Is The Democratic Party Part of The Israel Lobby?

You might think so, to hear Howard Dean in a speech to the American Jewish Committee claim:

"I was recently asked about the difference between the Democratic and Republican parties," Dean said. "When it comes right down to it, the essential difference is that the Democrats fundamentally believe it is important to make sure that American Jews feel comfortable being American Jews."

Actually, Dean's statement reveals nothing so much as his poor memory. It was just last year that Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) and other Democrats staged a mock impeachment inquiry over the Iraq war:

The session took an awkward turn when witness Ray McGovern, a former intelligence analyst, declared that the United States went to war in Iraq for oil, Israel and military bases craved by administration "neocons" so "the United States and Israel could dominate that part of the world." He said that Israel should not be considered an ally and that Bush was doing the bidding of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"Israel is not allowed to be brought up in polite conversation," McGovern said. "The last time I did this, the previous director of Central Intelligence called me anti-Semitic."

Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.), who prompted the question by wondering whether the true war motive was Iraq's threat to Israel, thanked McGovern for his "candid answer."

At Democratic headquarters, where an overflow crowd watched the hearing on television, activists handed out documents repeating two accusations -- that an Israeli company had warning of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that there was an "insider trading scam" on 9/11 -- that previously has been used to suggest Israel was behind the attacks.

Contrary to Dean's speech, you could just as easily argue that the Democratic Party is fertile ground for the musings of Mearsheimer and Walt (though it is refreshing to see the word 'activist' used in its traditional sense and not as a euphemism for 'terrorist'), though a number of Democrats did condemn what was said--including Conyers--afterwards.

Richard Baehr at The American Thinker has written a number of articles on the question of Republican vs. Democrat support for Israel. In The Growing Threat to Israel, he notes the solid support of Republicans for Israel as opposed to Democrats--all the more remarkable for the fact the majority of American Jews live in Democratic "blue states," while some of Israel's strongest supporters in Congress are Republicans in states with few Jews--such as Representatives Mike Pence of Indiana and Roy Blunt of Missouri and Senators Sam Brownback of Kansas and Richard Shelby of Alabama.

In another article, Why Does the Left Hate Israel, Baehr proposes 7 reasons, which he then goes on to explain in detail:

1. It is an easy way to express one’s hatred for America.


2. Israel is viewed as an outpost of colonialism , and an active practitioner of it.


3. Israel is a western nation, and hence can be judged by the left. Israel is not protected by cultural relativism, as the Arabs are.


4. Leftist Christian churches can escape any lingering guilt about the Holocaust, by turning Israel into a villain. Some leftist churches hate Israel because they think this will help protect their members in the holy land- in other words they feel threatened.


5. Ferocious Muslim hatred of Israel and the Jews reinforces the natural cowardice of many on the left who go along with the Muslims to stay out of their line of fire.


6. Jewish leftists are prominent in the anti-Israel movement. This opens the floodgates for everybody else.


7. Israel is attacked because the secular left is appalled by the influence of religious settlers and their biblical connections to the land of Israel, and by the support for Israel by evangelical Christians, and Christian Zionists.

With the Democrats' increasingly catering to the left wing--with its opposition and even outright hatred for President Bush and his policies--it is not difficult to see how the Democratic Party as a whole would be less favorable to Israel that the Republicans.

Of course, there are opponents to Israel on the Right as well, such as Patrick Buchanan, and you no longer hear people trumpeting the claim that Bush is the best friend Israel ever had, but as a group, the anti-Israel rhetoric is currently more concentrated on the Left.

Soccer Dad directed me to a post in Daniel Pipes' weblog back in March, Republicans and Democrats Look at the Arab-Israeli Conflict, which provides numbers on support for Israel between Republicans and Democrats:

Gallup Poll: Sympathies With The Israelis or The Palestinians Results By Party Affiliation and Ideology 2002-2006 Aggregate
	Israelis	Palestinians	Both/Neither/Don't Know
Conservative Republicans	78%	7%	14%
Moderate/Liberal Republicans	62%	16%	21%
Liberal Democrats	43%	23%	33%
Moderate Democrats	50%	17%	32%
Conservative Democrats	46%	23%	30%

By the same token, it is not enough just to have solid support from Republicans. As Baehr points out, it is not in Israel's best interests to have solid support on only one side of the Congressional aisle--thereby leaving support for Israel dependent on which party is in power.

If American Jews want their interests in Israel supported by both Republicans and Democrats, by the Left as well as the Right, we had better figure out just what our priorities are and how we define support for Israel. Platitudes such as Dean's ambiguously expressed desire to "make sure that American Jews feel comfortable being American Jews"--which, depending on how you understand it, can actual sound scary--are not enough. It is not enough accept to John Kerry's claim during the last election about his 100% voting record over a 20 year period, when, as reported by Rich Richman in John Kerry On Israel: Second To Several:

The JVL [Jewish Virtual Library] list notes that, in connection with the FY 2000 Foreign Aid Conference Report, Kerry opposed the pro-Israel position. In 2000, he failed to join 60 co-sponsors of the "Middle East Peace Process Support Act" — a bill calling on the president not to recognize a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. He also failed to co-sponsor the pro-Israel "Peace Through Negotiations Act," which attracted 60 co-sponsors.

In 1993, Kerry failed to join 55 senators signing the Grassley/Lautenberg letter to the State Department, which demanded that it include Hamas in its annual report on terrorism.

It is not enough to judge by the numbers. While Kerry voted for pro-Israel measures, he did not propose them himself; he just followed along. True allies and friends of Israel need to be judged by the quality of their support--and their support needs to be judged outside of Congress as well. One example is Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is working to slash US funding for the PA and the UN and ensure that America moves to isolate the new regime and whose Middle East Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee, heard the findings about the exaggerated claims for Palestinian Arab population.

Bottom line, despite the FBI investigation of AIPAC and the Mearsheimer and Walt paper, Jews need to unite behind Israel's best interests and find and create friends in Congress and elsewhere who truly feel the same way.

Crossposted at Israpundit

Technorati Tag: Israel and Democrats and Republicans and Howard Dean and Ray McGovern and James Moran.