The Price of Resilience

Posted on November 29, 2012 | 3 comments

     Here in Israel, where I have spent this past week, life goes on. One would never know, outside the communities of the south that are still under threat, that just ten days ago Israel had absorbed 1500 Arab missiles and rockets on its towns and cities, its men, women and children. That the “south” is located about 35 minutes’ drive from the “center,” where I am, adds to both the relief at the (temporary) end to the bombardment and to the quality of the ordinary citizen who is able to resume his daily life unimpeded.

     These skirmishes, including wars, are perceived as temporary glitches from which people are expected to rebound quickly and quietly. Indeed, many people seemed more concerned with the effects of Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York than on the effects of Hurricane Hamas here, even though the former is long gone and the latter retains its potency.

      But resilience comes at a price. The strength of character is remarkable to behold – it is almost natural, except for the children in the southern communities who have grown up under the fear of rocket attacks. Many of them suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, the inevitable result of years of daily rocket attacks that allows roughly 15 seconds to decide where to take cover.

    The price is complacency, an acceptance of a state of affairs that in normal countries would be intolerable and would lead to a swift and thorough rejection of the politicians who permitted this situation to occur and fester. Instead, the opposite happens. Failed politicians are routinely recycled, and accountability is non-existent. The election season here, mercifully just three months short (as compared to the interminable American process), finds the same faces, personalities and policies seeking public for the future failures that will buttress their resume of past failures. There is always a new face promising the world (this year it is TV journalist Yair Lapid, who at least is presenting more thoughtful clichés than others), but also more of the same. Tsippi Livni announced to mild fanfare her return and creation of a new party. Ehud Barak has retired from politics “forever;” wait, that “forever” retirement occurred in 2001. “Forever,” apparently, is not as long as it used to be. He, too, will be back, his “retirement” an admission that he could not win election in his own right. Ehud Olmert hems and haws about running (he won’t), freshly convicted of corruption related offenses, but no matter. All three have the stain of Lebanon on their records – Barak presiding over the night retreat in 2000 that eventually allowed Hezbollah to take power, and Olmert/Livni over the failed war of 2006.

     Memories are short. Contempt breeds familiarity, and familiarity wins elections. And of course, Olmert, Livni and so many others in government bear responsibility for the retreat from Gaza and the expulsion of its Jews in 2006. How many others? Even PM Netanyahu voted for the expulsion before he was against it. So did Limor Livnat, Yuval Steinitz, Tzachi Hanegbi and assorted others who still shape the Likud and assert strong right-wing credentials. Not many seem to remember or care, until you consider that the ruling party will only garner roughly 25% of the popular vote in this parliamentary democracy. And the president himself, Shimon Peres, escapes responsibility for Oslo, Lebanon, Gaza and other debacles – either compassion to an elder statesmen or the traditional lack of accountability that governs political life here.

     The week’s entertainment is provided by the Palestinian Authority, which is abrogating the Oslo Accords (again) by seeking UN General Assembly recognition of its statehood. It is bizarre for several reasons. Israel is unlikely to void the agreements, which in any event has only required its unilateral adherence but has always exempted the Arabs from compliance. Abbas, the “president,” has seen his role and power eclipsed and needs to show something, anything, for his eight years in office. His “term” expired four years ago, but since he cannot win re-election, he simply does not allow elections. His tenure in office is protected by the Israelis, for whom he displays nothing but derision.

    For its part, both Israel (and its current government) and the American government are on record as supporting a Palestinian state, so why the objections? That the “state” is supposed to emerge through negotiations seems like a technicality. Another technicality – that a state should have defined borders and sovereignty over those borders – also does not apply here because the traditional rules and definitions are often waived for those given to wanton violence against innocents and opponents alike. Contributing to the farce is that the vote took place in the UN General Assembly, infamous for its passage of numerous, non-binding anti-Israel resolutions, including the “Zionism is Racism” bit of moral splendor in 1975. The vote of 138-9, with 41 abstentions, is about what the world of decent people could expect. Once again, Micronesia and the Solomon Islands stand with the Jewish people. G-d bless them.

      It should not be overlooked that the foundation for this vote was laid by the Israelis many years ago. The Oslo Accords, whatever the technical language, was obviously designed to create a Palestinian state. That agreement was an explicit admission by the Jewish state that the Jewish people are not the exclusive sovereigns in the land of Israel, despite G-d’s eternal promises set forth in the Bible. Governments of the left and the right embraced that outcome in one form or another. Menachem Begin himself recognized (in 1978) the “legitimate rights of the Palestinian people,” a phrase that stuck in his craw but that he accepted based on his lawyerly interpretation that the words “legitimate rights” could be interpreted to mean anything he wanted it to mean and not what the other signatories understood it to mean. So the chickens of Oslo, Lebanon, and Gush Katif have indeed come home to roost.

     And yet, whatever the psychological value (and most Arabs will assume that the vote means something that it does not, and fire their weapons in the air in celebration), the vote has no effect in the real world. Nothing changes here, today, anymore that Arafat’s declaration of statehood amounted to anything in 1988. A General Assembly vote has no legal status at all. Abba Eban said it eloquently: “If Algeria introduced a General Assembly resolution that the world is flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would find overwhelming support in the Arab world” and elsewhere. And he said it almost forty years ago. Nothing has changed there, either.

     Abbas still needs to be propped up by Israel. There is no Palestinian state. The PA and Hamas are still bitter rivals, and Abbas knows that his political career ends the moment the people are given the right to vote him out, whenever that is. The UN carnival, typically, just distracts the world from the real crises in the region – Iran’s nuclear bomb, Syria’s civil war and Egypt’s ongoing unrest. Anyone who still needs proof of the mendacity and hypocrisy rampant in the Arab world needs to consider only the howls of protest when 150 Arabs were killed and several hundred wounded in the clashes in Gaza – squeals that were intended to awaken the world to the horrors of a nation (Israel) exercising its right of self-defense – while the Arab world is dormant at the massacres in Syria of more than 35,000 people, and the turmoil in Egypt where already more than 500 people have been injured.

    It’s not the civilian deaths or injury that seem to disturb the Arab world and its malevolent allies across the world; it’s that the cursed Jews are doing it, and in defense of their right to exist.

    There are two obvious conclusions to this vote. One, that Oslo is officially dead, and this declaration vitiates its very premises of negotiations over final status issues, and, two, that the United States is now bound by law to cut its funding of the Palestinian Authority. But neither will happen and the blatant violations will be finessed, because neither the US nor Israel has any real interest in changing the dynamic of the struggle. That complicity is emblematic of the failures of Israeli politicians for decades that have seen Israel’s strategic position deteriorate slowly but inexorably.

    Nonetheless, in the beleaguered town of Sderot, barely two miles from Gaza and the recipient of thousands of missiles and rockets in the last ten years, one encounters today personal strength and courage, a desire to rebuild, lifelong residents who have no interest in moving to safer zones. Their resilience is an inspiration to all Jews, and their heroic story will yet be told. In the new communities built to house the Jewish refugees driven out of Gaza in 2005, one encounters the same determination, along with sadness about what was lost and the unshakeable (and usually unmentioned) feeling of “I told you so,” the unheeded warnings of what would befall Israel if they retreated under pressure from Gaza.

    All these brave souls have been betrayed by governments with convoluted miscalculations, wishful thinking and illusions disguised as policies, unkept promises repeated in every election cycle, or statecraft that is often illogical and self-destructive.

   The people of Israel deserve better; if only they would realize it and act upon it.

3 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

The Fiscal Cliff

Posted on November 26, 2012 | 13 comments

      The fiscal cliff looms over American politics like a menacing cloud, or so the political class would have us believe. If Republicans do not agree to raising taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” curiously defined as people earning more than $250,000 per year, then automatic spending cuts will go into effect that will sharply diminish both defense and social spending. The numbers tells a different story.

     It is by now well known that President Obama has presided over the four largest annual deficits in American history, each totaling more than one trillion dollars. His remedy – to raise income tax rates on the rich so that they should pay the 39.6% top rate of the Clinton years – would generate approximately $80 billion in new revenue, which is about 2% of the annual budget, and around 7% of this year’s deficit. In other words, how does Obama’s plan even begin to address the budgetary crisis in America? It doesn’t, not in the least.

     In essence, it is government by non sequitur. Obama thinks the wealthy should be paying more in taxes simply because he believes the wealthy should pay more in taxes. He calls it “fairness,” even if it solves no discernible problem. Others might call by a different name the confiscation by government of well over one-half of one’s work product: slavery. The slave does not work for himself; he works primarily for others. So, too, the worker whose earnings mostly go to others and provides him no personal benefit does not really work for himself but for others – and strangers at that.

     The Wall Street Journal several weeks back (November 12, 2012) clearly illustrated the duplicity of the argument that the government requires more revenues. In 2007, the government took in $2.568 trillion and spent $2.729 trillion, a deficit of $161 billion. Call those the glory days. In 2008, during the financial crisis, revenues remained stable ($2.524 trillion) but outlays increased to $2.983 trillion – a deficit of $459 billion, horrific, but positively restrained by today’s standards.

      During the Obama years, America indeed jumped off the fiscal cliff, with epic mismanagement. In 2009, when the crisis devastated take-home pay, revenues dropped dramatically to $2.105 trillion, but expenses shot up to an astounding $3.518 trillion (a deficit of $1.413 trillion, the highest ever recorded). If that could be attributed to the bailouts necessitated (so they told us) by the financial crisis, then how does that explain the outlays that kept increasing even after the bailouts, to an all-time high of $3.599 trillion in 2011 (only slightly down this year to $3.538 trillion)? It is because the Democrats used the 2009 spending as the new baseline for future budgets, not as emergency spending to forestall the crisis. Thus, even though revenues have increased in the last few years, and now are only slightly ($75 billion) below the last Bush figure, government spending remains at least one trillion dollars over revenues, and that will continue for the foreseeable future.

     With all the talk of the “fiscal cliff,” the cliff is actually a forced reduction in government spending of a grand total of approximately $100 billion this year, less than 10% of the deficit and not even 3% of the projected budget. That is some “cliff.” That cliff would be perceived by an ordinary person as simple financial prudence – not spending money you don’t have on things that you don’t really need. But since government does not have any money of its own – it takes ours, borrows from other countries or prints more dollars – and politicians have big spending appetites with which they indulge the voters who keep them in power, the normal rules of spending do not apply to them.

     Hence, we are constantly barraged with fiscal legerdemain that fools the uninformed citizen. For example: Obama has been trumpeting his financial plan that “cuts” the federal budget by $4.4 trillion over ten years. That sounds great! But unaddressed is that his budget actually increases the federal deficit by almost $11 trillion. I.e., his “cuts” – should they ever be enacted, itself dubious – result in an additional deficit over that decade of about $11 trillion, rather than the $15 trillion deficit that would accrue without his cuts. Some sacrifice.

     Or, in a typical example that has been going on for years already in both parties, ”cuts” are deemed to be money that might have been spent but actually will not be spent because it is no longer needed. So, the fact that the US will not be fighting in Iraq from 2013-2016 or in Afghanistan from 2014-2020 is said to generate real “cuts” in spending each projected year that now can be used elsewhere. Really? Is money not budgeted and not spent really a “decrease” in spending? Not in the real world, but only in the politician’s alternate universe.

     Consider: my wife and I decided to buy a Jaguar XK. We really can’t afford it, but we figure that it is worth borrowing the money so that I can be the envy of all the other rabbis. After all, you only live once. But then, on second thought, we decided not to purchase that car, and – voila! – we just saved $81,000 that we don’t have that we can now spend elsewhere! Indeed, if we decide not to buy a Jaguar in each of the next five years, we will have saved over $400,000. Now we are talking about real money.

     It reminds me of the old joke about the kid who bursts into his house out of breath, and boasts to his father: “Dad, I just saved $2! I ran home from school behind a bus!” To which the father replies, dismissively, “You should have run home behind a taxi and saved twenty dollars!” That joke is now official government policy, and has been for some time.

     The sad truth is that government spending is almost never cut, because spending taxpayer money is the lifeblood of the politician. With it, he literally buys votes and assures his re-election. Every dollar spent by the government has an interest group lobbying for it, as if its life depends on it – and often it does. Thus, the president got a lot of traction out of Mitt Romney’s declaration that PBS federal funding would be cut – as if one network deserves special treatment in an era when television is glutted with privately owned networks. It became a rallying cry – Romney v. Big Bird. But if even those funds – basically, for entertainment purposes – cannot be cut, then nothing can be cut. Even the much celebrated “fraud and waste” in the federal budget have lobbyists. Every nickel goes somewhere – into someone’s job or someone’s pocket. And someone votes.

      Even the modest cut in the defense budget as a result of sequestration will restore Pentagon funding to the level of 2006, just a few years ago, and not at all dire. America will still spend on defense roughly the equivalent of the next ten nations combined. Somehow it will manage.

    So why the dreadful forecasts of cliffs and calamities? Because any “cut” drains the lifeblood from the politician. If these cuts become mandatory, then “someone” will lose something, and be unhappy as a result. But the current path is unsustainable. The American middle class who voted President Obama back into power want near-limitless benefits, as long as someone else pays for it. But there is no “someone else.” Not even the vaunted rich have the type of money that can underwrite the bloated budget, and they might as well sit on their money rather than see it taxed to oblivion.

     One rule of politics appears to be immutable: any increase in revenues will only lead to an increase in spending. Every dollar sunk into the federal treasury has some politician lusting after it. If spending decreased even to 2007 levels, the federal budget would be balanced in a year or two. So, let the Bush “tax cuts” expire. The very notion of a “tax cut” presupposes that government has some prior claim to our money, and only allows us to keep the remainder. Expose the rapacious government for what it is – a behemoth that can only subsist if it is constantly fed the red meat of the people’s hard-earned money. Let’s go over that cliff; we might enjoy the ride.

    Indeed, let the people be taxed enough so that the budget is actually balanced, without the gimmicks and duplicity to which we have become accustomed. It is probably the best way to revive and restore the ideal of limited government that was the original foundation of the American system.

 

13 Comments

Cease Fire?

Posted on November 20, 2012 | 15 comments

Israel faces a momentous decision – whether or not to again launch a ground invasion of Gaza – most weighty because the lives and health of its soldiers and civilians are at stake. I number relatives and loved ones in both groups, so any decision is fraught with peril, uncertainty and the risk of catastrophe. The questions then become: what would be the strategic objectives of such an incursion, and how realistic is it – both in terms of present casualties and future political prospects – that those objectives can be achieved?

Since Biblical times, Gaza has been a source of vexation to the people of Israel. From there the Philistines harassed and occasionally dominated ancient Israel, and it was through the Philistines – by then an extinct people for centuries – which the 2nd century Roman Empire sought to erase any reference to the Jewish people by re-naming their conquest “Palestine.” For sure, Jews have resided in Gaza since ancient times, with thriving communities from the 16th century until the War of Independence in 1948, and after the Six-Day War for almost 40 years. More than twenty Jewish communities were destroyed by Israel in 2005 in a reckless and counterproductive act whose real legacy is once again on display this week. As predicted then, Gaza became a haven for terrorists, the source for the relentless harassment of Israelis through rockets and missiles fired at civilians, and the base for Hamas.

It is remarkable how few Israelis seek to recall the provenance of their current predicament, perhaps because so many of the politicians responsible for that debacle are still in positions of prominence and influence. Although missiles were shot sporadically from Gaza even when it was ruled by Israel, it was much more limited in scope and more readily halted. There would be no need now to debate the risks of a ground invasion – and since the Expulsion, for the second time – because the military bases would still be there. Soldiers would not have to navigate through minefields, booby-trapped homes and underground weapons caches. Aside from the devastating human cost of the Expulsion, the task of pacifying Gaza has become infinitely more difficult. We can lament the past, but it is more productive to learn from it.

What are the strategic objectives of Hamas in this conflict? Bear in mind something that is rarely referenced – that Hamas is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Its raison d’être according to its charter is the elimination of the Jewish state and it has pledged to wage eternal war until it achieves that goal. It has mortgaged the lives of its fighters, their families and now all Gazans for a successful realization of its vision. Thus, Hamas is Nazi-like in its inspiration, aspiration and policies.

Their short-term goals are several: to kill Jews; to sow terror among the Israeli people; to test its weapons capabilities for future conflicts; to deflect attention from Iran’s nuclear program; to test the reactions of the American administration which it perceives as weak and not fully supportive of Israel; and, especially, to acquire further ammunition for its war of delegitimization against Israel.

The latter demands special emphasis, because it explains the glee of the Palestinians at the death or injury of their own civilian population. They love nothing better than to trumpet the evils of the Israelis who kill innocent civilians – babies! Unsaid of course, but now recognized by all decent people who pay attention, Hamas deliberately places its weapons, rocket launchers and offensive capabilities in the very heart of its civilian population – right next to, and sometimes even inside its schools, day care centers, hospitals and mosques.

That is the height of evil cynicism. They deliberately shoot their missiles at Israeli civilian targets, and then squeal like mice when their civilians – ensconced in what are effectively military zones – are hit. Certainly they do not expect their use of their civilian population as human shields to gain them immunity from attack; what they do expect is that their civilians will be killed or injured, giving them a propaganda coup amongst the venal and the gullible across the world by their feigned, pained expressions of anguish. That is why they have adopted the macabre practice of staging scenes of the injured and dead – and then having those “victims” get up and walk away when the cameras are turned off; that is why they have already this week utilized graphic pictures of fathers holding their wounded children – even though the pictures are from Syria, and from last month. (Israel has done remarkably well this time around in responding almost instantly to every Arab fabrication.)

And that is how they are trying to rile up the Arab world and win sympathy and support for themselves, even though the 100 Arabs killed in the past week pale before the 40,000 (!) Arabs killed in Syrian fighting in the last year or so, without respite and without any desire of the Arab world to intervene to halt that bloodshed. Every time one thinks that the Arabs have reached a new low in raw hypocrisy, they dig a little deeper. Those who think that they somehow care about the lives and wellbeing of their people have probably never heard of the phenomenon known as the “suicide bomber.” They don’t care about human life the same way we do; to think otherwise is to project onto them Western values that they do not share and in fact ridicule. A Hamas spokesman years ago brazenly touted their “advantage” in these battles: “We love death like the Jews love life.” Add to that the simple fact that this civilian population voted for the racist, genocidal and suicidal policies of Hamas, then any sympathy for them is grossly misplaced. Those who really are innocent should leave, and quickly, because they have linked their destinies to those of the malevolent mass murderers who govern them. Facilitating that would be an honorable mission of the Arab world today.

From an Arab perspective, they have achieved most of their goals already. They have killed Jews, sown terror, challenged the Americans, garnered their propaganda photos and tested their weaponry. Their major “demand” now is that Israel end its embargo on Gaza, the better to allow Hamas to import more missiles and even heavier weapons. Heaven forbid if Hamas would acquire guidance systems for their missiles, which now have the capability of reaching Israel’s largest cities and population centers. Such an agreement would embolden Hamas, grant it a major victory, and make the next war even deadlier.

What are Israel’s strategic objectives in the current conflict? As always, those are more difficult to ascertain, because Israel once again was forced to respond. (From Bizarro World: Hamas claims that Israel is the aggressor here and must make concessions. Follow the logic: Hamas has been indiscriminately firing rockets at Israel for years, with an increase in the last month. Since Israel responded only last week, Israel changed the rules of the game – the passive acceptance of rockets on its civilians – and is therefore the aggressor.) Israel’s obsession with avoiding civilian casualties, even to the immoral extent of risking its own soldiers’ lives, and even though it is the only such army in the world held to such a standard, greatly limits its maneuverability. But what are its goals, ultimately?

The problem is that what those goals are and what they should be are not identical. Israel wants stability on its southern border, and an end to missile attacks on its civilian population. It wants Hamas isolated internationally. It wants the world to halt the Iranian nuclear program. It wants to avoid an escalation in the north, where Hezbollah sits atop Lebanon with even more advanced and deadly weaponry than Hamas has.  It wants to avoid a propaganda victory for Hamas that a large scale death of Arab civilians would engender. It wants to avoid casualties to and the capture of its own soldiers – anytime, but certainly in an election year.

Notice how none of Israel’s strategic objectives are solely or even primarily within its control. That is why it is consistently on the defensive, reacting to events but never taking the initiative to transform its strategic situation. One Israeli general this week described the current operation as “mowing the lawn.” Every few years, Israel has to “mow the lawn,” i.e., degrade the capabilities of the enemy and thereby buy a few years’ relative tranquility. Ultimately, that is a defeatist attitude, as the enemy’s capabilities only increase. It is certainly not worth the lives of Israeli soldiers to “mow the lawn.” The grass just grows back, higher and more unruly; on the other hand, dead is dead.

A ground invasion is only worthwhile if there are strategic objectives that are achievable and can be enduring. One typical calculation involves war game theory. A war today that costs 1X casualties might be more desirable than a war in 2-3 years that will cost 3X or 5X casualties. Israel has to project the future capabilities of its enemy, as well as the reliability of the future support of its own allies (i.e., ally). A definite war today might not be sensible if casualties in a potential future war are only 2X. A war might be more beneficial today if the Obama administration two years hence is projected to be less supportive of Israel. (President Obama is in a predicament. Certainly, he has endorsed Israel’s right of self-defense, a gesture that is perceived by his supporters as unusually magnanimous, instead of what it really is: obvious. But he has also insisted that Israel not invade Gaza, which means that he prefers the status quo. But the status quo harms Israel.)

What should be Israel’s strategic objectives in a ground invasion? Nothing less than the destruction of Hamas and an end to its genocidal ambitions. (Of course, those ambitions will remain, but operating from exile, Hamas, like the PLO before Oslo planted them in the heartland of Israel, will be much less effective and an annoyance more than a threat.) It certainly can be done – although to announce it in advance would essentially pre-empt its implementation – and it is better accomplished with aerial bombing that weakens their resistance and Special Forces to capture and kill the leadership, rather than a full scale ground invasion.

Israel must re-assert its control over Gaza; it is the only way in the real world in which we live to prevent the recurrence of the same (or deadlier) quandary in another few years. Clearly, the hostile elements among the civilian population must be encouraged to find their happiness and fortunes elsewhere, and a world genuinely interested in their plight should facilitate that. In fact, an uninhabited Sinai Peninsula begs for them, and they could even live there in greater comfort with limitless land at their disposal – an end to the densely-crowded conditions in which they live and in which their problems fester.

This requires Israel to acknowledge that Hamas is their enemy, dedicated to their extermination, and so must be eliminated. There can be no rapprochement with a genocidal foe.

The downside, of course, is that such might prompt a violent response from Hezbollah –and from those in the international community who are devoted to the establishment of Palestinian states that render Israel more and more vulnerable. The upside is that, if not done, Israel will come under increasing pressure to make additional concessions, both to Hamas and to the PA – including the destruction of more settlements in Judea and Samaria and the formal recognition of a Palestinian state. If that happens, of course, then the current situation in Gaza will be replicated in Israel’s heartland in a few years, and life will become unbearable.

That process can be forestalled and even reversed, but only if Israel’s takes the initiative to transform the strategic dynamic in which it has operated for decades, including abandoning the illusory pursuit of peace with enemies sworn to its destruction. Otherwise, it is not worth soldiers’ lives for another paper agreement, or to strengthen Hamas through more concessions, or simply to kick the can down the road.

Frankly, there is no alternative other than to change the dynamic, and revitalize Israel for the struggles ahead. It is not a simple decision by any means.

May G-d bless Israel, its leaders and soldiers, to make the decision that is right, proper, wise and just, and to carry it out with efficiency, alacrity, and success.

15 Comments

Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel, Jewish History

The Jewish Vote

Posted on November 14, 2012 | 35 comments

There was an extraordinary reaction to my previous piece on the election portents for the American empire. Tens of thousands of people responded, most positively. Apparently, it struck a chord with many who fear for the future of the United States which has been the major force for good in the world for much more than a century.

One discordant note was sounded by someone, unfamiliar to me, who calls himself the “failed Moshiach,” or something like that. He demanded my immediate firing, a classic reaction on the political left to anyone who publicly deviates from their world view. His demand is not only risible, but also counterproductive, as my dismissal would only add to Obama’s sorry record on unemployment. In any event, I would be more concerned if the real Moshiach was displeased with my writings than a self-styled “failed” one.

That does beg the question: why is it that Jews overwhelmingly support the Democratic candidate? This is not something new, but has been the pattern for almost 80 years. (Late 19th century Jews voted primarily for the Republican, being especially fond of the Republican President Abraham Lincoln.) It was the late sociologist Milton Himmelfarb who decades ago noted that “Jews earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puerto Ricans,” i.e., the richest vote like the poorest. What fascinates is that, like the lure of Pennsylvania to Republican presidential candidates (it seems like it should vote for the Republican but never does), the Jewish vote tantalizes Republicans but never seems to materialize. Based on our race, status, education, employment, etc., Jews should be voting for Republicans but rarely do in significant numbers. The Jewish vote remains the chimera of the political conservative. For more than eighty years, the Jewish vote has averaged 75% for the Democrat, rarely deviating more than 5% above or below that figure. Until Hoover’s election, the Jewish vote fluctuated and was relatively balanced. The focus is not on those who can choose a candidate in either party (as I have done on occasion), but those Jews who can never vote for a Republican and always will vote for the Democrat. It cannot be that the Democrat is always the superior candidate to the Republican.

Once again in this election, almost 70% of Jews voted for President Obama, slightly down from the last election (78%), but very much in line with other immigrant communities like Hispanics (71%) or Asians (73%). But Jews are no longer a predominantly immigrant community, so why do the voting patterns of newcomers, or outsiders to the political system, persist among the Jews who are in the mainstream of the establishment? And why are the Orthodox Jewish voting patterns almost the mirror opposite of the non-Orthodox, with more Orthodox Jews voting for Mitt Romney and, give or take a particular race, for Republicans generally?

Firstly, Democrats are widely perceived as the party of the poor, the downtrodden and the societal outcast, and Jews – persecuted for most of our existence – have a natural sympathy for the underdog. As charity is a great virtue (and a fundamental commandment) in Jewish life, Jews especially are drawn to a system that appears charitable on the surface – the redistribution of income from the wealthy to the poor – and government is seen as the vehicle of that charitable distribution.

The weakness in that argument, of course, is that Jews believe in charity, but primarily as a private endeavor. The tithing obligation, or the dispensing of gifts to the poor in Biblical times (maasrot, leket, shikcha, pe’ah – known collectively as matnot aniyim, gifts to the poor), are all private ventures, and are not publicly coerced. Notwithstanding that at different times in history the Jewish community itself intervened and assessed wealthy members a sum of money to care for society’s poor, that was always considered a last resort and not particularly efficient. The king never levied taxes to care for the poor, although the religious establishment might. Charity as a private act lends moral perfection to the donor; the same cannot be said for a coercive taxation system that distributes only a small sum of the monies collected to the poor.

Of course, it would unacceptable in a Jewish context to have a permanent impoverished class – multi-generational families of welfare recipients – as it should be in an American context. The trillions of dollars spent since the Great Society initiated the War on Poverty has in fact exacerbated poverty, not alleviated it, with more poor in both real and proportionate terms today than when the programs started. It should not be difficult to ascertain why. Handouts degrade the recipient and create a dependency – call it now an entitlement – that is not easy to terminate. We know as well that the greatest form of charity under Jewish law is finding a job for someone unemployed, or lending him money so he can start his own business. For the recipient, that is both dignified and effective in the long-term, but for some reason, Jews feel better giving someone a fish than teaching him how to fish; perhaps the latter would cut into the market share of the Jewish-owned fish companies, if there were Jewish-owned fish companies. But current policies are demeaning and debilitating to the recipient, even if they satisfy the compassionate emotions of their advocates.

Secondly, Jews have been enamored with the Democratic Party since the days of FDR, who nurtured the identity politics that Barack Obama has perfected – appealing to a variety of different groups rather than to Americans as a whole. FDR won a landslide second-term victory in 1936 even though the economy worsened on his watch (higher unemployment, steep drop in earnings) because he blamed Herbert Hoover for everything (familiar ring, that) and patched together a coalition of interest groups – farmers, labor unions, Jews and women – that would be sufficient for victory.

But it is not just that FDR created the modern welfare state but that he also cultivated Jewish support. For the first time in US history, an American president surrounded himself with Jews – Frankfurter, Rosenman, Baruch, et al. An unprecedented 15% of Roosevelt’s executive appointments were Jews. That shattered the brick wall that the WASP establishment had erected around the levers of power, and forever endeared him to Jews. Of course, none of that symbolism mattered when the Holocaust came, and FDR did little to help the Jews of Europe and much to thwart immigration, rescue and relief efforts. Indeed, FDR remained a hero to most Jews notwithstanding his pathetic record on Jewish issues – even famously refusing to meet a delegation of Rabbis who came to plead for assistance to the beleaguered European Jews being systematically exterminated by the Nazis.

That disconnect – between rhetoric and reality – has persisted until today. Truman was rightly lauded for recognizing the nascent State of Israel in 1948 – after much hesitation – but Thomas E. Dewey was on record even before as supportive of Jewish national rights. JFK openly threatened Israel over its Dimona reactor, LBJ pressured Israel not to open fire in 1967 despite the Arab provocations that led to the Six-Day War, and it is now crystal clear how Jimmy Carter felt about the Jews and about Israel. (Others too. Former Israeli diplomat Naphtali Lavie wrote in his memoirs of the stridency and harshness with which then-VP Walter Mondale – so-called “friend of Israel” – dealt with Israel before and during the Camp David summit, leading Israel’s FM Moshe Dayan to comment: “Isn’t he supposed to be a friend of Israel? With friends like him, who needs enemies.” Similar backstage accounts elsewhere expose the current VP Joe Biden as antagonistic to Israel during negotiations as well while he was a Senator.)

Conversely, presidents as diverse as Nixon, Reagan and Bush II were immensely supportive of Israel, and at critical times. That their records were not “perfect” – whose is, and how would we even define perfect? – and that we can quibble about a policy decision here and there is a cogent reminder to the American-Jewish community that these men were, after all, presidents of the United States, not prime ministers of Israel. At times, the interests of America and Israel will diverge; that is natural and understandable, and America will also produce presidents like Eisenhower or Bush I, or Obama, for that matter, who were less sympathetic to Israel, and a Clinton who tended to be more sympathetic despite some ugly moments. But Nixon made historically important decisions (e.g., the re-supply of Israel’s armaments during the worst period of the Yom Kippur War, and over Kissinger’s strong objections) and Reagan and Bush II were preternaturally well-disposed to Jews and Israel.

Nevertheless, the curious love affair between Jews and Democrats that began with FDR has not ended. Today, it is trapped in a time warp. Jews contort themselves like pretzels to try to pretend that today’s Democrat party is the same as the party of yesteryear. But today’s Democrats head governments in which funds are handed down not to assist people short-term but to sew up their votes long-term, in which the inclusion in the party platform of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and G-d Himself was roundly booed, and about which polls widely show that support for Israel among Democrats is well below 50% and among Republicans well over 70%. Facts are stubborn things.

That engenders the third reason why Jews remain tenacious Democratic voters. The dark secret is that few Jewish Democrats vote with Israel as their main concern, or even as a major interest. As long as the rhetoric is innocuous enough, the real policies do not matter. There is also a segment of the Jewish community that, by reasonable standards, can be construed as anti-Israel. They make common cause with Israel’s enemies, support boycott of and divestment from Israel, oppose Jewish settlement in the heartland of Israel and favor the establishment of another Palestinian state, and/or are openly hostile to Israel exercising its right of self-defense – ever, under any circumstances. Some Jews even oppose the Jewish national idea, and think Israel itself is illegitimate. The one common denominator is that all those Jews vote for the Democratic Party. They are not the only Jews who vote for the Democrat, but all those Jews do vote for the Democrat.

Thus, the fourth reason why most Jews are Democrats – since Israel’s fate is of tangential interest to many – is that they are more aroused by the social agenda than by any other concern, including Israel. Many Jews are obsessed with abortion rights, and see it as a sacrament. They are fanatics about individual rights and freedoms, and loathe any constraints on personal behavior (even the Torah’s!) Jews, in fact, seem uniquely intimidated by the contrived threats to these newfound freedoms.  And they are in the forefront of transforming traditional society – supporting same-sex marriage, alternative lifestyles, and the abolition of any notion of objective morality. Strange, one might think, because Jews introduced to the world the concept of objective moral norms transmitted to us by the Creator of the universe.

But most Jews are widely estranged from their faith – fifth reason – and do not perceive their Judaism as shaping or influencing their world view, except insofar as they distort the Torah’s values and ideas and assume they correspond to the NY Times editorial page. Most can speak of Jewish values only in the most amorphous terms – and perceive as uniquely Jewish the platitudes (“be a good person!”) that are common to every religion. Most have limited exposure to Torah. That is why the Orthodox voting patterns are almost the complete opposite of the non-Orthodox. The closer one is to tradition, the more one will gravitate to conservative ideals. That there are exceptions, of course, only proves the rule.

A sixth reason bores into the credibility of the statistics, and raises the great enigma of Jewish life today: how many Jews actually live in the United States? The survey questions are asked with trepidation, because a large percentage of American “Jews” are not Jews according to Jewish law. As we know, a Jew is defined according to tradition as a person born of a Jewish mother or converted according to halacha, Jewish law. (The definition remains the definition despite its unpopularity, indeed, its rejection, in the non-Orthodox world. It goes without saying – but I must – that “non-Orthodox Jews” who satisfy the two criteria are as Jewish as is any Jew.)

With intermarriage in the non-Orthodox world hovering around 70%, how many of the “Jews” counted in these surveys are in fact Jews? For example, the children of non-Jewish mothers are not Jews according to Jewish law, even if they feel Jewish and were bar-mitzvahed. Likewise, the children of Jewish mothers who intermarry are Jews – but are they really representative of Jews in terms of ascertaining a “Jewish” vote – especially since most intermarried children by far are not raised as Jews, or educated as Jews? It might very well be that if we exclude hundreds of thousands of halachic non-Jews from our count as Jews, then the differences in voting patterns between Jews and other mainstream groups as revealed by the polls might not be as dramatic. Since it is difficult to count Jews in America – many pollsters rely on a self-definition which could as ethnic as it is religious – the surveys themselves are suspect. It would explain, though, why support for Israel has dwindled as a major issue for Jewish Democrats.

Finally, and sad to say, most Jews today are committed secularists who are uncomfortable with any expression of faith in the public domain. The Democratic Party is therefore their natural home, even if American history and politics have been informed by faith from the very founding of the country. The Democrats have moved on from that premise, and in their desire to transform the United States, have disconnected it from those roots.

But those roots should be attracting Jews, if they truly understood their faith. The growing trend of Jews moving to conservative ideas is reflective both of the attractions of tradition and the ongoing disappearance of the secular Jew. As yet, it is not enough to counter the allure of nostalgia for an idyllic liberal past that really never was, and will not be seen again.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Machshava/Jewish Thought