Diaspora Jews face pitiful political decisions.
Many feel they must choose between their interests as Jews and their interests as citizens. These used to be aligned, but have now diverged — as the West’s commitment to liberal decency has declined.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan of Moral Clarity.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.
Share this essay using the link: https://www.futureofjewish.com/p/diaspora-jews-face-pitiful-political-decisions
After the Holocaust, Jews found two new homes: Israel and liberal democracies across the world.
Diaspora Jews are often seen as Left-leaning, but it is more nuanced than that. More accurately, Jews tend to vote for the party they see as the more democratic. The Holocaust was not just a product of racism, but also totalitarianism, so Jews see democracy as their greatest protector.
The choice is particularly stark for America’s seven million Jews. Antisemitism dwells at both ends of the political spectrum, but presently there seems to be more in the Democratic Party, which American Jews traditionally support. The party’s far-Left (including Islamists), especially its younger cohorts, are vociferously antisemitic and anti-Israel.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has been deceitful and duplicitous in his treatment of Israel. He has supported it with one hand, threatened it with the other, and undermined it with that invisible third hand that conniving politicians always seem to possess.
Jews are ultimately grappling with two intertwining questions:
1) Who would be better for Jews right now?
Surging antisemitism has created immediate problems.
Is it safe to wear a kippah? Are synagogues and Jewish businesses being threatened or attacked? Is anti-Jewish hate speech being normalized? Can Jews attend their places of work and study un-harassed? Are governments acting, in word and deed, to protect Jews? Are Jewish children safe at school?
Few American Jews have had to ask such questions. These were their grandparents’ concerns, from which life in democratic America was supposed to liberate them.
2) Who is better for Israel?
Most Jews support Israel but have had the luxury of not having to think too much about it because U.S. support for Israel has been bipartisan. That is still the case, but this could change with demographic shifts, the Democratic Party’s tilt to the Left, and the Republican Party’s renewed flirtation with isolationism.
Israel’s existence makes Jews everywhere safer. Rising Jew hatred is making many Jews consider moving to Israel for sanctuary. That makes Israel’s existence, security, and success, a more pressing concern in American Jews’ lives than previously. They might be too busy with their own lives to care about Middle East politics, but Middle East politics cares about them. American politics, too.
Not Just the U.S.
Jews in Canada, Britain, Australia, and France are facing similarly difficult questions.
Canada’s 400,000-strong Jewish community is facing rampant antisemitism. Although oft-imagined to be a bastion of decency, seal-clubbing Canada has a long antisemitic history. It took only 5,000 Jewish refugees between 1933 to 1948, the fewest of any Allied nation.
Canada was also among the countries that in 1939 turned away the MS St Louis, a ship carrying over 900 Jewish refugees trying to escape Nazi extermination. The Canadian Government apologized for this in 2018, which did not help the 274 on that ship who died in Nazi death camps.
After many decades of improvement and prosperity for Canadian Jews, Canada has reverted to its antisemitic mean. It has imported Islamism — and the war within Islam between moderates and Islamists — through a lax immigration policy. Canada takes in about half a million immigrants a year, a huge number on a per capita basis.
Such rapid immigration makes proper vetting impossible and assimilation barely necessary. Muslims, including extremists, have become a significant political demographic to which politicians pander with their customary lack of shame. As everywhere, the far-Left have adopted their cause.
Canada, under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from the Liberal Party, has taken morally despicable anti-Israel positions at the United Nations. It has called for a ceasefire that would benefit the murderous Hamas terror group, and halted weapons exports to Israel to make it harder for the world’s only Jewish state to defend itself. The country is pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a liberal democracy.
In Britain, we might call the situation hospice care. Its 275,000 Jews are concerned. British voters have for years said they want fewer immigrants, and more control over who can enter. Governments on both sides of politics have ignored voters’ wishes.
The result is that Islamism is now mainstream and the government’s policy towards Israel has an unmistakable antisemitic stench. The commentariat classes are more scared of being called racists, or of losing the Islamist vote, than they are of the Islamists taking over.
The ruling Conservative Party, this week under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has failed utterly. The British Labor Party, led by Keir Starmer, will win power later this year and find creative ways to make things worse. His party is deeply stained with antisemitism. Britain’s fall may be imminent.
In Australia, which has a small Jewish community of 100,000 people, Jews have not traditionally voted as a block. That may be changing. The ruling Australian Labor Party, under dishwater-dull Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, has failed to take a strong stance against anti-Semitism, and offered only limp support for Israel.
The government’s appeasement of its Leftist base has left many Australian Jews bitter and disaffected. The government keeps calling for a ceasefire that is against Israel’s interests, and it is considering recognizing a Palestinian state unilaterally. Australia has shown Israel that it is an unreliable ally that cannot be trusted. Its Asian neighbors are taking note. It is a foreign policy catastrophe.
Australia has likewise imported Islam’s civil war through immigration. In a perfect act of moral debauchery, the government refuses to acknowledge this for fear that racist antisemites will call them Islamophobic. The government has cynically sold out Australian Jews to win votes from supporters of the Australian Greens, a quasi-Stalinist party popular with clueless inner-city types. I wish I were making this up.
France’s 500,000 Jews, the largest population in Europe, also feel threatened. While the government did ban “pro-Palestinian” rallies, antisemitic hate crimes have soared. Jews are scared to go out.
The French Government under President Emmanuel Macron, whose foreign ministry obviously lacks competent legal advisors, has told Israel that it will be committing war crimes if it attacks Hamas in areas with civilians, and if it moves civilians out of harm’s way. In other words, Israel has no right to defend itself. That is reprehensible.
France’s problem with Islamism is noteworthy for another reason. Unlike the Anglosphere’s approach to immigration, which is to develop multicultural societies consciously, France has always taken assimilation seriously. Its approach is to be fiercely secular and to make everyone who immigrates become French.
The aim is a multi-ethnic, but largely monocultural state. This approach has failed, too. The naivety of thinking you could reason with jihadism is astounding. It is like they have never read a book or looked out the window.
Thus, the situation is grim. Many Diaspora Jews are confused about how they should vote and what they should do. The liberal democratic homes that they cherish and to which they have contributed so much, are disappearing without a fight. Many are asking themselves if they should get an Israeli passport for insurance.
The answer is probably yes.
Guess what, I hate to break it to you but the West's commitment to " liberal decency" has been as much of a hoax as " palestine" and the "palestinian people "
I'm Canadian - and the author's description of the situation here is spot on. We Canadian Jews have one hope: the Conservative Party opposition leader Pierre Poilievre who came out strongly pro-Israel and has been wooing Canadian Jews at various events. (Search him on YouTube for some of his speeches at Canadian synagogues.) Poilievre stands a good chance of beating the far-left, anti-Semitic Trudeau at the next federal election because of his stand on other issues and, to date, doesn't seem overly concerned about offending the huge bloc of Canadian Muslims who vastly outnumber Canadian Jews. Time will tell....