The assimilated successful German Jews of the 19th century embraced reform de-accesionism (divestiture of language, observance, and tradition) and assimilation, which included an indictment of the other: their poor co-relgionaries in the East, whose arcane practices, they agreed, explained much of the hatred leaching over onto “Civilised Jews”. They offered their reasoned betrayal of their brothers as part of the initiation fee into the liberal world, a process we find repeated today. (See: Noam Chomsky, George Soros, Bernie Sanders, Tom Friedman, Anthony Blinken.)

We American Jews, traditionally, vote for the Democrats, since we look around and see social ills — and believe it is the job of the government to eradicate them. But this concern with social justice is a warped understanding of the Biblical injunction to do justice. The Bible admonishes us not to respect the claims of the rich, nor of the poor, but to pursue justice. It can be pursued, we learn, only through application of previously determined rules: set by, for example, the Torah, the Talmud and the Constitution.

“Social Justice”, though, is the appeal to the sentient to assert that the rules are insufficient, and that “surely there must be a better way”. But there is not. A dedication to law, as untidy and indeed absurd as it may sometimes be, is the firewall between peace (even precarious peace) and anarchy.

“You cannot spill a drop of American Blood without spilling the blood of the whole world,” wrote Herman Melville in 1849. “Be he an Englishman, Frenchman, Dane or Scot… We are not a narrow tribe of men, with a bigoted Hebrew nationality — whose blood has been debased in an attempt to ennoble it, by maintaining an exclusive succession among ourselves.”

Melville might have stuck to his whales, but he also trots out his antisemitism, turning his proclamation of an American Brotherhood into an oxymoron. Jews are despised for enforced separatism and for attempted assimilation; as we are loathed as a minority up until the moment when minority status is preferred but is denied us, and we concur that that’s fine, too. Our problem is not public opinion — but denial.

Today, the Democrats have become the party of antisemitism. Obama and Biden’s policies have given money and arms to Iran, and withheld congressionally mandated military aid to Israel — and yet Jews vote Democratic. Charles Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, is a Jew, representing a significantly Jewish constituency. He pointedly insulted Prime Minister Netanyahu, on his visit to Congress, refusing to shake his hand. For whom was Schumer performing his discourtesy? Who does he think he is, and what does he think might defend him, and his constituents, should the Caliphate come knocking?

Kamala Harris, as Vice President, is President of the US Senate. It was both her responsibility and her honour to preside over the Joint Session of Congress convened to hear Netanyahu. Instead, she chose to attend a reunion of her college sorority. Can one imagine a more appallingly calculated slight? Her absence announced that, under her administration, the United States will abandon Israel. And yet American Jews will support her.

I believe that a Jew who votes for the Democrats is a damned fool. I know that no one ever acts for any reason other than “it seemed like a good idea at the time”. What is the idea good enough to induce Jews to side with antisemites? It may be called liberalism, but it contains the unavowed fear of demonisation. The good news is that the Jew need not worry, as he has already been demonised.

As Rebecca West writes in her masterpiece, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: “There are better things in life than fighting, but they are better only if their doers could have fought had they chosen.”