Having worked literally at the very heart of the Israel lobby, I can tell you that for Israel to be fighting a war for 10 days without a resolution of support from Congress, is unprecedented in modern times. It’s been at least 25 years, maybe much longer, since anything like that happened. Normally it doesn’t take more than five days. (As of this Wednesday, it’s clear that it won’t happen at all.)
- I can also share that there are still a large number of deep-dyed, third or fourth or fifth generation Democrat Jews—many of them, campaign donors—for whom Israel is a top issue, the top issue, or the only issue. These folks didn’t like Trump, yet some can be turned—but not if the GOP just sits on its rump.
- Most Democrats in Congress are still cordial with the Israel lobby, but they know their base is on the other side. A new poll done with the participation of The Trafalgar Group (a “gold standard” pollster) shows that Democrat voters are substantially more likely to blame Israel than Hamas, Iran, etc., for the current violence.
- Members of the Democrat “squad” in the House of Representatives have been using the Israel-Hamas war as a fundraising tool. They have no direct say in foreign policy, but they have gotten way out in front of their leadership, which, sadly, has departed from tradition by avoiding any truly “high-profile”, unambiguously pro-Israel statements on the Israel-Hamas war. Of course, the Democrats know how their voters feel.
- Pro-Israel demonstrators have been assaulted in New York and Arizona at a minimum, and a pair of Jewish diners in Los Angeles were jumped and beaten by thugs, some wearing Arab headscarves, on Tuesday night. A group of protestors waved Palestinian flags and chanted slogans for the destruction of Israel across the street from a synagogue (!!!!!) in Skokie, Illinois, this past Sunday. Morons across the country have been holding up “Star of David equals Swastika” type signs, insulting the memory of history’s greatest genocide and its victims—more than just a “microaggression”! Across the pond, in the UK, Jews going about their daily business have been verbally harassed and physically assaulted.
- Since late last year, Democrats have been shameless about concocting a totally fictitious, “white supremacist” threat against Asian-Americans—when in fact, most hate crimes against Asians have, sadly, been committed by African-Americans, i.e. persons within the most reliable Democrat voting bloc. It’s gotten so ridiculous that the bogus ‘widespread violence against Asians…and therefore, structural racism’ talking points have even made it into official messaging to employees at U.S. Government agencies.
Where are the Democrats now? They are silent.
- Thousands of Democrat voters marched against Israel in Washington, DC this past Saturday. This was probably the largest, specifically anti-Israel protest ever held in our nation’s capital. Normally they do this type of thing in New York. Now, they feel emboldened. It looks like a good stretch of Pennsylvania Ave. was closed off for their convenience. Did I mention, these are Democrat voters? This is the Democrat base.
- These are Biden voters! Why doesn’t Biden get them under control? He needs to get in front of the country and call for an end to the hatred! But he won’t, because the Democrats need the Jew-hater vote!
- Just flipping the Democrat script, you see how it works? And it’s true. For a long time, most of the Jew-haters have been on the Left, or voting Democrat anyway. Someone needs to say that on prime time.
WHERE IS THE GOP?
- It’s not enough to try to run with a pro-Israel resolution in Congress, ten days after the war started. (Thanks, Senator Tim Scott, what took so long?) As of Wednesday evening, Republican “thought leaders” in the Senate have finally just barely started to wake up, but ten days? It’s almost a joke now.
- Democrat voters are openly supporting an Islamic fundamentalist, misogynist, terrorist organization dedicated to the destruction of our most loyal ally in the Near East. As of Wednesday, Biden has been getting on Israel to unilaterally wind down its self-defense operation, partly due to pressure from the Democrat lunatic base and “the squad.” In short, Democrats are surrendering to—even supporting—terrorism. My goodness, it’s even worse than an “insurrection”! Where are my pearls, I must clutch them!
- If the shoe was on the other foot, Democrats would be all over the airwaves, calling out Republicans for inaction in the face of—even, direct support of—terrorism, racism, genocide.
- Republicans still haven’t learned the no-shame game. They are stuck in a lazy inertia, unwilling to fight on EVERY FRONT like Democrats do. Although the GOP has a mad-as-well, fighting base, it still acts like a bunch of timid, directionless, emasculated wimps at the top. When is that going to change? We know they can do better. All they need to do is convince themselves that Israel is actually Judge Kavanaugh in disguise.
- The GOP needs to show up and fight—open every possible new front, crack the Democrats’ bizarre coalition open like an egg, separate them from their donors, use every tool available, put them on the defensive. Do Republicans want to win or not? At least, they should act like they deserve to.
UPDATE : May 22, 2021
Without getting into the obscure, sad details of what went down in Congress, what we’ve seen in the past 36-48 hours is a total collapse of the Israel lobby’s influence among Congressional Democrats. For the first time ever, Israel was forced to cut short a defensive military operation not just from U.S. pressure (that’s happened many times), but specifically for U.S. domestic/internal political reasons (never happened.) Prime Minister Netanyahu simply had no choice.
Now here’s a Thursday night video out of New York of a mob of Palestinian flag-waving, free-roaming goombahs—at least three of them wearing Arab headscarves, and surely all Biden voters—threatening, cursing, and spitting at a couple of diners whom they reportedly thought were Jewish. There are a number of much worse videos coming out of that city now, including one of Arab youth assaulting Jewish kids, and one of Arab men cruising down a Manhattan side street, stopping the car in the middle of the street, getting out and picking fights with anyone who “looks” Jewish. This is now totally out of control. One New York Jewish man is at the hospital in serious condition.
And yet, I have some “inside intel” that my wonderful GOP readership on Capitol Hill was, sadly, with just a couple of exceptions, thoroughly un-receptive and not interested in my below message (scroll down if this is new to you.)
All Republicans want to be seen as friends of Jews and Israel, but evidently, in many cases, that doesn’t run deep, because they’re obviously not going to war over it, and moreover, calling the Democrats out for covering for and seeking the votes of Jew-haters, terrorist-lovers, and morons who want to bring foreign conflicts to our streets is a step too far for them. (I’m not talking about just cutting one local ad against Senator Schumer.)
Republicans as a whole are not going to play the “disown your extremists!” game that the Democrats played against Trump; it’s too unsportsmanlike, you see. You can’t do it while holding brandy and a cigar.
Their Frank Luntz marching orders now seem obvious—Republicans hope to keep a low profile and have the 2022 midterms simply fall into their laps, thanks to inflation, gas prices, suburban secular white female “swing voters” coming down from their COVID/BLM highs, or whatever. That’s the plan. It might work, or it might turn the base off so much that they outsmart themselves and lose anyway.
UPDATE : May 23, 2021
Senator Hawley has said he will introduce a resolution condemning anti-Israel incitement and violence against Jews. That’s very nice—Hawley despite his freshman status is a true leader—but this type of thing is mostly aimed at campaign fundraising among Republicans (first and foremost, in this case, Republican Jews.) It will have essentially no real-world “play” or “presence”, even in the unlikely event that it clears the Democrat-run Congress without some koom-ba-ya watering-down to condemn “all violence anywhere in the world”, or some such formula.
Republicans can do much better. Imagine if some top GOP senator went on Fox today, and said the following:
“I will be sending a letter to President Biden later in the week, calling for an FBI investigation into all recent acts of violence and intimidation against Jews in New York, L.A., and elsewhere. This is punishable under Federal hate crime laws (18 USC 249 & 241) and we need to pursue it. I’m old enough to remember how the FBI sent nine agents down to NASCAR to investigate the noose hoax. If they can do that, they can look into these attacks, which are almost all on video. We’ve got to make sure these thugs understand they can’t bring the Arab-Israeli conflict to the streets of New York. They nearly killed a Jewish man in Times Square, it’s out of control. We’ve got to pursue them with the full force of Federal law. Now, I don’t think Biden will do it, because we know Democrats are running a big tent with both Jews and Jew-haters inside it. They’ve got one leg on each side of the fence. Of course, they don’t want any attention to this violence. It’s an embarrassment to them, Biden’s said nothing about it, the media’s not connecting the dots. But we’ll see how Biden responds, if he responds.”
WHAT ARE THE CHANCES (HOW CLOSE TO ZERO?) THAT ANY TOP REPUBLICAN WILL SAY ANYTHING REMOTELY LIKE THIS ON NATIONAL TV IN THE NEAR FUTURE?
