-Analysis-
CAIRO — In recent comments former U.S. President Donald Trump said that any Jewish person who votes for Democrats “hates their religion,” adding that “they hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves because Israel will be destroyed.”
It was not the first time that the majority of Jews faced accusations from Trump, who had a hard-line pro-Israel stance during his four years in the White House. Indeed, he had previously accused those Jews who vote for the Democratic Party of disloyalty and of not doing the right thing for Israel.
In the tight race that Trump and Biden fought in 2020, 77% of American Jews voted for the Democratic candidate, compared to only 21% for Trump. And there are no indications that this percentage will change significantly in the upcoming election rematch in November.
American Jews have traditionally voted Democratic, as it is the party that tends to look out for ethnic and religious minorities. However, the Republicans have begun to gradually change this tradition. That’s given to the growing influence of the conservative religious missionary movement, which sees in Israel a religious prophecy that must be fulfilled, in addition to the rise of pro-Palestinian voices among minority support movements, in which many Democrats are active.
People got to know
This time, Trump’s repeated statements struck a particularly sensitive chord among Jewish Americans. The war, which began on Oct. 7, has caused an unprecedented division in the ranks of the Democratic Party where the progressive wing’s influence is growing, with calls for an immediate halt to the war and a rejection of the decades-old American policy of supporting and aiding Israel even as it violates universal rights and international law.
That policy of blind support, which has blocked Americans from even hearing the Palestinian narrative, is driven by a media that includes important Jewish-American businessmen whose commitment to the Zionist project is unwavering.
Such Zionist narrative also presents Israel as a model that is similar in some aspects to the American experience in the establishment of the new homeland by migrants who came to rebuild it from all corners of the earth, amid difficult circumstances and a hostile atmosphere that required first getting rid of the indigenous population.
The result is that criticism of Israel in the United States remained taboo for many decades. But this has begun to change gradually in recent years, as social media allows the bypassing of traditional media in order to influence younger people in particular. The success of the Palestinians in presenting their cause on basic humanitarian grounds linked to their rights as equal human beings, regardless of the religion of those practicing occupation and racism.
For this reason, Palestinians find greater support and sympathy among movements that defend the rights of Black people and minorities in general. Of course, the intensity of this popular support escalated as the world and a large segment of Americans were stunned by the scale of destruction and killing in Gaza, which quickly far exceeded losses Israel suffered in the Oct. 7 attack.
Schumer’s watershed
In this context, the condemnation of Israel’s policies in Gaza by Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer has gained particular importance. It has come from the highest-ranking elected Jewish-American official, who made sure to emphasize in his speech that he is still a Zionist who loves Israel. This love, he said, is what drives him to criticize the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which risk turning Israel into a pariah state.
Young Americans have only known images of occupation and hateful racism against the Palestinian people.
The condemnation of Israel this time did not come from a radical leftist activist who participates in the weekly pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have been sweeping American cities. Rather, it came from a 74-year-old veteran Zionist, member of the generation of American politicians whose fascination with the Zionist project multiplied in the resounding moment of victory in 1967, and their country’s policy subsequently crafted to support Israeli gains.
But this should also remind us that younger Americans — specifically the age group between 18 and 35 years — did not witness that stage in the history of the Zionist state. In recent years they have only known images of occupation and hateful racism against the Palestinian people, periodic wars in which thousands of Palestinians are killed without punishment.
No longer a sacred cow
A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University in November found that the number of those who support Palestine in the Democratic Party exceeded the number of Israel supporters for the first time, by a difference of 11%. In 2022, the percentage of people who supported Israel was 34% higher.
But the most important figures were in the age group under 35 years, where the percentage of supporters of the Palestinians reached 58%.
Of course, the percentage of support for Israel in general among Americans, regardless of their party affiliation, is still high, but it is certainly no longer like it was before. And it is no longer a taboo for Democratic legislators to propose halting the supply of weapons to Israel’s military if it continues its indiscriminate killing and starving of the Palestinians.
This is why many Jewish Americans who used to embrace the progressive positions of the Democratic Party — such as racial equality, freedom of speech, the right to abortion, and LGBTQ rights — now find themselves in an extremely difficult and contradictory position of trying to reconcile being both a progressive and a Zionist. Most no longer want to grant Israel and those in charge of the Zionist project the monopoly on speaking on behalf of the Jews across the world, as if Judaism and Zionism were synonymous.
An electoral issue
The number of Jewish Americans participating in the demonstrations to stop the genocide in Gaza remains a relative minority, but they are notable, and the beginning of an unprecedented shift in dealing with the assumptions imposed by the American official establishment, which views any criticism of Israel to be anti-Semitic.
Israel is no longer the singular sacred cow in the United States.
Trump’s accusation against Biden and Schumer of being “haters of Israel,” is clearly a play for votes. Yet there may be another notable shift in the mood of the American electorate, in addition to the dilemma facing American Jews who will vote for the Democratic Party: The position on Israel and the Palestinian cause has turned into an electoral issue in a country where internal issues usually dominate voters’ concerns.
What is certain is that Israel is no longer the singular sacred cow in the United States. It has to fight a more difficult battle with younger American generations who reject the lies of the official establishment of the past.
