On Israel, Progressive Jews Feel Abandoned by Their Left-Wing Allies

Progressive Jews who have spent years supporting racial equity, gay and transgender rights, abortion rights and other causes on the American left — including opposing Israeli policies in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — are suddenly feeling abandoned by those who they long thought of as allies. This wartime shift represents a fundamental break within a liberal coalition that has long powered the Democratic Party.

In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous, a well-known progressive activist who regularly criticizes the Israeli government, described from the pulpit her horror and feelings of “existential loneliness,” her voice breaking. “The clear message from many in the world, especially from our world — those who claim to care the most about justice and human dignity — is that these Israeli victims somehow deserved this terrible fate.”

In Atlanta, a Jewish mother involved in local politics wrote an open letter lamenting that her child’s progressive private school had not addressed the attacks in Israel with the same kind of empathy it showed after local killings of Asian Americans. “Our people are butchered, and no one speaks to it?” she wrote. “I don’t know if I’m seething or just sad.”

I do hope my fellow Jews wake up and smell the matzoh. It’s time to leave the damn Dems and chart our own course. Sure, it may not be with the right or the left completely, but at the very least, don’t be a “taken-for-granted vote” anymore. And stop being afraid of the consequences of freedom. Yes, there are assholes in the world.

That’s why protecting yourself is so damn important. Nobody’s going to do it for you. Israel was established on that idea. Sadly, it’s a lesson they’re going to learn with their own citizenry, and I see steps being taken in that direction. I suspect even the Israeli left is going to be very pro-gun for a while. And that’s the difference between American and Israeli Jews. Here Jews are far more cerebral and more married to the idea that we can write and legistlate our way out of anything. Israeli Jews live in reality, for the most part, October 7th being a big exception.

But here’s the difference. I expect Israel to react with the hard-headed pragmatic self-honesty it’s always had. While American Jews will at some point, go right back to holding hands with people who hate us.

It helps them when conservatives do everything they can to drive off groups that might split with the left. And yes, I am talking about abortion. Let them slaughter their foul spawn. They are NOT snuffing out Einsteins, and I am not interested in martyring our nation to save the one in a million that might actually improve the world. When we bring civilizational collapse under control, then we can talk about redeeming everyone.

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