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August 10, 2010

The New Angry American Jewish Voter

By Steven Windmueller

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Click here for Raphael J. Sonenshein’s response to Steven Windmueller.

One should not assume that the anger expressed by American voters in recent weeks is somehow limited to a fringe element of this society. While Jews are generally not identified with the Tea Party crowd, there has been a corollary Jewish response these days to the events unfolding in the Middle East and elsewhere.  Someone has suggested that this countercultural response could be labeled as a contemporary version of the Maccabees, namely, a revolt against the existing order.

Clearly, the community mobilization in the months following the Gaza flotilla incident has energized significant segments of the American Jewish community. Unlike previous news events involving Israel, this story has served to galvanize many who are particularly upset over how Israel has been depicted by governments, commentators and press reports.

Already deeply committed to a pro-Israel agenda, these Jewish activists and voters now feel increasingly isolated and concerned over how Israel is being maligned in the world.  Over time, this cohort of voters and activists has taken on the political attributes and characteristics of “red state voters” through their support of single-issue concerns, a value-based and at times a faith-defined political agenda, and a specific hard-line position on American security and military defense issues. Voters from within this growing wing of the Jewish community have opted to support candidates who more definitively support their policy viewpoints and who in turn have questioned the current state of American democracy and politics. In particular, this group has sought to critique the current national administration for what it perceives as its less-than-full support of the case for Israel within the international community.

This type of renewed activism can be seen supporting pro-Israel PACs (political action committees), as confirmed by Morris Amitay, former executive director of AIPAC, who noted in a New York Post story this spring: “I have had some people sending me a second check this year, saying they hope it does good with our friends in Congress because of the animosity from the White House toward Israel.” Such fundraising success is also present among an array of single-issue organizations, both on the right and left within the Jewish community.

Similar to the Tea Party movement, there is a growing momentum to mobilize support for Israel among the electorate and to hold politicians accountable for their commitment, as well, to the Jewish state. Some of this discontent is being directed against other Jews who hold views that align with Peace Now and J Street or other center-left positions on Israeli policies, which are interpreted by the Jewish political right as giving aid to the enemies of Israel and adding fuel to the negative and problematic image of the Jewish state internationally.

This class of activists has created, in effect, an Israel loyalty test that defines and measures one’s credentials as a pro-Israel advocate. Nuance has given way in this current crisis to a more definitive expectation of support. The once-understood communal principle of governing by consensus has given way in these times to the presence of political positions that firmly divide the Jewish community into ideological camps. Increasingly, one finds that in place of a shared discourse and a commitment to civility, the communal debate often deteriorates to sloganeering and, at times, name-calling. In some settings, unless one holds a “politically correct” position on Israel, one’s voice is not welcomed or sanctioned by the formal institutional structures of the Jewish community.

We are not only witnessing a sharpening of the divide within the community, but a radicalization of the Jewish political right, accompanied by a corresponding disengagement of the Jewish liberal sector from the Israel discourse, as this latter group is often unwilling or too uncomfortable to participate from what some perceive as a defensive posture. Of equal concern are those on the left who come to believe Israel has lost its moral compass and have abandoned, in turn, their role as defenders of the Jewish state, preferring to align themselves with the nation’s most outspoken critics.

The Jewish Vote

The divisions that now define American Jewish voting patterns are framed and influenced by a number of elements. A new generation of voters includes a significant Orthodox cohort, along with a growing presence of Russian, Iranian and Israeli activists, who generally reflect a more conservative political bent and represent an important and growing factor in the ever-shifting Jewish political scenario. Possibly a far more interesting and emerging base of support can be found among male baby boomers (55 to 64 years of age), whose voting patterns have increasingly reflected a shift to the right. This political transition is particularly significant among Jewish voters, as this age cohort dominates the Jewish population base. Not only worried about their own economic status, this constituency is deeply concerned by what they observe as the erosion of support for Israel.

This spring, in a study of American Jewish voters, McLaughlin and Associates reported that 42 percent of those polled would support the president’s re-election, while 46 percent indicated that they would support another candidate. Among Orthodox/Chasidic voters, 69 percent noted that they would likely support someone else, in comparison to 17 percent who expressed support for the president. Among Conservative-affiliated voters, the proportion was 50 percent to 38 percent. Reform Jews, by a slim majority of 52 percent, supported Obama, while 36 percent indicated they would consider someone else. Fifty percent of the Jewish voters polled in this study expressed support for the president’s handling of U.S. relations with Israel; 39 percent said they disapproved. These numbers become significant when one realizes that the president received nearly 80 percent of the Jewish vote just two years ago.

There appears to be a more general shift in the reshaping of “liberalism” on the part of the Jewish electorate, where moderate positions are replacing the more traditional left-of-center political perspective. This shift is reflected in a number of ways, as voters are more selective in identifying with liberal causes and, in turn, are redefining how they interpret the nature of their ideological credentials and voting positions. This pattern of social moderation is not limited to the Jewish liberal community but is prevalent among a growing sector of Democratic voters.

The center-left Jewish groups, including the labor-Zionist organizations, are struggling in this environment to maintain their base as well as to attract new audiences to their political perspectives and institutional message. The downsizing of this once-formidable bloc of liberal Jewish activists is reflected as well in the shifts we are likely to see in the changing patterns of institutional affiliation among younger Jews, whose loyalty and commitment to Israel has come into question.

The Angry, Fearful Jewish American
The national anger found among the electorate encompasses concerns over the economy, jobs and health care reform as individualized issues. But the deeper despair is tied to what researcher Frank Luntz has described as the lack of accountability and the lack of respect when dealing with one another. Such themes are not only evident among Jewish constituencies but take on a specific bent in expressions of anger offered through recent online comments:

Israel needs to turn down further American “military aid” so as to no longer be beholden to a communist Muslim interloper or his nudist Israeli messenger boy.

American Jews embracing, supporting, justifying or even praising Obama and his pro-Arab, anti-Israel — and, as such, anti-Jewish — policies and declarations, remind one of American Jews of the 1940s who were too afraid to show compassion for their brothers and sisters perishing in Europe, for fear of losing favor with the Roosevelt administration.

The absence of a shared Jewish political agenda reflects this deep, and at times angry, social divide that now defines the state of American Jewry. This new political reality portends a serious crisis; as a minority community, Jews cannot afford the luxury of being seen as a house divided. Ethnic communities operate within a particular framework of influence and credibility. When their power is understood to be compromised or weakened by internal discord, their capacity to be politically effective is proportionally reduced.

Steven Windmueller serves as the Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk Professor of Jewish Communal Service at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles campus.

Click here for Raphael J. Sonenshein’s response to Steven Windmueller.

A version of this article appeared in print.

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Steven is 100% correct. Raphael is drinking too much kool aid.

Comment by paul jeser on 8/11/10 at 10:56 am

There is an article in Haaretz today by Ari Shavit which is very critical of the Eiland report and the manipulation of Israeli public opinion and the Israeli government by the leadership of the Israel Defense Forces. The same manipulation of many American Jews leads to the kind of crazed statements referred to at the end of Professor Windmueller’s column.

Comment by Manny Shargel on 8/12/10 at 3:23 pm

In all this pollster/professor talk, with which I have been all-too familiar since 1956, when I first edited the draft of the Bendix-Lipset “upper mobility” book, I see the same patterns of pollster analysis, meant to provide footing for voting, i.e., policy-making and policy-makers.  What entertains me about this whole Jewish palavering, chavering, non-historical talk that is pseudo-profound, although informative in the case of these two writers is the absence of the monstrosity, and I mean monstrosity, in the Community Tent covering the age-old Jewish anfractuosity, from Maccabees on down — I mean but one word, and it is ISLAM.

Comment by Jascha Kessler on 8/12/10 at 4:40 pm

I am an angry Jew - I’m talking Old Testament angry - Levi and Simon avenging the rape of their sister Dinah angry - Samuel chopping the Amalekite king into little pieces angry. There are too few that share my vision, but the willfully blind are finding the truth harder to deny. I sure hope we don’t have to wait for a re-enactment of the Warsaw ghetto uprising before our collective sight clears up. Shalom’ peace, is the best option when it is an option. When it isn’t, take your cues from scripture.

Comment by jonathan castle on 8/12/10 at 6:01 pm

From 72% Goldstone (Obama voters) Jews it left about fifty percent.
Did climate change so badly influence Jewish brain?
Did Hitler, Stalin, Russian Tsars expiriences left any trace in Jews brains?

Comment by ArkadyDash on 8/12/10 at 7:33 pm

I believe that Jews, in general, are liberal vis a vis the United States and hawkish vis a vis the existence and protection of Israel.  As a conservative Jew, I am tickled at the dichotomy and how the average Jewish liberal does not see the inconsistency.  That is what makes life interesting.

Comment by Ilbert Phillips on 8/13/10 at 12:10 am

American aid to Israel has increased under Obama. The U.S. has worked hard to protect Israel in the United Nations and there has been unprecedented military cooperation between Israel and America.

What right wingers do not like is that Obama called for a settlement freeze, and has called for a two State solution. The right wing mocks the demographics that are not in Israel’s favor and are playing Russian roulette with Israel’s future.

The right wing calls Obama a Moslem, an anti-semite and anti-Israel and any Jew who works for him or who voted for him is a called a self hater. The religious and right wing in Israel and America do NOT, repeat NOT, have a monopoly on love for Israel!

Comment by Mark Jeffery Koch on 8/13/10 at 7:40 pm

I’ve always considered myself a very progressive political thinker. My disappointment started with this administration’s failure to fully address the domestic agenda Obama offered in the campaign (single payer health insurance for one example). Now, with the administration’s increasingly hostile attitude toward Israel, I’m more uncertain than ever as to how I will vote in the fall and where I will send my contributions. Even our own Barbara Boxer remains too silent on Israel. I’m actually considering a third-party vote for senate in November.

Comment by Ben Rich on 8/15/10 at 1:16 am

The president of the U.S. should:
Fistly, act in the of the U.S.
Secondly, uphold the U.S. Constitution

Comment by chelemer on 8/16/10 at 2:13 am

What Barack Obama says is similar to what Kadima says.He asks Israel to go back to the 1967 border (Ben Gurion also did so)and to freeze temporarly settlement activities so that no facts on the ground will be created during the peace talks.It is true that Bush had a written agreement with Sharon which said that Israel should be allowed to build inside the settlement blocks,but since Netanyahu refuses to accept the Annapolis process because it was not ratified by the Knesset why would Barack Obama be bound with a private letter written by Bush but which has never been approved by the Congress. 
Ehud Barak warned against this anti-Obama rethoric which may turn out to be damageable for Israel.

Comment by C. Bendavid on 8/16/10 at 5:28 am

Windmueller writes, “as a minority community, Jews cannot afford the luxury of being seen as a house divided.” Very true, especially as those hostile to Israel and the Jews are united against us. A liberal, it’s been said, is one who will take his opponent’s side in a dispute. We no longer have the luxury of “on the other hand” sympathies for our opponents. It’s time to choose sides. And in this, liberal Jews (among which I once counted myself) are on the wrong side.

Comment by Raymond in DC on 8/16/10 at 8:13 am

There is no common ground between the Jewish supporters of Israel and Jewish supporters of Obama and left-wing ideology, embodied in outfits like JStreet. The latter is a creature of Obama’s Jewish advisers designed to exert pressure on Israel on behalf of their master, providing Obama with plausible deniability.

We are too much apart, and the chasm is growing. JStreet is a street on the way out of Judaism and the Jewish people, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Comment by Yakov on 8/16/10 at 9:28 am

MY PEOPLE RIGHT OR WRONG—ABSOLUTELY NOT - WRONG IS STILL WRONG !!

Comment by David Wiseman on 8/16/10 at 11:16 am

I am an 86 year old veteran of the US Army Air Corps in WW II. Part of my family was murdered in Auschwitz. I disagree strongly with the thrust of this article.  I voted for Obama but am appalled at his passive betrayal of liberal domestic issues, his escalation of war , and subservience to Israeli’s Likudist polices. We believe there must be a fundamental break between Israel’s aggressive foreign policy and US policy. As Ehud Barack said ” Israel lives in a tough neighborhood”. That is Israel’s problem not the US problem. It has no easy solution but the increasingly illegal and murderous policies of the LIkudist’s will not lead to any solution and increases anti semitism worldwide..

Comment by bill on 8/16/10 at 2:31 pm

i will allways support israel

Comment by Raymond Babcock on 8/16/10 at 2:57 pm

I am not a Jew, but it is about time that American Jewish voters turn on Obama!  Look at how he treats the Jewish state while he bows to the king of Saudi Arabia and kowtows to all the oppresive Muslim states.

It’s about time.

Comment by A reader on 8/16/10 at 4:14 pm

Jews supporting Republicans are ignoring, in addition to Bush’s disastrous economic policies that converted a 3-year surplus into a major deficit, created few jobs and left the U.S. on the brink of a depression and Bush’s misusing science to deny climate change that now threatens all of humanity, the fact that Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran all got stronger during Bush’s hands off policy, that U.S. military aid to israel has never been greater and that Israel needs some prodding from Obama to reach a peace agreement that it badly needs to be able to help address its many economic, environmental and social problems.

Comment by Richard Schwartz on 8/16/10 at 7:49 pm

Jews can only reach consensus in portraying the full global Jewish situation leading to the creation of Israel in 1948. It was not a European problem in the sense that the ancestral lands of Jews were in the Middle East and that the historical leading governing body of the Jews had been deported to Babylon but the Jews of Babylon could not open Iraq to Jewish immigration while they could legally claim their rights to Jerusalem and host fleeing Jews from extermination. The Babylonian Jewish community never left the Middle East so claiming Israel is not strictly claiming a gift from God but claiming an historical land right as much as the Natives in Canada claim their rights.

Comment by Karole du Pont on 8/17/10 at 5:39 am

Why any Jew voted for Obama is beyond me. If they did they shouldn’t celebrate Passover as he is trying to give Jerusalem away. So it will not be next year in Jerusalem with Obama. He abused Netenyahu. He made Israel a weak nation in the eyes of the world. Didn’t sell them the weapons for attacking Iran. I can go on and on! Self Hating Jews, What else is new!

Comment by Alan on 8/17/10 at 9:31 am

If indeed the Jewish community is moving to the right politically, then this can only be seen as a good sign.

Comment by Tom on 8/17/10 at 9:46 am

Thanks SO much for this column…it comforts me.  As a convert, I am baffled by the blase` or even hostile attitude I see towards precious Israel, in the last place I’d expect it : among those lucky enough to have been born Jewish ! I have been grieving wordlessly over this and related things—gay parades in the holiest city on earth, hunger, poverty, and abortion in the Promised Land,—oh, i could go on—but thank you for this article; I now have better understanding, and a little more hope.  Yes, indeed, let Israel stand on her own feet, looking to her Maker alone for help—the “aid” from the US simply costs too much now, in too many ways. Am Israel Chai!

Comment by Shilah bat Eliyahu on 8/17/10 at 10:18 am

The reasoning that minority ethnic groups must be ‘uniform’ in their views and political activities is only valid when the ‘uniform’ activities benefit the group as a whole.  Uniformity in the American Black Community has degenerated into a con-game, leaving them in poverty of wealth and spirit.  In democracies marching in lock-step is not viable, it enslaves. Ideas are the Minorities/Majorities in a democracy.  Communities in Lock-Step are unheard, being predictable and perennial.  Creative thought atrophies. Loss of Lock-Step thinking? Best thing to happen in the Jewish Community. Ideas must survive on merit, NOT peer-pressure, only then are they able to persuade others outside.

Comment by Lee Bailey on 8/17/10 at 10:34 am

So we Jews should be just like African-Americans who blindly follow the party line and hope that our plates will be filled.  Even though Jews are only 2% of the US electorate, they represent a sizable portion of campaign contributions.  Obama will only meet with J Street Jews who follow him like puppy dogs and are funded by fellow liberals and arabs.  You can’t put the jeanie back in the bottle; Obama made his bed, now he can lie with the dogs.

Comment by Texan on 8/17/10 at 1:08 pm

I find it astonishing that a person as obviously reflective as Rabbi W should suppose that communal unity is a priority requiring the different segments of the Jewish population in the US to sacrifice their own perspectives and values. It is a formula for the ghettoization of Jews in the US——enforced presumably by community leaders and not hostile Gentiles. It is also an expression of profound distrust of our non Jewish fellow citizens, since the point of unity is presumably to be preapred at any moment for an American equivalent to Masada, or the Expulsion from Spain, or 1933 in Germany. Why should we live in so pathologically frightened a way?

Comment by Norman Birnbaum on 8/17/10 at 2:07 pm

I would think that the Republican use of the Manhattan Mosque would be a greater motivation to Jewish voters.  Ross Dourthat is argued in the NYT that terrorism was warranted against Catholics because of their association with a center right foreign theocracy. 

I believe that Jews that choose to vote in the United States will vote for first for rule of law in the United States where their children live and go to synagogues that were not to long ago under threat of conservative terrorism, before they will vote for a candidate who campaigns as slightly more unquestioning of their Israel than their opponent.

Comment by Robert Hotchkiss on 8/17/10 at 3:18 pm

“Israel needs to turn down further American “military aid” so as to no longer be beholden to a communist Muslim interloper or his nudist Israeli messenger boy.”

I can’t begin to imagine what that sentence is supposed to mean.

Comment by MLR on 8/18/10 at 6:06 am

The Multi-media Jihad against Israel and the passivity of the Israeli and American Jewish leaders

Since 2006 Israel is under an intense attack, first by two professors who “uncovered the Jewish Lobby,” and by the anti-Semitic Jimmy Carter.

Then the Second Lebanese and Gaza Wars let all media witches out of the bottle with nearly 40000 negative daily articles, more than for all world conflicts combined.

From Arab Aljazeera to Russian TV, to the anti-Israel CNN, ABC, Google, AP, Reuters, BBC all attack daily Israel.

And the first in the history of the US a zealously pro-Islamic President Barack Obama who repeatedly states that the Christians and Muslims build America without the Jews.

Comment by mike on 8/18/10 at 1:37 pm

Right on

Comment by raymond dreyfuss on 8/18/10 at 4:00 pm

my neighbors are jews they suport obama he’s a muslem unbelivable! muslems hate jews wake up jews before it’s to late, wake uppppppp.

Comment by rick chism on 8/18/10 at 4:05 pm

“Israel needs to turn down further American “military aid” so as to no longer be beholden to a communist Muslim interloper or his nudist Israeli messenger boy.”

That ridiculous and absurd sentence was all it took to destroy anything meaningful you had written prior.  Your credibility dropped to zero.

Comment by Michael Mark on 5/19/11 at 6:20 pm

One ridiculous and absurd sentence was all it took to destroy anything meaningful you had written prior.  Your credibility dropped to zero.

“Israel needs to turn down further American “military aid” so as to no longer be beholden to a communist Muslim interloper or his nudist Israeli messenger boy.”

Comment by Michael Mark on 5/19/11 at 6:23 pm

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