On Harris, Israel, and the Jewish community
By : Adam Kessler
Adam Kessler served for eight years in the Baltimore JCRC primarily responsible for Israel advocacy, and 10 years as director of the Philadelphia JCRC. He is a member of the board of DJOP.
Well, here we are two weeks until the election. We are facing the abyss and I think all of us want to be sure we did all we could to get Harris/Walz elected. I know I have been busy with my Jewish PAC. (Democratic Jewish Outreach PA. www.DJOP.org.) We discussed what we should be doing in the remaining days and decided (among other things) that each of us should be reaching out to our circle of friends and family to address questions or concerns they may have. We do not know what effect this will have given that it is hard to imagine that there is such a thing anymore as an undecided voter or that anyone will be swayed by anything we might say at this point. But one never knows.
Of course, there is much to point out about Trump that we detest, his character most of all, but there is also his stance on women’s reproductive rights, taxes, the economy, immigration, foreign policy, his xenophobia, the list goes on. As the former director of the Jewish Community Relations Council in Philadelphia and now as part of a Jewish PAC let’s focus on two major issues of concern to our Jewish community: antisemitism and Israel. I am concerned about the amount of misinformation and distortion by the Republican party on these two topics. They have managed to create division inside our community raising questions by some, even Democrats who still are susceptible to the tired old tropes that Republicans are “better” on Israel and antisemitism despite a record that contradicts that claim. Too many of us recognize Trump’s shortcomings but are willing to give him a pass. I write this knowing that most of us will vote Democratic as in previous elections. This year we hope to improve on past performances because the stakes are so high. So this is an appeal to all of us who just might be able to sway that one doubting friend or family member to vote Harris/Walz in the remaining days coming up to the election.
With regard to Israel in particular, this division undoubtedly stems from two different approaches to a very complex situation. Republicans, who tend to be more unified as a party, have no problem politicizing their support for Israel despite pushing domestic concerns at the expense of aid to Israel. Last year after Oct. 7 they delayed for six months support for the military aid package for Israel pushed by the administration because they linked it to their partisan domestic priorities. That is their right but they can’t then also claim fidelity to Israel above all else and at the expense of Democrats. They are good at saying one thing and doing another. Democrats on the other hand are more complex, they represent many different groups who have varying approaches on most topics let alone the war in Gaza.
Despite many competing pressures from within, President Biden and VP Harris were able to support Israel’s security with record breaking military support and, at the same time, also pay appropriate attention to the plight of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. That is the proper role of a super-power who has to maintain credibility in order to remain influential with the many parties to the conflict in the international community. Simply “green lighting” every action by any government involved is not a sign of true friendship. This is a complex and fluid situation if there ever was one. It is unrealistic to assume that there won’t be disagreements about tactics and strategy from time to time even between close allies. Rushing to judge those inevitable disagreements each time as evidence of waning overall support or even hostility is a distortion of the facts and ignores overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This politicization by Republicans complicates the ongoing working relationship between Israel and the United States who are already burdened by the daily life and death decisions they must make.
On the question of antisemitism, this can be summed up quite simply; while antisemitism exists on both the right and the left, we have one political party, Republicans, whose top leader promotes and condones it and another political party, Democrats, whose leaders condemn it. This is in stark contrast to the past where leadership from both parties were unequivocal in their condemnation of antisemitism and bigotry of all kinds. I hope all members of our Jewish community will keep this in mind before they cast their vote.
I have attached materials that encompass these points from a few esteemed colleagues I served with in my time at the JCRC’s of Philadelphia and Baltimore plus an article from the Washington Post outlining the unprecedented military support given to Israel over the last year from the Biden/Harris administration. In an effort to make it easier for you to review, I have included excerpts from each article below. I hope it helps you in your conversations over the next two weeks. Please reach out if you have questions. I and DJOP am so happy to provide you with this important information. To send out information like this we need donations from wonderful supporters like you! If you wish to support our work please donate here: https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/donate2djop Adam
Abe Foxman was national director of the Anti-Defamation League for 28 years. He is a Holocaust survivor.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-most-important-vote-us-jews-will-ever-cast/
Key excerpts:
- Jews are safest in a pluralistic society, where democratic institutions and civil rights protections are strong. The brand of authoritarian populism, laced with Christian nationalism and white supremacy that we have seen being normalized by the GOP scares me…
- American nativism and isolationism back then kept the US from intervening in WWII, only doing so after five million Jews had already been murdered. Today, a new America First movement has a leader who would dispense with NATO and who plays footsie with the world’s worst autocrats, including Viktor Orban, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong-un…
- Vice President Harris and President Biden pushed through Congress almost $18 billion in military support after October 7th. Former President Trump played politics with military aid to Israel, instructing Republicans in Congress to link aid to Israel to border reform, which delayed the aid, and, in fact, his running mate voted against it…
- I also take seriously a longtime friend of Israel and Trump’s former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, who has warned that “Trump’s support for Israel in the first term is not guaranteed in the second term, because Trump’s positions are made on the basis of what’s good for Donald Trump, not on some coherent theory of national Security.” …
- And I applauded his moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. But his support often comes in tandem with the invocation of offensive stereotypes about Jews and dual loyalty charges. He continues to insult the millions of Jewish Americans who choose to vote for the opposing candidate or who simply don’t support him as being “ignorant,” “fools” or “disloyal.” In doing so, Trump has also set up Jews to be blamed if he loses the election…
- Trump has also said that Jewish leaders “should be ashamed of themselves” for calling him out for dining with antisemitic figures like Kanye West and white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Fuentes previously said “perfidious Jews” should be executed …
Rabbi Doug Kahn is the Executive Director Emeritus of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area. He has devoted more than 40 years to advocacy on behalf of the American Jewish community and continues to consult on community relations issues in the Jewish community.
Full article Why Trump is the wrong choice for the Jews | Doug Kahn | The Blogs
Key excerpts:
- Donald Trump has a blind spot regarding the Jewish people. The man speaks in antisemitic tropes. And when his audience is mostly Jewish, the antisemitism becomes even more pronounced…. He has repeatedly said that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion,” a comment the ADL publicly called “defamatory and patently false.” And he has gone so far as to openly push the “dual loyalty” trope, saying in 2019, “If you vote for a Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you are being very disloyal to Israel.” ….
- What’s more, Trump has said that Jews would be to blame if he doesn’t win in November. “In my opinion,” he said recently, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss” if current polling holds.
- Let’s be clear what that means. Trump is instructing others that Jews would be at fault if he loses. This risks the day-to-day safety of the Jewish community. It threatens us, putting us in the crosshairs of those who would be most angered by a Trump loss.
- While recognizing the importance of the Abraham Accords and the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the view “but he has done some good things” ignores the more insidious danger posed by Trump. The same excuse was once given to the likes of Louis Farrakhan, and we were appropriately outraged at the willingness of his defenders to overlook his extremism. Today, more than ever, we cannot afford to ignore what our better instincts tell us about Trump, the ugly words he utters, and the growing danger of those words being translated into action by true believers. Consider everything we know about Trump’s extremism: his failure to condemn white supremacy, his assault on institutions that safeguard our democracy, his advancement of racist views to stoke fear and sow deep division within our society…. As a people who throughout our diaspora history have sought to convey the dangers of overlooking the warning signs, we owe it to ourselves and our country not to become the overlookers ourselves.
Martin J. Raffel served for 27 years as senior vice president at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), an umbrella body with 16 national member organizations and over 120 locally based organizations (JCRCs). He was JCPA’s lead professional on matters related to Israel, world Jewry and international human rights.
Give me Harris and Walz for the next four years | Martin Raffel | The Blogs (timesofisrael.com)
Key excerpts:
- … (We) hear again and again that former president Donald Trump moved the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It’s true, …. but it possesses only symbolic value and fails to advance Israel’s security and the search for peace.
- The Biden/Harris administration… has stood by Israel since that awful October 7 providing billions of dollars of additional military assistance — repeatedly working around a Republican controlled House that held up the administration’s supplemental aid package for Israel and Ukraine — and defending Israel before biased and hypercritical international forums.
- The US joined with a coalition of regional forces to protect Israel from the barrage of Iranian missiles and drones last April. And we have deployed naval strike groups, as well as a nuclear submarine, to the Eastern Mediterranean to deter Iran further. These represent only a small number of examples of how the administration has concretely helped an Israel at war. https://jewishdems.org/crisis-in-israel-key-points/
- What can we expect from an administration led by Kamala Harris, … (In her) acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention … She declared, “Let me be clear: I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organization Hamas caused on October 7…”
- … Would Israel’s security be best served by a Harris administration that supports NATO and believes fundamentally in America’s obligation to stand by our democratic allies, or by an “America First” neo-isolationist and thoroughly transactional President Trump who has essentially indicated he would hand Ukraine to his pal Vladimir Putin on a silver platter?
Brown University’s Cost of War Project, as reported by the Washington Post, Oct. 7, 2024
Excerpts:
- The United States has spent a record of at least $17.9 billion on military aid to Israel in the year since the unprecedented onslaught by Palestinian terror group Hamas in southern Israel sparked the war in Gaza, … An additional $4.86 billion has gone into stepped-up US military operations in the region since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre, …
- The report … is one of the first tallies of estimated US costs as President Joe Biden’s administration backs Israel in its conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon and seeks to contain hostilities by Iranian proxies in the region.
- Israel — an ally of the United States since its 1948 founding — is the biggest recipient of US military aid in history, …. the $17.9 billion spent since October 7, 2023…. is by far the most military aid sent to Israel in one year. The US committed to providing billions …. Barack Obama’s presidency set the annual amount for Israel at $3.8 billion through 2028.
- Unlike the United States publicly documented military aid to Ukraine, it was impossible to get the full details of what the US has shipped Israel since the last October 7, so the $17.9 billion for the year is a partial figure, the researchers said.
