A recent conference of Jewish Democrats offers some insight into how Jews are attempting to reconcile their political identity with their party’s explosion of anti-Semitism.
The gathering suggests an unusual dynamic is emerging within the Jewish left coalition.
The conference was hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America. While it is technically the Democratic version of the Republican Jewish Coalition, there are key differences—first and foremost that the RJC is much more willing to confront Republicans who clash with RJC’s Jewish values. The JDCA, by contrast, has a much lighter touch. Such confrontation is usually carried out by a different Democratic group, the Democratic Majority for Israel. The fact that the JDCA left a vacuum in that one area—fully battling anti-Semitic party candidates—for DMFI to fill is an important part of the story, because it helps explain how anti-Semitism grew unchecked within the party.
The JDCA also deals poorly with criticism, which has created a kind of ideological and informational bubble around its leaders and staffers. That, in turn, hampers the group’s ability to react to events as they happen.
Which brings us to this week’s gathering. Graham Platner, the Maine Democratic Senate candidate with a Nazi tattoo, a history of anti-Semitic and misogynist comments, and a discomfiting openness to political violence, was not at the conference. But he was a topic of conversation.
Platner has been rapidly embraced by both mainstream establishment Democrats and the party’s grassroots. Once he became the presumptive Democratic nominee, his party circled the wagons around him, setting aflame every last vestige of its institutional credibility on anti-Semitism and extremism more generally.
But in a strange twist, there appears to be one holdout. Halie Soifer is the director of the JDCA, and she came to the group after working for Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, and other Democrats. Like Jonathan Greenblatt, the Obama alum who took over the Anti-Defamation League, Soifer was one of a new crop of progressive Jewish organizational leaders seeking to take their institutions in a much more openly left-wing and partisan direction.
Then, on October 7, 2023, disaster struck the Jewish world, and many of its political or politically adjacent institutions were unprepared.
Greenblatt has tried to adjust, and he’s made some progress. Most important, he has been willing to attract the ire of the hard left and the progressive staffers who left ADL when Greenblatt de-emphasized social justice money pits. There are signs that Soifer might be ready to take positive steps, too.
“As far as I’m concerned, you can regret having a Nazi tattoo, you can try to cover it up, but it’s still there,” Soifer told reporters on Wednesday, according to JTA. “And to me that symbolizes reasons for deep concern about his views and values.”
Soifer is aware, it seems, that Platner’s excuse for his Nazi tattoo, that he didn’t know what it was, is a lie: records have surfaced of his bragging about his Nazi tattoo for years. If Soifer is unwilling to be willfully blind to Platner’s extremism, it would be an improvement for the organization at a much-needed moment in time.
However, Soifer left the door to reconciliation wide open. Platner, she said, will need to “demonstrate great assurances on a range of issues of concern to our organization to receive our endorsement.” Otherwise “we may just not get involved in that one.”
It’s something. But it might be both too little and too late. The time it has taken Democratic Jewish figures to come around to the need to fight anti-Semitism within their own tent has left them forever playing catchup. Worse, it has enabled the rise of the very candidates Soifer now claims to be concerned about.
Additionally, Republicans have on occasion urged voters to back the Democrat in general-election races if the Republican nominee is truly unacceptable. There is no sign any Democrats of influence would follow the same path. Staying neutral is the most backbone they’ll show at this point.
And the party isn’t at all swayed by JDCA finally showing a bit of hesitation about a Democrat. Platner’s name was raised at the conference by Simon Rosenberg, a Jewish Democratic strategist. His position on Platner: “The Maine party is excited, ready to go, and we’re all going to be along the Platner train in a few weeks.”
According to JTA, the “big tent” argument seems to be the main excuse being deployed to convince Democratic Jews to go along to get along: “Ami Fields-Meyer, a former Biden White House adviser who spoke more critically of Israel than most of the summit’s speakers, did not weigh in on Platner specifically. But he echoed Rosenberg’s call for building coalitions that include ‘people we don’t agree with,’ and advocated for the Democratic Party and Jewish community to embrace a wider range of viewpoints on Israel.”
It should go without saying that if Jewish Democrats aren’t going to resist having extremist anti-Semites representing their party, then virtually no one will. If that’s the case, the battle has already been lost.
Source:
www.commentary.org
