The Patriot Post® · An Increasingly Anti-Semitic Democrat Party

While the media are salivating over the ostensible turmoil in the Republican Party precipitated by the removal of Never-Trumper Liz Cheney as House GOP Conference chair, the real action is taking place on the other side of the aisle. Democrats are in the midst of a power struggle between the old guard whose support of Israel grows increasingly tepid and the radical leftist newcomers who embrace rank anti-Semitism promoted as “social justice.”

No one better describes the mindsets of Democrat radicals known as “The Squad,” as well as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, better than historian Victor Davis Hanson. “Americans are supposed to envision Iran and its West Bank terrorists as a sort of Middle East version of BLM fighting off the systemic racism, colonialism, and imperialism of the Israelis — predictably playing their accustomed role of the Minneapolis police department,” he writes.

The other half of the equation, as in the old guard led by the likes of Joe Biden and John Kerry, who still mouth the platitudes of Israeli support, yet seek to re-empower Iran? “In the new global era of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, Iran also deserves inclusion and equity,” Hanson adds. “Act as if the hazing of American ships in the Persian Gulf, smuggling arms to Yemen, and assassinating Tehran’s enemies inside Iraq are all simply cries from an oppressed heart that need to be contextualized rather than deterred through a disproportionate reaction.”

For the radicals, Hamas terrorism and Israeli self-defense are indistinguishable from one another. “The devastation in Gaza is unconscionable,” tweeted Sanders. “We must urge an immediate ceasefire. The killing of Palestinians and Israelis must end. We must also take a hard look at nearly $4 billion a year in military aid to Israel. It is illegal for US aid to support human rights violations.”

Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) concurs. “We cannot stand idly and complicitly by and allow the occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people to continue,” Pressley insisted. “I am committed to ensuring that our government does not fund state violence in any form, anywhere. … The question at hand is should our taxpayer dollars create conditions for justice, healing and repair, or should those dollars create conditions for oppression and apartheid?”

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) criticized President Biden, despite his restoration of aid to the Palestinians rescinded by President Donald Trump, and his promise to send another $10 million, while remaining uncommitted to restocking Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system — which has intercepted 90% of the more than 4,000 rockets so far fired at the Jewish state by Hamas. “I don’t care how any spokesperson tries to spin this,” AOC stated following Biden’s assertion that Israel has a right to defend itself. “The US vetoed the UN call for ceasefire. If the Biden admin can’t stand up to an ally, who can it stand up to? How can they credibly claim to stand for human rights?”

Human rights? Few entities on the planet are more contemptuous of human rights than Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization since 2003. It plants missile launchers and other armaments in schools and hospitals, using its own people as shields, knowing the Israelis’ attempt to stop the indiscriminate firing of missiles into their nation will be condemned by feckless internationals who decry “civilian” casualties and demand ceasefires to prevent Hamas’s military capabilities from being permanently impaired.

That call received a big boost from Biden on Wednesday when he told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he wants a “significant de-escalation” in violence.

Such fecklessness elicits simple questions: Is there any other nation in the world that is expected to endure a steady barrage of increasingly sophisticated and longer-range missiles being fired into it? Would any other nation be expected to abide contemptible leftist demands for “proportionality,” as in every Palestinian casualty being “offset” by equal numbers of Israeli casualties? What other nation is expected to abide miles of terror tunnels, including one 163 football fields long connecting Gaza to Israel, used for conducting terror operations? Does anyone remember that Israel gave the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians in 2005, removing Jewish settlers in the process, or that Hamas gained control of the government there in a violent coup in 2007?

Does anyone still remember Hamas’s charter of existence calling for the annihilation of the Jewish state?

Too many Democrats don’t give a damn. “Israeli air strikes killing civilians in Gaza is an act of terrorism,” tweeted Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN). Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who is Palestinian, insists that Netanyahu should be held responsible for “war crimes.” (For his part, Biden praised Tlaib’s “intellect” and “passion” and thanked her for “being a fighter” while offering prayers for her Palestinian relatives.) Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) played the race card. “As a black woman in America, I am no stranger to police brutality and state-sanctioned violence,” she declared. “We have been criminalized for the very way we show up in the world. … Palestinians are being told the same thing as black folks in America: There is no acceptable form of resistance.”

The “Squad” members are currently pushing to block an arms sale to Israel.

By contrast, Newsweek columnist Jason Lemon notes that President Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “appear to be at odds with a vocal segment of the Democratic Party that has criticized Israel’s actions toward the Palestinians amid the region’s escalating conflict.”

Yet even that assessment is inaccurate. While Biden and Pelosi condemned Hamas, Schumer has been conspicuously silent.

Yahoo columnist Alayna Treene attributes that silence to pure political calculation. “Schumer is up for re-election next year,” Treene explains, “and one of his potential opponents — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) — is one of the most vocal progressive critics of the actions taken by Israel’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

In a better Democrat Party, Schumer would be vociferously condemning the moral bankruptcy that attends efforts to paint a democratic Israel and Hamas terrorists as two sides of the same coin. He would be excoriating Biden administration efforts to court Iran, which is using Hamas as de facto missile testers for its own genocidal ambitions with regard to Israel.

In this Democrat Party, the proverbial handwriting is on the wall — and has been for quite some time. In 2012, the effort to reinstate the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital into the party’s platform during its National Convention was met with a literal chorus of boos. A poll released three years ago revealed that since 2001, the share of Democrats sympathizing more with Israel had declined 11 points, from 38% to 27%. Democrats, especially those who inhabit the Black Caucus, have repeatedly met with and refused to condemn rabid anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.

Moreover, their anti-Israel supporters are marching in lockstep. In major cities across America, thousands of protesters marched with Palestinian flags, chanted anti-Israeli slogans, voiced support for Hamas, and, in Philadelphia, demanded an end to Israel’s right to exist.

Why? As Hanson reminds us, an increasing number of Democrats view Israel as “a white, Western, rich, wall-building, neocolonialist, neoimperialist, and apartheid state that it is in dire need of cancel culture, deplatforming, international ostracism, and military comeuppance.”

In other words, as far as too many Democrats are concerned, Israelis are every bit as “deplorable” and “supremacist” as Trump supporters.

And for those same increasingly anti-Semitic and nihilistic Democrats, the words “Never Again” ring increasingly hollower with every passing day.