by Eric Alterman Info
Eric Alterman is a professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College and a professor of journalism at CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. He is the author, most recently, of Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Important Ideals.
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Jim Young / Reuters Pundits claim Jews are abandoning the president. But the truth is, he remains more popular with Jewish voters than any other ethnic group, save blacks. Eric Alterman on the perpetual myth of the Jewish rightward shift.
Times columnist Charles M. Blow was apparently light on ideas for his weekly column the other day and so he decided to wade into the “Is Obama Good for the Jews” waters. He should have stayed on dry land.
The thing about Jews is that you can find one willing to say just about anything. Do Jews support the Park51 Community center? Yes, they do. Do they oppose it? Sure. Do they oppose Israel’s settlement policy? Absolutely. Do they support it? Damn straight they do.
On what authority does Blow have it that most American Jews decide their vote purely on the issue of Israel, or that Obama’s policies toward Israel are particularly unpopular with Jews?
To make his case, Blow turns to John Bolton, one of the most radical members of the Bush administration who has called for an Israeli attack on Iran the day before yesterday at the latest. When Bolton calls Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech “most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making,” he is probably not trying very hard. George H.W. Bush and James Baker were much tougher on Israel than Obama was, or could imagine being. And Ed Koch, well, come now. The former New York City mayor is so crazy in matters relating to the Tribe, he once demanded that the U.S. boycott France (and Woody Allen). And is it really news that Rep. Mike Pence, the Republican Conference chairman, told the Christian Broadcasting Network, “I believe the Obama administration is the most anti-Israel administration in the modern history of the state of Israel and our relationship with her.” I think it would be news if he didn’t. The people who are complaining about Obama at the top of their lungs are, like Bolton, largely the ones who didn’t want him elected in the first place. You can find 31 or so of them collected here.
Casting a slightly wider net, Blow cites the Pew Foundation’s recent survey that Jewish Republican support now “stands at the highest level since the data have been kept,” though he doesn’t say when that was. The figures presented only go back to 2006, when everybody’s support for Democrats was way higher than it is today. Blow insists that “This is no doubt a reaction, at least in part, to the Obama administration having taken a hard rhetorical stance with Israel, while taking special time and care on our relationship with the Muslim world.’"
Oh, really? Well, I doubt it. Barack Obama, like pretty much every Democrat before him, remains more popular with Jews than with just about any other ethnic group in America, save blacks. His approval rating among Jews, steady in the low 60s, is about 15 percent higher than it is with the goyim. Neoconservatives have been predicting a Jewish turn toward the Republicans since George McGovern only got about two-thirds of the Jewish vote—that’s right, only two-thirds—and yet it never happens. (See for instance, “Milton Himmelfarb, “Are Jews Becoming Republicans?” Commentary, August 1981. Having lost patience, they started complaining about what Irving Kristol not so fondly called “The Political Stupidity of the Jews.”) Even so, on what authority does Blow have it that most American Jews decide their vote purely on the issue of Israel, or that Obama’s policies toward Israel are particularly unpopular with Jews? Blow may be without doubt on these points, but he is also without any reliable evidence.
According to a spring 2010 survey conducted for J Street, the “pro-peace, pro-Israel” American Jewish lobby, American Jews support the policies undertaken by the Obama administration on Middle East peace by margins of three or four to one, depending on how the question is asked. They are pretty much evenly divided about whether it’s a good idea for the U.S. to openly criticize Israel—as Obama has done in response to the Netanyahu government deliberate thumbing its nose in America’s eye over settlement policy—with a small plurality of 40 to 44 percent agreeing “that the United States should publicly express our disagreements and request Israel to change certain policies.”
• Douglas Schoen: Why Obama's FailingBlow falls back on the columnist crutch, leaning on Times reporter Helene Cooper, who noted, “It remains unclear whether Mr. Obama’s latest outreach will reassure American Jews and the general public in Israel, where Mr. Obama’s approval ratings have plummeted.” Yes, all things futuristic “remain unclear,” particularly when one refuses to define one’s terms. Amazingly, Blow, like Cooper, does not appear to distinguish between American Jews and “the general public in Israel” even though the two are citizens of two entirely different countries, only one of which Obama is president. Second, Blow pretends that the issue at stake is Jewish votes, but adds, cryptically, that “their influence outweighs their proportion.” Interestingly, Blow does not bother stating why. I don’t disagree, of course, but I don’t see the point of playing footsie about it either, unless you happen to work for Abe Foxman.
The fact is one can make a case that Obama is a great president for Israel and for American Jews just as easily as one can make the opposite case. One can even do it on the very terms these “pro-Israel Jews” use to define the terms of the debate. He was just about the only world leader anywhere to go along with Israel’s crazy argument for why it had to raid a peaceful aid mission to Gaza and ended up killing nine people, for one. And as The Wall Street Journal reported last week, “U.S. military aid to Israel has increased markedly this year. Top-ranking U.S. and Israeli soldiers have shuttled between Tel Aviv and Washington with unusual frequency in recent months. A series of joint military exercises in Israel over the past months has included a record number of American troops.” Even AIPAC is on board, at least when asked a direct question. Asked for a comment by Think Progress, spokesman Josh Block said, “Clearly the Obama administration remains deeply committed to the U.S.-Israel alliance, and supporting aid to Israel and deepening our military cooperation is just one aspect of that.” Does Charles Blow really want to go to his grave being more “pro-Israel” than AIPAC?
12 August 22, 2010 | 11:33pm Twitter Emails
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rea
Jews and Muslims support him, ...., we Christians are screwed. Praise the Lord.
How Christian of you to say so... lol.
"But the truth is, he remains more popular with Jewish voters than any other ethnic group, save blacks."What a bigot... Jewish is capitalized while blacks is in lower case. Why not African American or Negro as an ethnic group? I wonder if he capitalizes muslim or whites?I guess unless you are part of the "Tribe" you don't deseve capitalizations. All you lowly "goyims" are just second class citizens.Sorry Eric, you are the problem.
I live in the most Jewish neighborhood in flyoverland. He won't be getting many votes here if my conversations with neighbors on my daily walks are any indication. My neighbor, a lifelong liberal told me he was listening to Rush Limbaugh now. "A better friend Israel has never had," is how he describes Rush.
I'm not worried, that last part about Rush convinced me of how full of crap you and your neighbors are. Thx.
nkwecho82 = putz
Self interest over national interest is nothing new from Zionists, be they Christians or Jews. Biblical tomfoolery will pollute the Christian mind every time, but for Jews it's just a "better deal" for them to support the right wing Israeli nutcases. So what if it costs America dearly....
I lived in Texas, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Iowa a good number of years each. I have lived in North Carolina about a decade now. I am a rootless cosmopolitan city person (hence the moving from state to state for my employer of 33 years) and so find the local rednecks interesting, as typically they are the natives and different from me. I observed that while they were all indeed rednecks, there seemed to be a variation in type according to state.I prefer the Iowa ones in terms of interacting with them, though the food was better in Wisconsin. Had I been either a Lutheran or a Catholic Wisconsin would have been a better experience. North Carolina rednecks are quite polite but not in a friendly way. Virginians are a little crazy, more so than Texans, though less likely to shoot.After reading your comment I was left wondering how a liberal in 'flyover land' compares to liberals elsewhere, say Berkeley, which is a mighty interesting place to visit, or Madison WI, which has a liberal enclave of sorts. I lived in Tidewater Virginia and don't recall coming across any liberals there, and here Charlotte I only come across them at the best and only French bakery we have and occasionally see one on television campaigning against my favorite whack job (I vote for her) Sue Myrick. I cannot help but wonder if a liberal in 'flyover land' is a man that only owns one gun, and that's for hunting deer.
Amelies? NoDa? yum
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