“If I had lived in Germany in the 1930’s, I would have been braver than those people!” Are you sure? Life is funny. I remember all kinds of statements like that a few years ago by people who were sure that antisemitism would never be a problem in the United States or the West again. That wasn’t really the case, but you really had to work to avoid seeing it.
The rule is simple: things change. Very few people are driving the same brand of car they used the first time they drove to the polls. There are multiple other changes. Should I keep voting the way I’ve always voted? Have I changed or have the parties changed?
Alan Dershowitz has every Jewish, Democratic, and liberal credential one could possibly want. His latest book is Why I Quit the Dems: And So Should You! (confessions of a reluctant Republican*) urges Jews and other lifelong liberals to leave the current Democratic Party.
He starts with a forty-page explanation. Then he has about a hundred pages of his columns over time showing how he got there. His entire argument addresses that question.
We’ve all been taught that the Democrats are philosemitic, fought against bigotry, went to war against Hitler when the Republicans were still isolationist, and so on. That is true, and that is why I used to be a Democrat. But it is only partially true.
The parties have changed in many ways. I’m going to focus on foreign policy, Nazism, and Israel in this article.
Jerry Klinger is president of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation. He had an interesting discussion of Presidents Roosevelt and Nixon in the August 2012 edition of The Jewish Magazine.
Both men were antisemitic. Klinger described FDR as a pernicious and Patrician antisemite. President Roosevelt made defeating Hitler the war’s focus. He and the media downplayed the status of the Jews. He infamously turned away a ship full of Jews trying to flee Germany. The New York Times refused to provide any in-depth coverage of the treatment of the Jews during the war.
Harry Truman was another Democrat who acted in antisemitic ways personally, but was very helpful to Jews and Israel. Despite a lifelong friendship with a business partner, Truman let his wife refuse to host Jews in their home. He recognized the State of Israel eleven minutes after its founding despite considerable opposition from prominent members of his own cabinet. They correctly warned him about the long-term problems he would cause, but he did it anyway.
Israeli and American views of Richard Nixon differ starkly. Israel was caught off guard when the Arab-Israeli War of 1973 started with a surprise attack on the holiest Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur. The Israelis were initially losing badly, especially in terms of supplies. They asked the Americans for help. Klinger noted that “Nixon may have been anti-Semitic, but he was not anti-Israeli.”
“As preoccupied as he was with Watergate, Nixon came straight to the point, announcing that Israel must not lose the war. He ordered that the deliveries of supplies, including aircraft, be sped up and that Israel be told that it could freely expend all of its consumables — ammunition, spare parts, fuel, and so forth — in the certain knowledge that these would be completely replenished by the United States without any delay.”
Klinger says the following about how Israeli leaders viewed Nixon:
Yitzhak Rabin held him in the highest regard, according to Rabin’s close friend, Yerach Tal, the American editor of Ha’aretz. Golda Meir describes Nixon in her autobiography as the best friend Israel ever had in the presidency and does so in life and death terms.”
Americans obviously have a different view. Golda Meir’s sister, Clara, lived in America and criticized Nixon. In a letter, Golda wrote:
Look, Clara, you’re an American. You don’t like Nixon. I’m an Israeli. I’ll never forget that if it hadn’t been for Nixon, we would have been destroyed.
Klinger concludes his discussion of Nixon as follows:
Jews do not have a very good track record telling the difference between who is an anti-Semite and who is a friend but not pro-Jewish.
President Nixon died in 1994. He is still reviled by most Jews. They live oblivious to the greatest debt conceivable owed by Jews to an anti-Semite,
Life.
This failure to acknowledge Nixon’s help is part of a pattern Klinger describes.
American establishment Jewry remains very protective of President Roosevelt. They were and are the opposite with Republicans and Richard Nixon in particular.
That pattern continues with the current Republican President. Donald Trump has Jewish grandchildren and has been a strong protector of Israel.
He believes Iran is a serious danger. Its leaders have been saying “Death to Israel!” and “Death to America!” for fifty years. He thinks that when people keep saying what they want to do, you should believe them. He knows his history. Adolf Hitler was ignored when he wrote his plans in Mein Kampf. Trump has seen other American leaders downplay the Iranian’s shouted threats. He doesn’t ignore them.
He has seen Iran fund terrorism around the world and will not tolerate the idea of a world where those people have nuclear weapons. He is fighting Iran to keep Israel, Europe, the United States, and the world safe. Yes. It helps Bibi Netanyahu - and the rest of the world.
Today is October 7th. It is the anniversary of the massacre of innocent Israelis. Dershowitz’s book challenges those who ask, “What can I do?” His answer is simple. The Democratic Party isn’t what you’ve been supporting for the last four or five decades. The Democratic Socialists (DSA) have people who are loudly antisemitic. If you vote for your local “moderate Democrat”, you could put one of the DSA people in a committee chairmanship where they could do a lot of harm.
It is up to you. Stay comfortable and vote by habit or take the time to study Dershowitz’s book and consider what to do to protect every vulnerable group.
I know one thing. If we fail and another disastrous pogrom happens, I know what the future will hold. In another eighty years or so, people will gather around and say, “If I had lived in America around 2030, I would have been braver than those people!”