Soccer Dad: Demcorats, jews and israel

May 1, 2007

Demcorats, jews and israel

In an effort to keep their huge share of the Jewish vote, Democrats continue to claim that they are better for Israel, yet their actions leave me wondering.

The NJDC (National Jewish Democratic Council) has been very vocal in its blog defending Speaker Pelosi's trip (with a number of other both Democratic and Republican politicians) to Syria.

Two weeks ago it quoted an editorial from the Baltimore Jewish Times defending Pelosi's trip

Diplomacy is not a weakness: That�s a lesson the Bush administration, mired in Iraq and increasingly isolated in the world, doesn�t seem to learn.

House Speak Nancy Pelosi�s recent Middle East mission cast an uncomfortable spotlight on that reality. Ms. Pelosi, a California Democrat born in Baltimore, was skewered by the administration for violating its policy of keeping the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad in the diplomatic deep freeze.

Much of that criticism was pure politics, not policy; the administration didn�t seem to care much about the Republican delegations that also went to Damascus over Congress�s spring break.

Except those Republicans who went to Damascus weren't photographed on the front page with the dictator of that country. They weren't in any leadership position. They were wrong, but they were not as high profile as Speaker Pelosi.

That is why Speaker Pelosi came in for the special criticism.

On Friday the Washington Post weighed in with its criticism of the Speaker, No Results in Damascus which concludes

The danger of offering "friendship" and "hope" to a ruler such as Mr. Assad is that it will be interpreted as acquiescence by the United States to the policies of dictatorship. Ms. Pelosi's courting of Mr. Assad didn't cause Mr. al-Bunni's prison sentence this week -- but it certainly did not discourage it.

(The same lesson about encouraging a dictator applied to Arafat too. But logic, when it comes to the Palestinians, is, shall we say, uncertain.)

The NJDC didn't address the Post's criticism, which can hardly be characterized as partisan. Pelosi's make nice approach to Syria didn't just harm Syrian dissidents, it strengthened Assad politically. That's bad for the United States and Israel too.

Also Democrats are proving that Ehud Olmert isn't just unpopular in Israel, but here too. Shmuel Rosner wrote

The Waxman-Ackerman statement doesn't leave any room for guessing game. They were troubled by the continuous speculation and discussion of the Israel-Democratic feud, as was lastly presented by my friend Natan Guttman in The Forward. "Democrats are still angry about what they see as Olmert's desperate attempts to align himself with President Bush even if it means wading into American political controversies... This [different] source said, "even as our leadership is working to calm things down, the rank and file Democrats are getting tired of these Israeli maneuvers." If Israel doesn't "get its act together" and doesn't reciprocate these pacifying moves - "if Olmert keeps doing such irresponsible things" - it will get more "difficult for Democrats who do care about Israel" to defend their position. It almost sounded like a threat.

Mere Rhetoric objects

They proudly grant legitimacy to genocidal lunatics who openly declare their intention to wipe out the Jewish state. They aggressively espouse policies that would objectively empower the most radical anti-Semites on the planet. They implicitly repeat vicious anti-Semitic libels that have costs tens of thousands of Jews their lives. And then they have the nerve to threaten the sitting Prime Minister of a sovereign ally because he points out that maybe he might prefer people who don't behave so atrociously.

There's an additional problem too. PM Olmert is not my idea of an ideal leader, but he has excellent political skills. (How could he survive otherwise.) So why in the world would he risk the wrath of the ascendant Democratic party to support a weak Republican President? It must be that his support for the war in Iraq is based on his own assessment the war from Israel's perspective.

The Democrats forget that the war was initially very popular in pro-Israel circles. Saddam, among other things, was funding suicide bombers. (A number Israeli leaders, though, apparently thought that Iran was the bigger threat than Iraq in 2003.) But as the war has become unpopular in this country, Democrats, even those who initially supported the war, started changing their tune and giving the reason that the war was bad for Israel too.

So when Olmert says that he supports the war he's undermining this fig leaf. The Democratic anger seems to be angry at Olmert for looking for his country's best interests instead of their political best interests.

Whether it is in their leader's actions in Syria or their vocal criticism of Israel's Prime Minister, Democrats, choosing between politics and Israel are choosing politics.

Democrats, Israel